Posted on 04/19/2006 8:18:38 AM PDT by x5452
19 April 2006, 16:18 The number of young parishioners growing in the Russian Church
Moscow, April 19, Interfax - Middle-aged and young people have made up a majority of parishioners in Russian churches for the last several years, at least in cities, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, has stated.
‘Moreover, this change in the age composition of our flock has not been conditioned by any external renewal of the liturgy or any propagandist actions or attempts to conform to the spirit of this age’, the hierarch said in a interview to Inside the Vatican monthly.
He described the revival of the Russian Church as God’s miracle, while pointing to the importance of the efforts made by the episcopate, clergy, the religious and laity.
The metropolitan also refuted the opinion that the increase in the number of Orthodox believers is a result of religion coming into fashion. ‘Fashion cannot be a long-term phenomenon; faithfulness to fashion never permeates the whole life of a person’, he said.
He admitted he ‘was pleasantly surprised’ when he first learnt that fast foodstuffs were displayed in major supermarkets and the market for meat drastically decreased during Lent.
This particular example, the metropolitan underlined, is a vivid testimony that religious choice has become for people a significant factor, ‘involving a change in people’s consumer preferences, so that the market, not restricted in any way by any ideological framework, has responded to it’.
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The number of young parishioners growing in the Russian Church
I understand from a nephew who is an EOC convert from the ECUSA and his wife and her sister and her husband who are converts from the RCC, that the EOC Church is growing in the USA especially in the South and West.
Our Southern Baptist Church here is growing as well, even in SOUTH Florida!!
EOC is getting big round here too.
That's good news about the Southern Baptist Church growing. As I said above............people are searching.
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