June 25, 2026
THE LARGER THE PARISH, THE WEAKER THE BONDS
People often say, “Our parish is one big family.” To which one might reasonably reply: either it is not very large, or it is not quite a family.
In a village parish, where the priest knows his flock personally and shares much of life with them, such a description is not uncommon. In a large urban parish, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain that same warmth among the clergy, staff, and regular worshippers. Friendships do not usually exist among a hundred people, let alone several hundred.
From the perspective of eternal salvation, however, this need not trouble us. No one laments the existence of large hospitals simply because they cannot offer the intimacy of a small private clinic. What matters is that the physicians are competent and caring.
The same is true in parish life. Some communities are small and close-knit; others are large and bustling. What matters is that Christians gather to pray, unite around the Eucharistic Chalice, and strive to fulfil the commandments of love for God and neighbor. If this is present, everything else is secondary.
Still, if one hopes for close personal relationships within parish life, numbers inevitably create challenges.
A PASTOR MUST SOMETIMES INSIST
One difficulty concerns the rector’s relationship with parish staff.
A priest may sincerely desire warm and trusting relationships with those who work alongside him, yet circumstances often require him to make corrections, enforce responsibilities, insist upon obedience to legitimate instructions, and occasionally even impose disciplinary measures.
Every rector faces a delicate task: he must be both a loving father and a responsible leader.
This balance is possible only insofar as he genuinely seeks God’s will for those entrusted to him rather than personal comfort, popularity, or emotional reassurance. Yet most of us know from experience how difficult this can be.
A parish may offer a wide range of ministries and activities, depending on its circumstances and the gifts of its rector. Yet even the most faithful and committed parishioners cannot always be given a suitable role within the life of the church. Practical limitations inevitably exist.
At the same time, parish needs often require hiring people based on competence rather than spiritual affinity. If a parish needs a skilled mason, accountant, or electrician, it cannot always wait until a devout Orthodox Christian with precisely those qualifications appears. The work must still be done.
As a result, some employees may simply work at the church much as they would work elsewhere. Yet even when this is obvious, can a priest allow them to feel that they are somehow outsiders? And if not, how should we understand their place within the life of the parish?
Even among the most devout parishioners, not everyone can devote large amounts of time to parish activities.
This is particularly true for those with families.
A married Christian naturally has responsibilities at home that an unmarried person does not. There is nothing wrong with this. What would be wrong is using parish life as an escape from family life.
Some parishes hold special molebens for parish workers or spiritual children. Such practices can be entirely good and appropriate.
A moleben before an important parish project, or prayers offered for a sick spiritual child at the request of fellow parishioners, are natural expressions of Christian concern.
In the 1990s, however, I had an experience that gave me pause.
At that time, our parish community consisted largely of a close circle of friends. Wanting to bring a stronger churchly element into our common life, I began organising weekly “brotherhood molebens” an hour before the regular evening service.
Over time, however, something unexpected became apparent. Many members of our own circle attended these services somewhat reluctantly, while other parishioners—having heard about them—began coming eagerly and in increasing numbers.
Gradually it became clear that prayer was not actually the center of our relationships.
And another question arose. Who exactly were these “other parishioners“? Were they somehow not my own people?
The Church is the one Body of Christ. How can there be strangers among the members of a single body?
There is an old Russian proverb that says: We do not love people because they are good; rather, they seem good to us because they are “ours”.
Those who belong to our circle are easy to love. We enjoy their company, overlook their faults, and remain attached to them even when they inconvenience us or cause us pain. With strangers, however, things are often very different. Even genuinely good people can feel burdensome simply because they are not “our people.”
A familiar example illustrates the point. A woman has both a son and a son-in-law who drink heavily and mistreat their wives. Yet she desperately hopes her daughter-in-law will remain with her troubled son, praying only that he might reform. At the same time, she encourages her own daughter to leave her husband.
What we see here is not the impartial love commanded by Christ, but the natural attachment we feel toward those whom we regard as our own.
