Orthodox parish: how a parish is created, the structure of the parish, management of the parish, the difference between a parish and a temple, a modern parish

Orthodox parish

Before the October Revolution, it was in parish churches that all official information about parishioners was concentrated: who was born when, was baptized, got married, what they bought and where they moved, and, naturally, dates of death were also recorded. Parishes were formed, as a rule, where there was not only a church, but also the means to maintain a church clergy, i.e. staff of clergy. It is noteworthy that at first parishioners actively participated in the election of clergy members, but over time this right was abolished, leaving only the opportunity to communicate their preferences when appointing a clergyman.

How is a parish created?

The parish unites clergy and lay people who attend one church. The parish is overseen by the bishop of the diocese, who appoints the rector of the church and blesses the entire parish for its activities. Church canons are strict, and if some (or even all members of the parish meeting) decide to leave the parish, they have no rights in relation to the financial and material benefits of the parish. And if we are talking about separation from the built hierarchy, not only property and the right to use it are lost, but even involvement in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Coming

The diocesan authority blesses the creation of churches, chapels, houses of prayer, and also manages the parish. The Audit Commission has the right to control how the parish operates.

Conclusion

It must be recognized that most of the problems listed above, as a rule, have their roots in the long persecution of the Church, which caused a rupture in spiritual and church traditions, as well as their incorrect interpretation by modern people. In most countries of Eastern Europe, parish communities were destroyed, and there was no talk of their revival. Those churches that had not yet been closed were perceived only as places where religious services were provided to the population.

Unfortunately, in our days, when times of relative freedom have arrived, the process of reviving parish communities has encountered new difficulties. The natural conservatism of the Orthodox Church sometimes plays a negative role here. The traditions and way of life of parishes, which have developed as a result of certain historical factors over several decades, are beginning to be perceived almost as patristic, originally Orthodox. As a result, some of the parish rectors are afraid to change anything in their parish, including building community life.

Today it is already becoming obvious that it is important to reorient the attention of the church community from the revival of external church forms and concern for material well-being to the creation of community life and creative church work.

The processes currently taking place in the Church and society give us the right to look into the future with optimism. Despite all the difficulties, people turn their gaze towards the Church with hope, the number of parishes is increasing, including due to young people. Having gone through neophytehood as a natural growing pain, people find the true meaning and joy of life in love for Christ and unity with Him, missionary and catechetical activities are revived, and the level of church self-awareness grows. Faith, rooted in the words of Christ: “I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18) gives us strength to perform Christian service to our neighbors.

Notes:

Anastasius Janulatos. Liturgy after liturgy.

Prot. Alexander Schmeman “Eucharist: The Sacrament of the Kingdom”, p. 299.

Speech by His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' at the ceremonial ceremony on the occasion of conferring on him the academic degree of Doctor of Theology honorius causa of the Tbilisi Theological Academy during the visit of His Holiness to Georgia on April 27 - May 1, 1996. See: Newsletter of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate from July 1, 1996, p. 3.

Reviews of diocesan bishops, III, 443.

Bishop Feofan. Soulful reading No. 10. M., 1896, part III. With. 462–463.

His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II “A true elder treats every person with care”

For example, brief explanations before important moments of the service.

It is advisable to read the Gospel and Apostolic readings facing the people.

Parish structure

Also, with the blessing of the bishop, brotherhoods and sisterhoods are created, which involve other parishioners in the care of the temple, engage in charity, educational activities, and religious education. They make contributions to the needs of the church and strictly obey the decisions of the diocese and parish rectors. In the event of separation, they also lose their property, ceasing all activities within not only the parish, but also the church.

The parish is headed by a rector, who is appointed by the bishop of the diocese. He directs the clergy of the parish, ensures that the church has all the attributes necessary for divine services, organizes the activities of brotherhoods and sisterhoods, holds parish meetings, ensuring that his decisions are strictly observed, represents the interests of the parish entrusted to him in government bodies, maintains a liturgical journal, issues certificates of the sacraments of baptism and marriage.

Parishioners

As a rule, there are 3 people in the church: a priest, a deacon and a psalm-reader. If the parish is small, there may not be a deacon on board. If, on the contrary, the composition may be increased by decision of the diocesan authorities. His responsibility is the spiritual and moral components of the state of the parish. A clergyman can transfer to another diocese only with the permission of the bishop.

