Insular adj. pertaining to an island, or to the inhabitants of an island their customs;etc.; inward; narrow


On Saturday May 5, over 40 clergy and laity from the Cleveland Deanery spent a beautiful sunny spring Saturday cloistered in a conference hall exploring how to let the Light of Orthodoxy shine more brightly in Northern Ohio, and more specifically in the neighborhood of their parish.

The workshop, titled "Breaking Our Insularity", focused on the causes and effects of operating our parishes as if they were closed to outsiders -- unaware of the spiritual and charitable needs of our local communities.

The agenda included significant time for open discussion of two particular aspects of parish insularity -- evangelization and parish local charitable outreach.

During the workshop participants heard, via video, examples of various activities being piloted at parishes within the Diocese. Many of those examples came from live and video presentations from various guest speakers.

• Fr. Basil Stoyka, rector of Sts. Peter and Paul parish in Lorain OH explained their doorknob to doorknob ministry where parishioners distribute flyers introducing neighbors to Orthodoxy and inviting them to church. Parishioners unable to participate do their part by praying for this ministry.

• Fr. James Dank, rector of St John of Kronstadt parish in Lincoln NE participated via video to explain the parish's Catacomb Bookstore where information on the Orthodox faith is made available to the neighborhood in an informal coffee house setting conducive to fellowship and personal contact.
  A video of Fr James description of the Bookstore and its role in parish outreach can be seen here.

• Richard Leiter, a parishioner at St John's in Lincoln explianed via video the Fr. Arseny society outreach activity his parish uses to help parish men understand their faith, deepen their commitment to the faith and to share it with non Orthodox.
  

• Fr Steven Kostoff Rector of Christ the Savior-Holy Spirit parish in Cincinnati opened the session on Charitable Outreach by sharing a summary, via video, of a homily on the Last Judgment.

• A series of videos featuring Charles Robbins, a parishioner at St Gregory of Nyssa parish in Columbus OH were used to explain the "Saturday Lunch Program" in use at that parish. The project not only feeds local homeless people each Saturday, the activity extends to job training and Christian education. Many neighborhood persons now participate in worship services at St Gregory.
  

During the workshop each parish took an inventory of their current activities with respect to building awareness for the Orthodox faith and their parish and in reaching out to do charitable works. In the evangelization and growth section they were asked to consider whether they focus harder on building awareness to generate more perosns exploring the parish community or whether they should focus on improving their ability to turn initial inquiries into serious committed exploration of the Orthodox Church.

Parishes were then encouraged to decide on one action to take in each area to improve their efforts. These actions could be to start some new ministry/outreach activity, to find an activity that was no longer relevant or potent and drop it to make room for other ministries or to find an underperforming activity that could be focused on for further strengthening.

In the day's last hour each parish selected one of its two action items and developed a six month plan for implementing it. Communities described the desired status of their action item on November 1 , 2007, listed up to three key barriers to achieving that status and outlined specific actions to be undertaken over the six month period.

Among the actions taken by participant parishes were:

• Pruning the Parish Activities Tree - a number of parishes discovered from their inventories that they simply has too many activities. They decided to drop one or two and better focus on a few existing activites that could become mor effective.

• Greeters Ministry - One parish realized that it had a large number of new, inquiring faces each month but did not do a particulalry good job of encouraging those persons to feel compforatable in their first encounter with the community. They will strengthen their greeters ministry.

• Door to Doorknob - At least two parishes committed to implementing the 'doorknob ministry' modeled by Sts. Peter & Paul parish in Lorain.
  

• Increase Community Visibility - Two parishes, one an urban parish and another a suburban parish selected activites to enhance their visibility in their respective community. Included were actions for improved, inviting signage around parish facilities, one-to-one personal ministry contact and contacting the superintendent of schools to better understand the true needs of those in the community.