Welcome

JosephObrien

St Colman

Whatever your reasons or motives for visiting the St Colman’s Orthodox Church Web Site, you are most welcome.

Some of you might be here because you are planning on visiting the Church, some of you are here out of curiosity or just exploring the Internet, and some might be searching for Orthodoxy. Whatever your reasons for coming, may God bless you, and St Colman pray for you.

The Church of St Colman was founded as a mission parish to serve the spiritual needs of Orthodox Christians in Ireland. The Parish is in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad’s Archdiocese of Berlin, Germany and Great Britain, and Archbishop Mark is our ruling Hierarch and the re-kindler of the Irish Mission. A Russian Orthodox parish was founded in Dublin after the Revolution in Russia to serve the needs of those Orthodox Christians who fled their homelands. They were welcomed by the Irish people and settled all over Ireland.

With the passage of time, the Holy Protection Parish gradually faded away until it closed in the 1970s. The History of the Parish can be found by clicking on History.


A lot of people ask, What is the Orthodox Church?

Briefly, the Orthodox Church was founded by Christ, who handed down Tradition and Holy Faith through the holy Apostles and Disciples. This faith was distilled and refined by the Fathers of the Seven Great Councils of the Church, when representatives from the whole Church met together collectively and defined faith and rejected errors and heresies. The Seventh and last Great Council restored the proper veneration of Icons back into the Church.

Other Councils were convened to reject heresy. They also laid down the date for reckoning Pascha (Easter) as well as the Symbol of Faith or Creed of the Church and rejected the insertion by the Western Church of the filioque clause which, because of its adoption by Western Church, the whole of the Western understanding and inter-relationship of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit has been changed.

The Orthodox Church’s faith is unchanging; it continues through to the present day by maintaining the teachings of the Councils, by focusing and directing our lives by putting the worship and adoration of God before everything.

It does not fall into the trap of trying to be all things to all men, by trying to re-interpret the faith for successive generations, thereby changing God for man, and not calling men to change for God — this is fashion, it is not faith or truth.

Please enter into this web site as though it were a Church, respect it, pray for its people, and for those who ask our prayers, and go in peace. For further information on Orthodoxy or becoming Orthodox, please leave your name in the visitor’s book.

For further reading:

The Shepherd
“A Pastoral Magazine” published by St Edward’s Brotherhood, St Cyprian’s Avenue, Brookwood, Surrey, England.

“The Orthodox Church”
ISBN 0-14-014656-3 published by Penguin books

FIND OUT IF YOU ARE AN AQUARIUM-KEEPING LEADER

JosephObrien

In the past five years, I have seen so many people come to Christ. I could give you a lot of specifics about that, outside of God’s favor. I could tell you about all the things that we have done. But deep down I know that none of it is ever going to help you unless you make a decision that we made during the early days of our church.

The decision we made was to focus more on the people we are trying to reach, than on those who we are trying to keep. Or you can also say, to be fishers of men and not just keepers of aquarium.

Here we are not at all trying to cater to the personal preferences of a few people, in our pursuit of the salvation of others. It means that if the few people are 10, we are pursuing 100 of them. Or 5,000 out of 10,000 people. Or 10,000 out of 20,000 people.

But to my knowledge, most people and churches are not willing to do that. They are a mere keepers of aquarium. Goldfish normally suffer from goldfish white fungus, which grows on them when their wounds are left open. Most people say that they want to reach more and more people. But in reality, they are more focused on preservation than expansion. They focus more on keeping people rather than reaching them. Such people let the saved ones dictate their style, who in turn dictate focus, and hence vision.

It results in a room full of saved people and not people getting saved. This happens because the people you are trying to reach are not at all interested in the church that has been created by the people you are trying to keep. If it had been like that, they would be coming. But they are not.

This is the point at which people usually play the discipleship card. They try to disciple the people they are trying to keep.  For some reason they even accuse you of pitting evangelism against discipleship. But this is not the case. I believe that true disciples should focus more on making disciples than freeze-framing the church the way it was before they came. Or 26 programs customized to their preferences.

If the belief is that the mark of maturity is a bunch of people who want to create a museum for the purpose of glorifying and preserving their personal preferences, and then sanctify it, by calling it a church, count me out. I don’t believe in all this.

I have seen people who want to be both. If you are also one of them, I have to say that you can be both. Focus on the people you want to reach, and you will keep the people you want to keep. Don’t let anything else bother you. They will find a church elsewhere to graze.

I believe that they are merely occupying the space of a person who only cares about gossiping. You can fill their seat and it will be with such a person who needs it the most.