And finally, the parishioners, i.e. Orthodox Christians who regularly attend church, participate in divine services, follow the rules of the church, take communion and confess. In addition, it is the parishioners who must take care of maintaining the temple in proper condition.

Church community

Audio

Questions from TV viewers are answered by Priest Konstantin Morozov, cleric of the Church of St.
Prophet Elijah on the Porokhovs. Broadcast from St. Petersburg. — Good evening, dear TV viewers. The program “Conversations with Father” is broadcast on the Soyuz TV channel. Presenter: Mikhail Kudryavtsev. Today our guest is the cleric of the church in honor of the Prophet Elijah on Porokhov, Priest Konstantin (Morozov). Hello, father.

- Hello, Mikhail.

— Father Konstantin, I ask you, according to tradition, to bless our TV viewers at the beginning of the program.

- God's mercy will be with you.

- Thank you. Dear friends, our topic today is “Church Community.” Please call our studio in St. Petersburg by phone and ask your questions on the topic.

Father, in your opinion, is the church community in modern reality a myth or a reality?

- A lot has been said about this. His Holiness Patriarch Kirill said that parishes should turn into communities. The “200” program is aimed at this, which says that small churches, where the priest knows his flock, will be genuine communities.

What is a community anyway? It has not yet been determined. In my opinion, first of all we need to ask the question: what is the Church, why is the Church needed? Many secular people ask me this question. We have many correct answers to this question: in order to participate in the Holy Sacraments, in order to receive grace, the Church is a hospital. In my opinion, the Church is needed so that a person knows what he wants from God - family well-being, some earthly blessings. But what God wants from him, man does not know. In fact, the task of the Church is to convey to people what God wants from them.

The central task of the Church is to understand man, when we understand that the Church is needed only in order to understand: what does God want from me? This answer to the question of understanding the church community. These are people who get together and solve internal and external problems that either society or themselves pose to them. God wants them to respond to certain challenges of the time.

— Isn’t this goal being achieved now in the parish regime?

— We have Sunday schools, and even then not in all churches. Some abbots say that they do not have premises, although, it seems, why not gather in the church and organize circles, for example, on reading the Holy Scriptures? One way or another, the task of the school is spelled out: Sunday school should prepare a person for churching, so that he lives in the fullness of the Church and perceives the fullness of the teaching of the Orthodox Church. This is an educational task. Educational task: people meet and communicate on a given topic from a subject-based hourly perspective.

The community solves many more problems than Sunday school. For example, a doctor recently wrote to me in “Vkontakte”: I am a doctor, I do children’s massage, I work in a clinic, I would like to carry out this treatment for our parishioners for the glory of God. Of course, only a community can solve such a problem, when people get together and pass information by word of mouth: we have a person who can help you. The biggest problem of our time is that we are very divided. For us to get together and pay attention to each other is, in fact, the task of the Church. Now in most of our churches people come for their own: they come, pray alone and leave alone, and it’s better when there are not very many people in the church, otherwise someone will push you, shove you, someone will say something bad to you. It’s better when I’m alone in church - this is the general perception of people.

The Church must unite people and make it clear that we live in a community. This is originally a message from Scripture when God created Adam and said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” You can ask yourself the question: he is not alone, he is with God, was God not enough for Adam? Why does God still create Eve? Why does He create her from Adam's rib, and not as Adam? That it was difficult for Him to take the earth, to breathe into it the breath of life - so much for Eve? This is a very interesting question. It seems to me that Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh speaks a lot about this in his speeches, who says that an edge is a facet. In many languages, the rib is the reverse side, that is, relatively speaking, the Lord opens Adam like a book, takes out a part of him from there and makes Eve out of it. Completeness is achieved when there is this communication. If Adam had not known what love really is, he would not have been able to show this love to the Creator. In this regard, we know the Holy Scripture, which says that “thou shalt love God and thy neighbor as thyself.” Love for one's neighbor is placed on a par with love for God.

“Love for a prisoner, love for a sick person is also love for God.” Father Konstantin, you etymologically relate the word “community” to the word “communication”. If we look at the first Christians, their communities were characterized by the fact that they had everything in common. Do you think this side should be present in modern communities?