This distinction is important in parish life as well. The temptation to divide people into “ours” and “theirs” rarely appears in crude or obvious ways. More often it enters quietly, hidden beneath affection, familiarity, and good intentions.
From time to time proposals arise to introduce formal personal membership within parish communities.
The hope is understandable. Such membership, it is argued, would encourage greater responsibility for both the spiritual and material well-being of the parish. Those who do not belong to any parish formally might be prompted to take their place in the Church more seriously, seeing the parish not simply as a place they attend but as a spiritual family to which they belong. There is certainly some truth in this.
At the same time, personal membership in a parish has never been forbidden. In some places it exists quite naturally even today. In countries where Orthodox Christians form a small minority, parish life may be difficult to organize in any other way.
I once heard of a church on the Sea of Azov that survived the Soviet period because only five families faithfully maintained it and prevented its closure. In such circumstances, one could hardly imagine a more genuine form of parish membership.
And if a parish today develops such membership naturally, peacefully, and in a genuinely churchly spirit, few would object.
Questions arise only when formal membership is presented as an ideal to be implemented everywhere.
The reality of modern parish life is often far more complex.
One parishioner in our church regularly attends weekday services and teaches in our Sunday school, yet on Sundays and feast days she serves as choir director in another parish, where she also oversees religious education. To which parish does she belong?
Another woman has served for many years as treasurer in a large Moscow parish while remaining actively involved elsewhere.
Many parishioners live in one city and work in another. Depending on circumstances, they may attend services near home one week and near work the next. Their spiritual father may serve in an entirely different parish.
Such examples are hardly unusual.
If formal membership became mandatory, we would either have to permit membership in several parishes simultaneously or create categories of “full” and “partial” members. Yet it could easily happen that a supposedly partial member contributes far more to the life of a parish than many of its official members.
Even the language itself begins to sound uncomfortable.
Perhaps instead of speaking of full and partial members, we might call those who are officially enrolled “registered members.” Yet practical questions immediately follow.
Would registered members be expected to contribute a fixed portion of their income?
Who would verify this?
If a parishioner drives an expensive car while contributing only a token amount to parish needs, what then? Should the parish demand additional support? Threaten disciplinary measures? Report him to the tax authorities? Exclude him from membership? Refuse him Communion?
The questions quickly become absurd.
Nor do the difficulties end there.
What criteria would determine membership? Financial contributions? Frequency of attendance? Regular reception of Holy Communion?
Whatever standards are chosen, human beings remain inconsistent. Today a person satisfies the criteria. Tomorrow he does not. The day after that he qualifies again.
Who would be responsible for monitoring all this?
Would parishioners be expected to report themselves?
“Father, I have once again failed to meet the requirements—please remove me from the membership list.”
Or perhaps: “Father, I have received Communion three times this month—may I now be reinstated?”
At some point one must ask whether the parish has begun assuming a role that belongs to God alone.
In a small community of a few dozen people, many of these questions may resolve themselves naturally. But in a large urban parish where hundreds receive Communion on major feast days, such a system cannot function organically.
One could, of course, select a small group from among thousands of Orthodox Christians and designate them as the official members of the parish.
But what would that imply about everyone else?
Would they become, if not outsiders, then at least not quite our own?
An Orthodox pastor cannot view parish life in this way. For him, everyone must be his own.
The fact that we often fall short of this ideal is a matter for repentance, not something to be codified in parish regulations.
Moreover, formal membership inevitably brings not only responsibilities but rights. And with rights comes another danger: parish governance may gradually come under the influence of those who satisfy the formal requirements yet lack the spiritual qualities needed for such responsibility.
The life of the Church cannot be reduced to what can be measured and recorded.
A priest once told me about the parish where he grew up. Whenever a parishioner became seriously ill, he would contact the rector, who would then inform the community and ask those who were able to offer practical help.
Such a practice is, of course, admirable. Yet there is something better still.
Ideally, a brother or sister in Christ should not need to wait for a priest’s telephone call before helping someone in need. It is good when a pastor organizes mutual assistance, but it is even better when parishioners learn to care for one another naturally, out of Christian love rather than external direction.
The healthiest parish life is not one in which every difficulty must be solved by the rector, but one in which people quietly help one another whenever the need arises.
The priest remains available when problems cannot otherwise be resolved. But the less often matters reach that point, the healthier the community usually is.
How much personal interaction should a priest have with his parishioners?
Should he regularly visit them? Socialize with them? Build friendships outside church life? Or should all interaction remain within the parish setting?
There is no single answer. People differ greatly, and priests differ as well.
For some clergy, warm personal friendships with parishioners develop naturally and become a source of genuine spiritual benefit. I once knew an elderly priest who was remarkably intelligent, gracious, and deeply pious. He was also well educated in the broader cultural sense—a painter and an architect by training. His spiritual children frequently invited him into their homes, and such visits became a natural extension of his pastoral ministry.
For others, relationships take a different form.
This does not mean they are less effective pastors.
Certain gifts simply cannot be learned. A person either possesses them or he does not. If God grants such gifts, they should be used for His glory. If He does not, one should not try to imitate them artificially.
I know another priest who is prayerful, morally upright, a skilled iconographer, and exceptionally quiet by temperament. Apart from his wife, he has virtually no close friends—and there is nothing wrong with that.
A priest once told me that two of his parishioners live in the same apartment building as he does. One lives several floors below him; another lives in the neighboring entrance. Both confess to him regularly, one of them every week. Yet he has never visited either of them socially.
At first glance, this may seem rather impersonal.
On the other hand, if there is no shared work, no particular reason to meet, no deep friendship that has developed naturally, and no inclination on either side for casual social conversation, must such interaction be forced?
That priest serves every day from morning until evening. Whatever free time remains, he devotes to his family. He serves those women faithfully as their confessor and is genuinely grateful that they do not insist on entertaining him, but allow him the rest he needs.
The image of the parish as one large family works best in small communities where people know one another well and genuine friendships naturally arise.
Even there, however, friendship remains a fragile foundation upon which to build parish life.
Many years ago, when I first arrived in one parish, everything seemed wonderfully alive. New people poured in. Many were young. Some practically lived on church grounds. Everyone enjoyed the atmosphere, and I encouraged it. To be honest, I enjoyed it as well.
Then reality intervened.
One of the community’s most active and respected members unexpectedly returned to drug addiction after many years of sobriety. Another relapsed into alcoholism after a long period of abstinence.
The experience was sobering.
It reminded us that parish life cannot be built upon pleasant impressions of ourselves, upon enthusiasm, or upon the feeling that we have created something exceptional.
The truth is far less flattering.
All of us are wounded by passions. All of us stand in need of healing. All of us remain vulnerable.
A hospital does not fulfil its purpose because flowers stand on the windowsills or because the doctor smiles warmly at his patients. Such things are pleasant, but they are not the essence of medicine.
What matters is whether the doctor helps people recover.
His concern for patients is shown not merely through kindness, but through attentiveness, competence, and a willingness to do whatever is necessary for their healing.
Parish life is no different.
Personal relationships, valuable as they are, cannot by themselves sustain parish life.
What ultimately unites a parish is not friendship but a common life of service in Christ.
That may sound less appealing than visions of a large spiritual family, yet our task is not to cultivate emotional warmth for its own sake. Rather, it is to open ourselves to the action of divine grace.
That is why we come to church.
We are united not because we share similar personalities, occupations, backgrounds, or social standing. Among parishioners one finds employers and labourers, scholars and cleaners, wealthy people and those of modest means.
Friendships may arise among them, and when they do, they are a blessing.
Yet friendship cannot be the foundation of parish life. Some parishioners will never become close friends. Others may drift apart. Still others may have little in common beyond their faith.
In the Eucharist, those whom human preferences, temperaments, and circumstances could never fully unite become one Body in Christ.
