Parish Pulse  
DOWPA Seal A Newsletter for Parish Leaders

Archdiocese of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania
Orthodox Church in America

November, 2014 - Vol 2, Issue 5       

Upcoming Events
Webinar
"Outreach to College Students"
8PM EDT December 16
 Register
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Webinar
Tips for Building Choirs and Directors
January 2015 (date tbd)
More info to Follow
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2015 Small Parish Forum
The 2015 Small Parish Forum will be held from 3:00 PM Thursday June 18 thru noon on Saturday June 20 at St Nicholas Church Weirton WV
Quick Links
Quick access to documents, articles, webinar archives and presentations available on the Archdiocesan webpage or in a few cases the website of the Midwest Diocese.
Parish Finance Articles 

1.Parish Financial Audit Guidelines   

2. Best Practices & Principles for Parish Financial Accountability  

 3. Your Parish Budget: What Does It Convey?   

 4. Replacement Reserve Accounts   

5. Endowment Pros & Cons     

Growth & Vision

 1. Toolbox for Vision Casting   

2. What kind of parish do we envision?  

3. Orthodox parishes and neighborhood identity  

4. What priest's want?  

 5. Discovering Parish Core values   

Stewardship

 1. Total Stewardship  

2. Good parish Stewardship Practices   

3. Intro to Pledging and All member Canvasses  

4. Common Stewardship Q&A  

5. How Much Should I Give?  

6. Relevant Scriptural verses re: Stewardship   

Parish Renewal

4. Decline in your parish    

 5. Diversity among growing parishes  

 6.Commonality among growing parishes   

7. Wake Up a Sleeping Church    

8. Revitalization Thumbnail #1  

9. Revitalization Thumbnail #2  

 10. Triple Digit Anniversaries -- Face Forward   

11. Describing Parish membership 

Parish Ministry & Educ 

 1.Reorganizing Parish Ministries   

2. The Blank calendar 

 3. Establishing a Parish Youth Effort  

 4.Souls in Transition - Insight into Youth Min.   

5.Love Thy Neighbor    

Evangelization  

 1. Evangelization Principles  

 2. Survey of Orthodox Converts  

3. How Visitors Experience Your Parish -Mystery Worshiper Reports 

 4. Common Q/A: Orthodox Inquirers  

 5. "Sharing the Hope" Course   

Communicating Your Parish

 1. Website Webinar slides 

 2. Taking Parish Photographs   

 3. Toward Better Parish Websites (I)  

 4. Better Parish Websites (II)   

 5. Improving Parish Bulletin Content  

 6. Improving Parish Bulletin Format     

Youth

 1. Establishing a Solid Parish Youth Effort  

 2. Souls in Transition  

Videos. Podcast & PowerPoint Presentations   
In Christ,
Joseph Kormos
Parish Development Ministry Leader 
Archdiocese of Western Pennsylvania 
513-518-5878   joekormos1@gmail.com
Save the Date: 2015 Small Parish Forum
June 18 thru June 20 -- Weirton WV   
Green logo Smll parishThe 2015 Small Parish Forum , focused specifically on helpful,hopeful ideas for assisting parishes of less than 75 adults, will be held from Thursday June 18 (PM) thru noon on Saturday June 20.

The conference will once again be co-sponsored by the OCA's  Archdiocese of Western Pennsylvania and the Diocese of the Midwest.  The mission of the Small Parish Forum is provide help and hope to small Orthodox parishes --stability -a positive self-image and a sense that small parishes can live a Life in Christ without necessarily becoming "big".

Weirton West Virginia
The host parish for the 2015 Forum will be St Nicholas Church in Weirton WV. Located only 20 minutes from Pittsburgh Airport, about four hours from Detroit and just over 4 hours from Washington DC. and five hours from Scranton.

More info will follow as it becomes available.
 
