Many people suppose that “evangelist,”
“evangelism,” etc. were Protestant terms. However, these terms
originated in the Orthodox Christian Church. The words evangelist and
evangelism come from the Greek word for “Gospel,” eu-aggelion (Eu:
“well” and aggello: “to announce”) which means, “good news.” The word
evangelist is used many times in the Bible, in both the Old and New
Testaments.
(The word “angel” also comes from the same root. Angel means “one who
announces.”) As such, evangelist is an Orthodox word, and it can be said
the Protestants borrowed it from us! Sometimes, because of
well-publicized scandals connected to men who call themselves
evangelists, we might wish to disassociate ourselves from this word.
These men have indeed proven themselves to be false evangelists.
However, we must not forget that in many of our traditional languages
within the Orthodox Church (Greek, Slavonic, etc.), the word for Gospel
is something close to “evangel.” As such, we should not be ashamed of
the word, or hesitant to use it, but instead become diligent in our
reclaiming of it in its full and true meaning!
As baptized Orthodox Christians, all of us are
called to be evangelists, in the sense that we are called to bear
witness to the fullness of the Gospel, the Good News of Christ (which is
the treasure of the Orthodox Church alone) and proclaim it to those who
would hear it. Orthodox history is full of men and women who were
evangelists, starting with Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. St. Mary
Magdalene (sometimes called the Apostle to the Apostles) was the first
to proclaim the Good News of the resurrection of Christ to the world; in
turn St. Paul and the other Apostles traveled throughout much of the
known world announcing the resurrection. Sts. Cyril and Methodios
evangelized the Slavic peoples; Sts. Herman, Juvenaly and Innocent first
proclaimed the Gospel on the North American continent. St. Alexis Toth’s
evangelical work brought many Eastern-Rite Roman Catholics (Uniates)
back to the Orthodox Church at the turn of this century. Currently,
there is Orthodox mission work going on in Africa, Asia, Central
America, Mexico, as well as in the United States and Canada. We are also
finding that many of the countries that were traditionally Orthodox are
having to be re-evangelized, to some degree, since the fall of the Iron
Curtain.
For many Orthodox in North America, however,
evangelism might very well be a new concept. In the past (in some cases,
the present) many of our communities were more concerned about
maintaining various ethnic identities rather than actively evangelizing.
The thought of bringing in “outsiders” was not a priority. It was even
discouraged in some places. Some even had/have the notion that the
Americans had/have their own churches to go to (i.e. any non-Orthodox
church), that they should leave the Orthodox Church to “our kind.”
Tragically, the result has been that many of our once large communities
in this country have dwindled down to a few aged souls. In my own home
parish, for example, the membership has dropped from a couple of hundred
people in the 1950’s to about 25 in 1998. The parish has lost at least
one whole generation of “its own” to non-Orthodox churches due, in part,
to its attachment to ethnicisms and family feuds that their children
found to be quaint but actually became anachronistic barriers to their
learning about the Faith. Yet these very people are still resistant to
opening the doors to any one other than “our kind,” while bemoaning the
fact that their children and grandchildren are not Orthodox and that the
parish might very well close after their deaths. On a positive note: we
are seeing a number of new Orthodox parishes being formed throughout the
South and in other parts of the country. Many of the older, large
churches have opened their doors and are now filled with people, laity
and clergy alike, who are coming to Orthodoxy in droves, from different
religious and ethnic backgrounds. This is due to the calling of the Holy
Spirit. Over the past twenty or thirty years, visionaries such as Frs.
Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff and Archbishop Dmitri, among many,
many others, have called the Orthodox Church in this country to rouse
itself out of its apparent slumber and begin to rediscover and follow
the example of the great evangelists and missionaries of the Church.
They have held up, like a beacon, the work begun here by the likes of
Sts. Herman, Innocent and Tikhon, which is to preach the Gospel of
Christ to the inhabitants of this land. In recent times we seem to be
witnessing an astounding fruition of this work. Individuals as well as
whole congregations of non-Orthodox people are converting to Orthodoxy;
people who have left the Orthodox Church are returning; “cradle
Orthodox” are thrilled to learn “new things” about the Church of their
ancestors; and Orthodoxy is finally becoming a Church that is being
recognized by the American public.
Let us give thanks to God for all the wonderful
things He is doing in our midst and ask Him that we may be accounted
worthy of being good and diligent evangelists to those who are seeking
the Truth of Orthodoxy.