“I think that we cannot have people bring us everything, as was the case with the first Christians, they shared all their property, everything was divided equally. There can be no such socialism. Or maybe it’s when a person says: “I can serve our community with this and that.” Let’s say I have an additional computer or printer, I can buy it so that we can print some sheets.” And someone says: “I can buy a certain number of Gospels or books to distribute them to those who have not yet heard anything about the Gospel and about Christ.” This is also a moment when people can interact in this field. We have already said that the world is disunited, but the world is becoming functional.

Returning to the topic of surrogacy, all these conversations boiled down largely to “why is surrogacy bad?” Not everyone was convinced that this was immoral. Secular people said that all adults can choose for themselves. But the most important thing is that a person in such a context becomes a function. Such functionalism sometimes even penetrates into the Church, when social workers, full-time missionaries, and full-time catechists appear in our Church. This has never happened in the Church. There were people who treated the poor and widows with an open heart and helped them. It's not a function, it's a relationship. There were no catechists in the Church, there were teachers. This again is service, not work, not some kind of functionality. The Church never had full-time missionaries; there were Apostles who went and preached, for them this was the meaning of life: woe if I don’t preach the gospel.

— The difference is probably in internal motivation?

— In motivation, of course. The names themselves give a moment of functionality. If we remove at least these names and give them church meaning, as a moment of a person’s service, and not his functionality, then we will see that this will be treated completely differently. It is very important.

- Thank you. Father Konstantin, we imagine a temple, in this temple there is a parish, a community arises in it. Is it somehow separated from the parish or does it form some kind of separate structure?

“For a long time we had the position that the community is connected with the temple. A priest I knew was involved in a youth community. He moved to another parish. This entire youth community moved with him. When we met, we began to think about what Father Peter Meshcherin once spoke about: in society, communities are created not around the parish, but around the shepherd. We see that there is nothing wrong with this. We see this in the example of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, when there were many great shepherds - Father John (Krestyankin), Father Savva (Ostapenko), Schieromonk Simeon, he has already been canonized. When they left St. Michael's Church, three groups formed around them, which successfully marched to the Refectory Church, people asking their questions. It was a community that was created around shepherds. The same thing is happening now in most large parishes, when a person comes and for one reason or another chooses one or another pastor, approaches him and begins to live his church life with him. This is normal and natural. A modern community is created not in a parish, but around a pastor.

—Father Konstantin, won’t the situation that Apostle Paul denounces arise: there are Cephas, there are Apollos—communities will arise that will even, perhaps, oppose themselves to each other?

— When communities oppose themselves to each other, this is bad, this is disunity of the Church. But if they come to Christ, there is nothing wrong with that. If a priest becomes a kind of guru and overshadows Christ, this is, of course, bad. If communication creates the moment that we are going to Christ together, that’s good. When communities cooperate with each other, for example, one invites another to visit, it is a wonderful moment.

— Father, following this logic, it turns out that several communities can calmly coexist in one parish.

— At a parish, at some point, there are several groups of people who are cared for by different priests. This is if there is a large arrival. And if there is one priest, who is also the rector, then he controls all these groups of people. The authority of the abbot should always be higher and eliminates the difference between the fact that a person goes to this or that priest. The abbot is always “above”, so he can always easily coordinate.

- Thank you. Father Konstantin, in the modern world a situation of a practical nature often arises: a temple is chosen based on location, convenience, comfort. Is this bad and detrimental to the practice of the community?

- No. A person joins a new temple and, therefore, sees the life of this temple. By going to a temple, if there is really extensive temple activity there, he slowly finds his niche in this temple. Before the revolution, it was so that each person was assigned to a specific temple. Now this is no longer the case, which is probably good, because some people are closer to the style and spirit of one temple, while others are close to the style and spirit of another temple. When a person can choose, this is very wonderful, it enriches a person’s church life, it seems to me.

— Father Konstantin, from personal experience I can say that when you often go to a certain church, you don’t even know whether there are communities in it or not. It seems to me that our liturgical life is divorced from all other activities: I came to the Liturgy at 10.00, prayed, took communion and went home. There was a sermon, dismissal, they kissed the cross - and that’s it, silence in the church. How do you understand that there is life on Mars?

“If there is a good community life in the parish, then it is always visible. I always ask the same question, especially at Easter. They like to say: “Christianity is a joyful religion.” And I always say: “Where is our joy?” This joy is never visible on people's faces. One acquaintance told me: “People leave the church with such faces that you think that something happened at their service.” This is true. What is our joy? When people can share their faith, it's very cool. Nicaea released 1.5 million Gospels of Mark for free distribution. Each parish can order online and, upon receipt, distribute them to those who do not have them. This is a good step for the people, for the community, that they have shown themselves.

Or here is an interesting experience from one of the temples. The youth of the Gutuya temple decided that people were queuing for holy water on Epiphany and it was taking a huge amount of time. It’s cold, people are freezing, you can give them tea. It’s inexpensive; if you buy tea in bulk, it will generally cost a penny. They carried this tea around the crowd and talked to people at the same time. People did not expect at all to be treated humanely. The Church must pay attention to the person. Before we become deified, we must become human. It was a good move for the community. People saw that there was a living church life in this temple.

Call from a TV viewer: Good afternoon, host of the “Conversations with Father” program, dear guest. I would like to know your opinion on the following reasoning. In our history, in pre-revolutionary times, the communal life and unity of the Russian people was supported, from my point of view, at the family level: several generations of relatives - parents, children - lived in one hut. Nowadays in our society there is a tendency for parents and children to live separately. This is strongly supported from the point of view of psychology in our lives. Isn’t this the root of disunity and such a long development of the community in our society, the conciliarity that we are talking about now?

“I can say that the family structure and family values have indeed changed. This is already a statement of fact. Is it possible to return to what was? No, this is impossible, because the way of life now and the way of life then are completely different. Moreover, at Baptism, I always reveal one commandment to my parents: honor your father and your mother and you will live long on earth. Honor: feed, drink, the time will come - close your eyes. Why "don't love"? Because love is given. We know that there are relationships between children and parents such that it is difficult to talk about love there. Therefore - veneration.

On the other hand, we understand another point: when a person is young, he is guided by the following criteria: he is beautiful, he is healthy, he does not reach for pills every day, nothing hurts, he walks quickly and does not experience any ailments in his body . For him, everything is for the first time: entering school, graduating from school, entering college, first kiss, marriage, birth of a child, first salary, car, apartment, and so on. Life breathes such newness. But gradually these supports are knocked out of us. Not so strong, not so beautiful, not for the first time, but only again. What remains for a person in old age? In old age, the spiritual core that he has accumulated during his life remains. An old man is synonymous with wisdom. The young do not have what the old have - spiritual baggage.

When there were teenage outbursts, when a person declared that he was not just controlled, but that he was already a person: if you don’t watch TV, I will, if you don’t go for a walk, I will. When these conflicts occurred, where did the youth go? To grandparents. They could not tell them anything, just cut onions or peel potatoes, and they felt good in the orbit of such old age. They understood what they had to come to and reconciled with their parents.

Now we live in a non-religious world, so we mostly have grandparents. What do they do? They are engaged in the pursuit of life, a la Gurchenko: “I wish I were your years.” All these lifts, endless rejuvenation, although everyone understands that a forty-year-old with all her lifts and fitness will look worse than any 20-year-old, because age is age. A person does not live to lie in a coffin like a 30-year-old.

Hence the question: in the 90s there was a lot of noise about the fact that young people stopped giving up seats on public transport to older people. What, suddenly everyone has become uncultured? No, this generation gap simply occurred when the economic, political, social, moral situation and all other aspects of life changed dramatically, and the experience of the elderly became unclaimed by the young. In this regard, they simply turned a blind eye to the elderly, they did not exist for this world, because there was nothing to learn from them: they had no church baggage, no religious experience, and the social moments that they could convey became unclaimed.

Now, please note, people are giving up seats on public transport to the elderly. The situation has returned to normal and to some extent has come into compliance. In the modern situation, when we have gone through 70 years of atheism and the whole world is going through de-churching, this suggests that, on the one hand, people live for themselves, and on the other hand, parents begin to interfere in the families of their children very rudely and unreasonable. I myself always tell grandmothers and mothers-in-law who come to me: “Start your own family and lead there. This is not your family. This is the family of your daughter or your son, they must figure it out themselves. Otherwise, there will be constant clashes between you, which will not lead to anything good. These are not your children, these are your grandchildren. Their parents must raise them. You can say, “I was raised like this, let’s go to the theater, the performance is very good, etc., pass on your life experience.”

To a greater extent, modern grandparents do not raise their grandchildren; they do not want and do not know how to do this as needed. In other words, the grandchildren will take revenge on our children for us - there is such a rampant permissiveness for the grandchildren, which does not have a very good effect on the upbringing of the parents. This is a big problem. We have not formed a new family culture¸ only at the level of formation, but we cannot return to the old culture, it is already lost.

- Thank you, Father Konstantin. I was told a comment from one of our viewers that “the best childhood is childhood at the feet of your grandfather.”

- This is the absolute truth. If a person is comfortable at the feet of his grandfather, this is the most wonderful childhood. I remember my childhood. I felt comfortable when I went to Komarovo for the summer with my grandmother. But we were all waiting for our parents to arrive; they came on Friday evenings for Saturday and Sunday, during the summer season. It was a wonderful time. It’s wonderful when a person is happy with his grandparents, it means that they can pass something on to him.

- Thank you. Father Konstantin, I return to the topic and the previous question. The question stated, as it seems to me, several myths. The first myth: before the revolution we had communities. In my opinion, there was no community in the Church and in general there was a sad decline.

— There was no community, you are right. They were just emerging at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, and so they stopped at this point. Community appeared among people in the 20s, when the oppression of the Church united people with each other, and catacomb movements appeared, led by Bishop Athanasius (Sakharov). Secret communities of Christians appeared who helped each other during these difficult years of persecution of the Church.

— Before the revolution, there was virtually no liturgical life. What kind of community are we talking about?

- Yes you are right. Liturgical life boiled down to the rule: take communion once a year on Easter, receive a certificate that you have received communion, and take it to work. You will remember that there was a colossal decline in the army in the First World War after the compulsory communion of soldiers at Easter was abolished. Why? Because people did it formally. One of the philosophers asked the Red Army soldier: “What are you doing? Why are you destroying the temple? Haven’t you read the Gospel?” He replied: “No, I just kissed the lid of it.” That is, he came to confession, told some sins, kissed the cover of this Gospel, and what was there - he didn’t even look.

- Yes, it's sad. I would like to talk about one more myth from the question. For some reason, often, remembering pre-revolutionary Russia, we remember the peasantry, not the nobility. Show me those nobles who, perhaps, lived in one hut with ten of them, with their parents. This is also absurd. In terms of education, we are now closer to the nobles than to the pre-revolutionary peasantry.

- The nobles didn’t even raise their children; they were raised by governesses or tutors. It was not customary for the nobility to raise their children by sitting next to them. Very early on, girls from poor noble families were sent to the Smolny Institute, and no one asked the question that they were cut off from their mother and other family members and raised in a certain spirit and style.

We still have little work on pre-revolutionary education, and there are few who can well cover this topic regarding education in noble families. There is a museum at Smolny, whose specialists can tell you how Smolensk girls were raised in this educational institution. But it is still a unique experience.

- Thank you, father. Servant of God Natalya, our TV viewer, asked the following question: “What is the attitude towards those people who, perhaps, have been constantly going to different churches for many years? Thus, they live a liturgical life, participating in church sacraments, and are not attached or attached to any temple or priest.”

— We must ask the question: why do we participate in the sacraments? In general, why are the sacraments needed? Some will say: The Sacraments are needed for personal and individual salvation. Although in the first centuries they said that thanks to community, people were saved. The commemoration of the deceased at the Liturgy is a statement of their belonging to the community, proof that so-and-so was in the church community, therefore the church community prays for him constantly and regularly. This is where the moment of proskomedia comes from, when many people brought bread to the temple, they prayed for everyone, taking out a piece from each bread brought to the temple from each family. We can say that the moment of rooting in the community is very important; it guides a person in his church life. Moreover, he does not lead in a detached manner, but very concretely, vitally, definitely, when he experiences certain moments together with the temple, tunes into a certain church way of life, feels the spirit of the temple - this is important.

In the sacraments we receive grace. What is grace? This is some kind of magic word that we often hear: here is the Sacrament for you to receive grace, and grace is needed for salvation. I constantly come across this formula in some leaflets and discussions. We need the sacrament in order to have communion with Christ. I don’t need the Eucharist for anything else. The word “salvation” comes from the word Savior, Christ. If we talk about church sacraments in general, then this is a change in a person and his becoming by the grace of God completely different, different in the Kingdom of God. We forget that we are already saved. I remember our old teacher Evgeniy Aleksandrovich, he always said: “Protestants of all kinds and stripes say - we are saved. And period. And we say - we are saved in hope, we hope that we are saved.” We are truly already saved: the Savior came and saved us all, changed the nature of fallen man. When we talk about the Kingdom of God, for many it is a kind of abstraction. Then I give an example: in our world there are three moments that clearly indicate that our soul remembers the Kingdom of God. First, we know our future. What moment is this? The only reality of our life, what will really happen, everything else is only hypothetical - that we will die. We know that we are sick. Everything in the world is sick, everything that has life dies. But we have a negative attitude towards illness and death, although this is a natural state for the world, although it seems natural. Consequently, once upon a time there was no illness and death, since within ourselves we say that this is bad; For ourselves, we do not experience death as a natural process.

The second thing I have always talked about is our disunity. We all strive for unity: to be understood, to share my understanding and feeling about myself, so that the other person will react, like me, to the joys and problems in my life. Relationships between husband and wife, between children and parents, and between friends are built on this. Ultimately, I understand: no, the way I understand myself, the way I feel, another person cannot treat me like that. And the desire for this is colossal. This again suggests that there was such a state in the human soul, when this state was, we read about this in the Holy Scriptures: “Adam and his wife were naked and not ashamed.” What does naked mean? They were absolutely open to each other, there was no moment when they could hide anything from each other. Notice that only after the Fall does the moment of clothing appear: they sew fig aprons for themselves, hiding from each other, ashamed of each other. A moment of disunity appears.

Third: no matter how much they tell me at some nice feasts how good and wonderful I am, how we all appreciate and love you, I feel that they are not. I feel like I am. I want to be different, different. I want to change. These three moments, whether a person is aware of them or not, and reaches out to the Kingdom of God, so that these moments are replenished in him. And they can only be replenished in God. Therefore, if we go further, we can say that we live only for the Kingdom of God, in order to actually come to this fullness. The purpose of a person’s life is to love and be loved. They tell me: “Man is created for happiness.” No, not for happiness, like a bird for flight. Man was created to love and be loved. The more of this love we give to each other in communication, the better our lives will be. This is a very important point. Napoleon, while on the island of St. Helena, said a very good phrase: “Over the millennia, new commanders appeared in the world who gathered great armies to conquer the world. And no one succeeded. And only He, from His Cross, managed to conquer the world with love alone.” I think this is a very amazing phrase. She emphasizes the meaning of Christianity that it brought into the world - love. This loving attitude is very important. Moreover, understanding love not as a moment of completion, but as a moment of process. We very often talk about love both in family relationships and in communication as if it were some kind of given. We forget that love is a process, the formation of us in this gift. In Unction we again read: “What if I have everything, including faith, but I am like a ringing brass or a sounding cymbal, if I do not have love.” That is, the apostles say that love is the highest that can be: if there are all the gifts, but this gift is not there, then all the gifts are nothing in comparison with this.

The moment of love is often lost in our communities and churches. When the deacon comes out with the cup, we usually say, “Draw near with the fear of God and faith.” I always ask the deacons to add: “Proceed with the fear of God, faith and love.”

— As we hear this at the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts.

- Yes, as we hear it at the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. The moment of love and taking the cup with love is very important. The only moment when a person cannot be admitted to Communion is the moment when he is in a quarrel with someone, that is, in a state of disagreement, in a state of dislike with someone. He himself understands that he cannot relate to love if he does not have this love. How can he perceive God as love if he himself does not show this love in any way. Therefore, this is the only moment when a person can be told: “You are not prepared to receive the Holy Mysteries of Christ.” This is a central point in understanding and comprehending community. If the community conceives of itself as a moment of manifestation of love in this world, then Christianity will become what it should be for the world - it will testify to the fullness of relationships with God and people. The community, showing this love for others, can be very interesting. Especially in Europe, we love to scold it, but there the traditions of a Christian perception of the world have been preserved. For example, the Assumption takes place in Austria. A friend came and said: “Everyone there wears national costumes. A small town in Austria celebrates the Dormition of the Mother of God. I was surprised: a man, apparently the headman of the central Assumption Church, was standing next to boxes of wine. He pours a glass of wine to each passerby and treats him. He has a state of joy from the holiday.” When I said that our religion is joyful, what is it joyful about? We often don't have this joy.

“There’s not even a basic smile.”

- Moreover, I will say that many people come to the temple in ordinary clothes. I notice that more and more people come to the temple in normal everyday clothes.

“And often it’s even worse—something black, dark, scary.”

“Although it seems that if this is joy for you, you should at least wear a nice shirt.” Let it be clean, neat, modest, but it will be clear that you were preparing to come to the temple. This is important, because the external attunes you to an internal attitude towards what is happening. Nowadays our clergy in cathedrals always wear a white shirt. Can we say that this is a specific dress code? No, this is a certain attitude, including the fact that the priest, putting on a white shirt now, understands that he is going to do the most important thing. His external mood is a reflection of his internal state. He doesn’t put on who knows what - a T-shirt, a dirty shirt - he puts on a clean white shirt and goes to serve. Again, he sets himself up, this is a certain attitude towards service. Therefore, when parishioners come in ordinary clothes, it is nonsense for a church service, because they do not experience joy. They are ready to wear a good suit to the theater, but they are not ready to do this for the temple. This is already a certain psychology of perception, a sad moment.

- Thank you, father. We have very little time left. I would like to ask you to answer a question from our viewer, asked through the VKontakte group: “Hello, my name is Nikolai, I am 17 years old, I am disabled from childhood. There is a temple at the hospital. Father blessed me to help in the church, I want to enter the seminary. I live with my mother, grandmother, sister, brother. I don't have a father. I really want to go to seminary. I'm homeschooled." The desire is good, but how to treat it?

“I think that if a person, due to one or another physical disability, cannot take on the priestly life, he should not do it; not everyone is obliged to be a priest. This is a very difficult ministry. You always meet people and their problems, their sorrows, some difficulties in their lives. You must support them, show a Christian understanding of this or that situation. A lot depends on the shepherd. Therefore, if the shepherd himself experiences some physical difficulties, it will be very difficult for him to carry out his ministry. He will always internally feel his failure as a shepherd and as a Christian. Therefore, I think that if a person has problems of this nature that make his ministry difficult, then it is better to turn and serve the Church in something else - in the same moment as a reader, a parish catechist.

— Education can be obtained at St. Tikhon's Institute.

- Certainly.

- Thank you, father. Our program, unfortunately, is ending. I ask you, according to tradition, to bless our television viewers.

- Guardian Angel to all and may the Lord be with you all.

- God bless you, father. Dear friends, I will remind you that today with us was the cleric of the church in honor of the holy prophet Elijah on Porokhov in St. Petersburg, Priest Konstantin (Morozov). Presenter: Mikhail Kudryavtsev. All the best. See you again on air.

Transcript: Natalya Lokteva

Arrival management

The parish is governed by the parish assembly.

It is headed by the rector, and its members are the clergy and the most worthy parishioners. This body meets at least once a year.
Members of the assembly are obliged to strictly follow the canons of the church, otherwise the diocesan bishop has the power to change its composition. The decision of the meeting is made by a majority vote and announced to all parishioners within the walls of the temple.
It is the parish meeting that plans both financial and economic activities, determines the amount of deductions, approves the staff and the amount of support for clergy members, and considers complaints received about the actions of its members.
If the assembly is a legislative body, then the council is an executive body. It consists of a chairman, assistant rector and treasurer. The parish council implements decisions made by the meeting, plans activities, and draws up economic estimates.
He is responsible for acquiring the necessary property and for the safety of the entire temple complex, including the land. Another function of the parish council is to provide housing for those members of the clergy who have such a need.
The chairman of the council is the rector of the church, subject to the decisions of the diocesan bishop.

Servants of God
The audit commission elected by the parish meeting carries out the control function, carries out inventories, checks the progress and results of financial and economic activities carried out by the parish, all receipts and expenses. To avoid bias, there cannot be close relatives among the members of the council and the commission.