Leader's Day Explores Ministry of Parish Council 
indymeetingLeaders Day 2014, held in October at St. John the Baptist Church in Canonsburg PA explored "The Ministry of the Parish Council -- Roles, Responsibilities and Expectations". Sessions included presentations with QA and small group problem solving.

What's the Problem?
One important element of the session was an icebreaker survey asking atten  dees to identify the top problems/opportunities for improvement of their parish council. Not surprisingly the following received the most support.
  1. Nobody wants to serve on PC; hard to recruit; same people year after year.
  2. Parish council behaves as maintenance team; complaint/fire dept. Maintaining status quo.
  3. Ruts --We talk about same problems & issues month to month; year to year.
  4. Tension between the rector and parish council.
  5. The Parish Council sees its basic job(s) as overseeing the money
If these fit your parish... well.. you're not alone. Many topics were covered well during the session, however item one --recruiting --  we think deserves further effort. We'll work on that in future issues of Parish Pulse.

Online Materials
Those unable to attend the session can find various resources at these links:
Webinar for Your Parish Council? 
Reading these materials is one thing --but sometimes its valuable to hear a speaker deliver the materials -- to fill in the blanks and get answers to questions. We're happy to deliver an online webinar specifically for your parish council.
 
Observations About Parish Councils
One of the source materials used for planning the above exploration of parish Councils was a book titled: "Governance and Ministry: Rethinking Board Leadership"  by Dan Hotchkiss. 

Here are a dozen good ones we think:
  1. Parish Councils bear the responsibility to move the mission & parish life into the future.
  2. What the Council should NOT do is half the battle.
  3. Many parishes live off the invisible bank account of deferred building maintenance.
  4. No goal is so purely spiritual that it requires no money, space or time and no action is so financial as to lack ethical or spiritual implications.
  5. A Board made up only of practical program people has trouble discussing anything but practical program issues.
  6. For a council to act as it should - that is to envision the future, engage in strategic thought & hold its members accountable for organizational performance the ideal size is 6-8; max 12.
  7. No one step a council can take instills accountability better than periodic evaluation of its own performance.
  8. Many councils think they are making policy when they actually are setting precedents. By reacting to items brought by others, over time they lose their ability to initiate action.
  9. Budgets translate the parish vision into specifics. Unfortunately many parishes draw up the budget through a process that has little relation to their vision
  10. A short pointless meeting is better than a long one but a productive one trumps them both.
  11. Law of triviality -the time spent on an agenda item varies inversely to the $ sum involved.
  12. A Council's role is to tell a ministry group what results it hopes for... and not to intervene when they stumble.
Communicating Our Faith
Type caption text here.
The "Good News"is NOT our little secret.
One popular session at the 2014Speaking  Small Parish Forum  was offered Fr. Stephen Frase from Christ the Saviour Church in Byesville OH.
(Fr. Frase's PowerPoint can be found here)

 We asked him to summarize his talk in the form of an article found here.

Fr. Frase points out that thinking evangelism is "not Orthodox" is just not true - reminding us to think out in advance what we would say to someone who asks us about our faith in Christ. To prepare and invest as we hopefully do in other aspects of our church life.

He concludes by reminding us:

"The most serious mistake we can make regarding evangelization is to think it is someone else's "job" whether it be the priest, or other laity. Being prepared to share our Faith with others is a parish-wide initiative...no one is exempt. Everyone must be willing to explain our Faith to others wanting to learn."

You can find the article here.

In addition the document "Practical Principles of Orthodox Evangelism" may also be useful.  
Next Webinar: Outreach to College Students
Tuesday December 16, 2014 8:00 PM EST   
Our next webinar in the Building Vibrant Parishes Series will be offered at 8:00 PM December 16 in conjunction with the OCA's Department of Youth, Young Adult, and Campus Ministries. Our topic, "Outreach to College Students" will be explored by three speakers: Andrew Boyd, Department Director, Fr. John Diamantis, priest at St. Vladimir Church Trenton NJ and OCF Chaplain for NY/NJ and Fr. Deacon Alexander Cadman from Holy Trinity Church, State College PA.
coffee hour
Any clergy or lay person interested in better understanding practical ideas for how parishes can minister to local college students --and the transformational benefits that parishes receive from students' presence should find this session valuable.

As always webinars are free (!) but you must register to participate. Click here to register for this session.

 
Souls in Transition
National Study of Youth & Religion    
While arranging our upcoming webinar we were reminded of a  past Parish Pulse article dealing with youth and young Adults.
Souls in Transition
The article "Souls in Transition" summarizes the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) - a serious sociological study of the religious practices and beliefs of "Emerging Adults". The study tracks changes in beliefs and religious practices of study participants from their early teen years (ages 13 -15) to ages 18 - 23.

Religious Connection Leads to Good Behaviors 
An interesting study outcome is the significant statistical correlation between the religious strength/devotion of emerging adults and various positive behaviors such as better health and happiness; less promiscuity; less likely to break moral rules etc.

The authors clearly state that in their professional opinion the study provides "very good reasons to believe that religion is itself one significant cause helping to produce these life outcomes".

College No Longer the Culprit

Another study conclusion also seems worthy of sharing again. Namely that college does NOT corrode religious belief and practice as much as previously thought.  

 

Key study findings" 

  • "The religiously undermining effect of higher education on recent youth has disappeared."
  • "Among recently surveyed college students, 2.7 times as many report strengthening religious beliefs than weakening."
  • "If anything NOT attending college is associated with lower levels of religious practice."·
  • "American higher education seems to have become an environment less corrosive than in the past."

One factor is growth of campus based religious and parachurch organizations "that provide alternative plausibility structures for sustaining religious faith and practice in college."  

 

Tune in December 16 to learn more about the experiences of our speakers. Register for the webinar.

 

Read the article 


 
Establishing a Solid Parish Youth Effort
Experiences of Orthodox Parishes     
Mentor OH Harvest for Hunger While not aimed at the college age demographic another past article summarizes discussions of good youth ministry practices in a number of Orthodox Church in America parishes. What approaches are other parishes trying to build a solid youth effort? 

Read it here.

 
How Visitors Define Friendly
"How Many People Talked to Me"      
Some years ago we conducted a survey on parish life for the OCA as part of the Orlando AAC. One question asked parishes to (self) describe their most positive characteristic. Overwhelmingly growing and declining parishes claimed to be "very friendly". Obviously "self evaluated" friendliness is not important to what causes parishes to grow.

Define Friendliness
We recently read a brief article in the newsletter of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership exploring what caused visitors to return to a church. Sure enough "friendliness" was the most important factor. Interestingly when visitors were asked how they defined friendliness their answer was "The number of people that talk to me". Simple.

welcome
A warm greeting is important but guests say they base their "friendliness" assessment on how many people talk to them within ten minutes after the service. 
Furthermore they were asked when they made the determination of whether a church was friendly or not. The leading answer was within ten minutes of the end of the service. 

Critical Greeting Time is After Church 
Receiving a greeting upon entering can be nice and helpful. Passing out a bulletin. Smiling warmly. Good Morning! Welcome! However we've encountered a number of people who have related stories of how it took them a number of visits to a church before they had the nerve to stay for coffee hour. What will it be like? Will I have someone to talk to?

The most important time for greeting people is after church. A time when it is virtually impossible for assigned "greeters" to be effective. Therefore whether you are part of a greeters ministry or not you are the most important greeter in your parish.

Practice these words: "Would you like to join me for a cup of coffee?"
As always we appreciate the opportunity to land on your desktop. We hope you can take some encouragement and fresh ideas from the topics presented.
Please let us know of other topics that would be relevant to you.
 
In Christ,

Joseph Kormos 
Archdiocese of Western Pennsylvania, Orthodox Church in America 
joekormos1@gmail.com 
513-683-1911