In the 109 years since the founding of our Prelacy, our community has witnessed the Genocides of 1908 and 1915, the Sovietization of Armenia in 1921, the division of our church and community first in 1918 and then a second time after the NRA of 1933, our affiliation as a diocese under the Great House of Cilicia in 1958, and numerous waves of immigration into our Prelacy initially from the Ottoman Empire, followed later by immigration from various parts of the Middle East, and, most recently, from the remnants of the former Soviet Union and from the present day third Armenian Republic.

The events of the last 109 years forced the church to become, for many of us, our national home and compelled the church to emphasize its national character often to the detriment of its spiritual mission as a church. Today, despite the re-establishment of the Armenian Republic in 1991 and the opportunity for the church to abandon its role as a virtual government in exile, there are still segments of our community which are drawn to the church not as a religious institution but as national ethnic home for the Armenian people in the diaspora.

As we approach the 110th anniversary of the initial establishment of our Prelacy in 1898, the Executive Council has chosen to focus the attention of this year’s National Representative Assembly on what it is that calls us to the church and on what the mission of our church is in today’s world.

Although it would seem that any discussion of the mission of the Prelacy calls for the discussion of a series of seemingly complex and difficult questions, as Aram Vehapar has set forth in his Pontifical Encyclical The Message of the 1700th Anniversary which was promulgated in January, 2001, the mission of the Armenian Church and therefore of this Prelacy is really quite simple. The mission of our Prelacy, as set forth in the Gospel of Mark 16:15 is to “Go into all the world and to preach the Gospel to everyone”. In this context, again quoting Aram Vehapar, “the church is a community of faith, where people are joined together in Christ, live together the imperatives of the Gospel and strive for the full realization of the community of God.”

And yet, despite this rather simple and straightforward statement of our mission as a church, it is obvious that this mission is not being understood and is not being communicated to those who live within the geographic borders of our Prelacy. Church membership within the Eastern United States stands today at roughly 12,500 members and is the sum total of the paid membership of both our Prelacy and the Diocese. Membership within the last ten years has fallen by approximately ten (10%) percent just within the Diocese alone as our older generation begins to pass away and our younger generations find new ways in which to worship Christ, if they choose to worship at all.

How then, are we, as believers in Jesus Christ, and as members of the Armenian Orthodox Church through this Prelacy, to again go back to that seemingly most simple, yet challenging of missions set forth in the Gospel of Mark? I would like to suggest to you that there are six areas which we need to focus on if we are to grow as a Christian people within our church and Prelacy.

First in my mind, there is a need to refocus and understand the work of our clergy as messengers of the Word of God and as pastors to our community. From the earliest days of our Prelacy, the role of the parish priest has been a cornerstone upon which we have built our church and promulgated our faith. Traditionally, the role of the parish priest, both within our Prelacy and throughout the various jurisdictions of the Armenian Church, has been to deliver the sacraments; to marry us, to bury us, and to be a constant presence on Sundays and holy days in celebrating the badarak. In fact, one of the primary reasons our Prelacy became affiliated with the Great House of Cilicia in the 1950s was because this most basic need was not being served as many of our faithful had to turn to the Episcopal and other churches when the Catholicosate of Etchmiadzin, for political reasons imposed by the then Soviet government in power, turned its back on us.

Today, if we are to succeed as a church and prelacy, it is not enough for our priests to exist only for the delivery of the sacraments. Today, we look to our clergy to serve three vitally important yet separate aspects in their ministry. First, we look to our clergy as preachers; persons chosen to deliver the Word of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ in ways which speak to us in a meaningful way in this most complex and increasingly secularized global society we live in. Next, we look to our clergy as teachers, those who can teach us not only the theology, canons and practices which make Armenian Orthodoxy distinct within the Christian world but who can also help us to become better educated as ethnic or adopted Armenians. Third, we also look to our clergy to serve as pastors and as administrators of our parishes and to those who look to our church and its clergy to provide comfort for those in distress as well those in need of guidance and wisdom at all hours of the day and of the night.

But if we are to demand so much of our clergy in evangelizing and educating our people, there are fundamental changes which are required of us if we expect to attract and retain qualified persons who are called to the church and its ministry. First, we need to completely overhaul the economic basis upon which our clergy our compensated for the work which they are called upon to do. Although it is true that the priesthood is a calling and not a profession which one enters as a means to achieving great economic wealth and riches, it is also true that in a world in which starting salaries paid to professional “white-color” employees are often in excess of $100,000 per year, the salary of a first year priest compares unfavorably with salaries paid to entry-level government employees or elementary school teachers. Salaries for clergy who have served faithfully for thirty years within our Prelacy fail to meet the sums earned by the average American family of four and fall far short of the sums paid to other professional persons with comparable experience. Parsonage allowances paid to our clergy, particularly in major metropolitan areas, fail to meet the sums required in today’s world for what most would consider modest housing. The lack of adequate salary and employment benefits puts considerable stress upon the family structure and lives of our clergy, often forcing our Yeretzgins to find employment outside the home which can provide such necessities as family health and other insurance benefits which our churches don’t provide while still trying to raise their families and serving the churches to which their husbands, as priests, have been called upon to serve. It is a simple fact that not one church within our Prelacy, to the best of my knowledge, pays any more than the basic minimum Prelacy salary and benefits as set forth in our guidelines.

We also need to understand that, in our larger churches, the assignment of one priest to service communities and parishes which minister to tens of thousands of people makes little sense and reduces the priest to little more than a minister of sacraments rather than being the preacher, teacher, and pastor we require of our clergy today. Our Prelacy needs to develop programs which encourage and mentor young adults and persons who hear their calling in middle age to come to the priesthood. The Armenian Church requires the extensive use of persons called upon to serve as deacons and altar servers, and choir members to insure that the full richness of our badarak and other sacraments can be given to our people; a richness which is so much a part of the Armenian Orthodox tradition, yet we fail miserably by not training and utilizing the skills these persons and others who are called to the church possess to assist in visitations and in other functions and programs of the church which complement the work of the parish priest.

We also seriously need to look at how we train our clergy, not only in their initial training in the sacraments, but also in ways which enhance their skills as preachers, pastors, and educators to the community. Our programs in this area are scattered and not well coordinated. Our priests are encouraged to obtain higher education yet little emphasis is placed on what that education should be and how the education will assist the priest in becoming a better pastor to whichever parish he serves. