Why Come to Church? - Round Table Discussion 

absolutely we should.

And stay till the end. ie leave AFTER the thanksgiving prayers.

Hang on in there. The Grace of God and intercession of the saints will support you. Form my first encounter with Orthodoxy to my baptism took nine years! Thats 22 years ago now. I thank God daily for being led into the Orthodox faith. Where else would we go? For there lies the fullness of Christ; there lies eternal life.

Keep going you wont be sorry.

gerrie van der lee "In the Creed we do not say, “I believe that there is a God”; we say, “I believe in one God.” Between belief that and belief in, there is a crucial distinction. It is possible for me to believe that someone or something exists, and yet for this belief to have no practical effect upon my life. I can open the telephone directory for Wigan and scan the names recorded on its pages; and, as I read, I am prepared to believe that some (or even most) of these people actually exist. But I know none of them personally, I have never even visited Wigan, and so my belief that they exist makes no particular difference to me. When, on the other hand, I say to a much-loved friend, “I believe in you”, I am doing far more than expressing a belief that this person exists. “I believe in you” means: I turn to you, I rely upon you, I put my full trust in you and I hope in you. And that is what we are saying to God in the Creed. Faith in God, then, is not at all the same as the kind of logical certainty that we attain in Euclidean geometry. God is not the conclusion to a process of reasoning, the solution to a mathematical problem. To believe in God is not to accept the possibility of his existence because it has been “proved” to us by some theoretical argument, but it is to put our trust in One whom we know and love. Faith is not the supposition that something might be true, but the assurance that someone is there. Because faith is not logical certainty but a personal relationship, and because this personal relationship is as yet very incomplete in each of us and needs continually to develop further, it is by no means impossible for faith to coexist with doubt. The two are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps there are some who by God's grace retain throughout their life the faith of a little child, enabling them to accept without question all that they have been taught. For most of those living in the West today, however, such an attitude is simply not possible. We have to make our own the cry, “Lord, I believe: help my unbelief” (Mark 9: 24). For very many of us this will remain our constant prayer right up to the very gates of death. Yet doubt does not in itself signify lack of faith. It may mean the opposite-that our faith is alive and growing. For faith implies not complacency but taking risks, not shutting ourselves off from the unknown but advancing boldly to meet it. Here an Orthodox Christian may readily make his own the words of Bishop J.A.T. Robinson: “The act of faith is a constant dialogue with doubt.” As Thomas Merton rightly says, “Faith is a principle of questioning and struggle before it becomes a principle of certitude and peace.” Faith, then, signifies a personal relationship with God; a relationship as yet incomplete and faltering, yet none the less real. It is to know God not as a theory or an abstract principle, but as a person. To know a person is far more than to know facts about that person. To know a person is essentially to love him or her; there can be no true awareness of other persons without mutual love. We do not have any genuine knowledge of those whom we hate. Here, then, are the two least misleading ways of speaking about the God who surpasses our understanding: he is personal, and he is love. And these are basically two ways of saying the same thing. Our way of entry into the mystery of God is through personal love. As The Cloud of Unknowing says, “He may well be loved, but not thought. By love can he be caught and held, but by thinking never.”6"-The Orthodox Way, Kallistos Ware

@@Simonet1309 i joined Orthodox Church [Finland] year 2001 : in that weekday's morning, i had particularly evil demons, attacking me. [ i had intentionally caused 100% brain damage at spring 2000, andBut Jesus woke me up from deaths, at butchers' hospital. satan took me to it's eye-stick, incessantly. ] ☦ so i just left that farm-work that morning, and drove to nearest city [ Oulu] = to it's ort.church-office. - i never visited it before. i just stomped there, and saw bearded [respectable looking -] man, surrounded by paper wars. i said, "mittenly" : "i need to join Orthodox Church." that holy sacred man stopped his paper-work and answered to me : "Well, let's fill the forms." 🕎🕎❗❗❗❗❗❗❗🕎🕎 now, over 18 years later, i realize : h o w u n i q u e m e t h o d t h a t w a s ; no starting-courses, no "getting familiar with church". - that [now:legendary emeritus-] proto-shepherd = elder Raimo [K.] pre-saw, that this was my only way to get Rescued from bane's detestation.

