ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF A PREACHER-MISSIONARY

Abstract

The article explores three essential features of Orthodox mission in its theological context. It shows that holiness, sacrifice, and joy are the defining characteristics that a missionary must possess in continuing the apostolic ministry. The inner meaning of these qualities is revealed as integral components of Christian witness in the modern world. Іn this life we understand and perceive everything superficially. As a result of the loss of integrity of our natural principles of mind, will, and senses, we tend to think about objects and phenomena, and most importantly about human beings, based on rational and visible facts, thereby losing notion of the reality itself. Unfortunately, most of us do not have an Orthodox way of understanding of such concepts as prayer, fasting, worship, church, and others. This list could go on forever. Everything is limited to the realities of an every day life and everything in our life has religious and moral ‘colouring’. The subject of attention is sermons and missions because there is a lot of talk nowadays about their necessity and relevance. Missionary schools have been opened, and the discipline «Missiology» has been introduced into theological education. But there is a considerable danger of reducing mission to just information and catechesis. Mission becomes a type of activity, but not the life of the Church. Therefore, surely not every type of preaching activity can be called a mission. That’s why arises an urgent need to outline the main characteristics of Orthodox missionary work, abstracting from its rational understanding. Referring to the works of contemporary Orthodox theologians like Metropolitan Kallistos (born Timothy Richard Ware), protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, Most Reverend Metropolitan George (Khodr), or archimandrite Justin Popović, and evaluating their significant contribution to the development of theological thought, we can identify three main characteristics of an Orthodox missionary: holiness, sacrifice, and joy. These are the categories without which the true mission of a Christian becomes similar to that of the Pharisees who, according to Christ, converted people to God but made them worse than themselves: «Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are» (Matthew 23:15).