He calls the surge in membership some churches are experiencing “both a blessing and a curse.”
“One of the real challenges we in the Orthodox Church are going to have is we have a lot of people coming into our church now, especially young men,” he said. While expressing gratitude for the men who have found his parish, he added, “I would be afraid if some of these men went to some other Orthodox churches, where the priests themselves have given in to these ideological wars and these priests would just feed into what these men are already looking for, the right-wing, extreme craziness.”
The study is part of a national mixed-methods project titled Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations and funded by the Lily Endowment that is investigating changes to congregational life resulting from COVID-19. Faith Communities Today provided 2020 survey data of over 15,000 congregations on the pre-pandemic congregational landscape.
The next survey in November 2024 will follow up on many of the same themes to examine how the pandemic’s impacts continue to change how congregations operate and collect perspectives from not just clergy but also lay persons.
This article originally appeared here.
