Friday, May 07, 2004

Orthodox Evangelism and the Orthodox Church in Tanzania


From a note scribbled on a piece of scrap paper on my desk:
In 2003, the Orthodox Church in Tanzania opened 20 new communities (which I interpret to mean, “parishes”), and some 3,000 people were baptized.

To put this in some perspective, Holy Archangels Orthodox Church in Phoenix, Arizona, began holding services in early 2002. At Pascha, there were 8 people in attendance, and 8 communions. In 2003, having moved from living rooms to a rented office suite, we had 24 attending the Paschal service, with 22 communions. This year, in our own building, we had 46 people attending, with 38 communions. (For those of you experiencing déjà vu at this point, I mentioned this before, in the blog on April 14th.) We’ve had a baptism each of the three years on Great and Holy Saturday; and there have been three others baptized at other times over the past year as well.

Anyone have any details about what they’re doing in Tanzania? Maybe we can do something similar here…