The difference between a parish and a temple

The temple is the room into which the people who make up the parish come. An analogy related to the biblical interpretation of the Church, compared to the mystical body of Christ, is appropriate here. If the Church (not a separate temple, but the Church) is a body, then the parish is its separate cell.

The life of the parish is not only the divine services, but also all the components of the life of the people included in the parish community.

The rector of the parish manages all churches; clergy, with appropriate permission, can also conduct services in different churches. But all this is within one parish.

Opportunities for a young person to realize his or her potential in community life

Parish intra-community life is called upon to shift the emphasis from the need to perform external rituals to the inner life of a person and make life itself a divine service and communion with God. The church community is called upon to give the young person the same thing as the Church as a whole - “the fullness of being.” The main thing in Christianity is communion with Christ and life with Him and in Him, which is by no means ensured by the external form of piety and the semblance of spiritual life, but only by the implementation of the Gospel in one’s life. The Eucharist and the non-liturgical life of the community that flows from it, as from a source, is the fullness of home, work, leisure and other aspects of human life and activity. In this sense, doing works of mercy is also not the absolute goal of Christian life. Thus, all church, liturgical, missionary, spiritual, etc. life is only a way of communion with Christ.

There are parishes with a dominant line of activity. This area of activity can be expressed in social, missionary, educational service, etc. At the same time, the life of such parishes is not limited to a pre-selected area of activity. If the principle of fatherhood and family is fulfilled in the community, then life itself determines specific goals, roles and types of service. The primary task of the community is to build life around the Eucharist as the center of the congregation. The church community, like a real family, automatically absorbs and implements the service the need for which arises daily. Thus, the non-liturgical activities of a young man in the community depend primarily on his desires, abilities, the intensity of his parish liturgical and family life, as well as the experience of the rector.

Types of this activity can be the following:

Assisting clergy during divine services.
Economic obediences within the parish.
Classes with children in Sunday school.
Missionary service.
Educational ministry.
Social service.
Youth ministry, etc.

Modern parish

In 2009, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church adopted a new edition of the parish charter, according to which the bishop has full power. Today the parish not only holds services, but, keeping up with the times, organizes exhibitions of works of various genres of church art, publishes its own newspapers, and has web pages on the Internet. And in the best traditions of charity, in the parish houses of the parishes they offer food to everyone who is hungry, share items of clothing and spiritual food - printed materials.

Children in the parish

In Tsarist Russia, a parish was strictly limited to the territory of residence; there was even a kind of “addition” to a specific parish. And only in the churches of his parish could an Orthodox Christian participate in divine services and make donations there. After the revolution, the number of parishes and churches decreased significantly, and then the true believers went to other territories. Even today Orthodox Christians are free to choose a church themselves. After all, the Orthodox Church is one.

Principles of relationships between clergy and laity

The basic principles of the relationship between the rector and the church community can be defined as family, brotherhood and fatherhood, expressing love and trust between all members of the parish, both priests and parishioners. In spiritual terms, the ideal situation is when the rector and other priests of the parish are the spiritual fathers of the parishioners. On the other hand, parishioners and priests must observe a certain subordination in their relations with each other, since one can often find cases of distortion of the principle of paternity, for example, the “friend-foe” relationship model or the elitist self-awareness of a particular community. It is necessary to understand that such relationships are sometimes nurtured and provoked by the priest himself.

It should be noted the importance of the parishioners’ obedience to the priest due to his conscious choice as a spiritual leader (in the area of personal spiritual life), as well as due to the status of the priest’s ministry (in the area of doctrinal and administrative). At the same time, the priest is called to remember that the laity in their fullness represents, according to the Apostle Peter, “a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Pet. 2:9). Therefore, it is desirable for the entire parish to participate in making important decisions related to the life of the community.

The fatherhood of the priest in relation to the parishioners is expressed in primacy in love, active participation in all affairs of the community, as well as in teaching, spiritual guidance and sacramental service. A parish is a family, and all members of this family, especially those carrying out pastoral service, are called to actively participate in the life of the community. The role of the priest only as a fulfiller of demands or a cult “mediator” between the people of God and God is unacceptable - parishioners expect a living and active participation in the life of the community from the pastor.