Thanks and God bless!

Above all the Eucharistic sacrifice. The man being encompassed and encompassing God truly. The paramount enigma on Earth, the hardest to really understand.

Glad you enjoyed it!

@@Trisagionfilms One concession and/or benefit of Covid19 is being able to have my local church services available online (St Spyridon in Kingsford (Sydney), Australia) and to have them here as a permanent (I hope) resource. Through this technology I sat with my family and saw the Agio Fos on the weekend and have discovered your channel. Again what a great resource ths is! :) I watched the video on Elder Paisios the other day after finding out on the weekend that my previous local parish priest (interstate church) used to seek him for counsel and had him as his Confessor. From there I will be buying his Epistles book to find out more about his life and guidance in a Christian life. Covid19 may have temporarily closed our churches but it has not taken away from Family Prayer and coming together and sharing Easter - though in a different way for this year. Though we can not physically partake in the Mysteria it has given me and my family some great time for reflection, learning and appreciation. Χριστος Αωεστη and God Bless. And may God give you all strength in these challenging times.

Glad you enjoyed!

Chapel of saint epiphanios in Ayia Napa Cyprus

Thank you! and maybe a table will be added one day.

Hopefully, being in total communion with God.

Nancy Post this may help you find closest Orthodox Church if you are in US. You may have to change the mile radius. But there are orthodox prayer books you can use online for your daily prayers that may be helpful. assemblyofbishops.org/directories/parishes Orthodox prayers: ww1.antiochian.org/orthodox-prayers

Same here! Hoping for that to change. God bless

@@saenzperspectives thanks Samuel, I'm in Canada and there is a Church one hour from where I live. When Churches open after the epidemic, I will attend that Church.

You need to take Holy Communion. That's one of the reasons why you need the Church. Also; “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” Matthew 18: 19-20.

Paul Harvey I came from an evangelical background and converted to orthodoxy. I really pray that the liturgy isn’t changed to evangelical style of worship. The liturgy is absolutely beautiful and is actually one of the things that appealed to me. I recommend reading the following book: Orthodox Worship: A Living Continuity with the Synagogue, the Temple, and the Early Church by Benjamin D. Williams. www.amazon.com/Orthodox-Worship-Living-Continuity-Synagogue/dp/0937032727

Your intentions may be in the correct place but it is important for you and all others to know that the liturgy is very, very important to Orthodox worship. The Orthodox believe that the divine liturgy was instituted by the apostles for the Church's continual, reverent, obedient, holy, pure, spirit-lead worship.

I was an avid fan of CCM in my youth, which was in its infancy in my teen years. We did not use it in the worship services of my childhood Methodist Church, but outside that, it served a purpose to nurture my faith. I spent my last 20 years as an Evangelical in a “seeker friendly” church with all that entails…. I became Orthodox in midlife. It’s been over 15 years since I converted, and I say with all humility “God forbid!” to your suggestion. In the Liturgy, we need to learn to offer right worship, and leave worldliness behind. We cannot drag the world into this sacred space in order to attract seekers. It is incompatible with what worshippers (and seekers) need God to do in their souls in these moments. Outside that context, it might play a role, (ie., as a story-telling medium of people’s journeys to Christ), but beyond a certain point, my experience is it will just get in the way of true worship. God in His wisdom has given us the Divine Liturgy for the good and transformation of our souls. Come and see…. The Russian Church for the last 30 years has had an explosive rebirth. They are attracting way more Russians with their traditional forms and institutions (monasteries) than Western Churches are Western seekers, who rather seem to be flocking to Eastern religions and the occult/New Age instead or becoming “nones.” Are you in Russia? Where is this perception coming from?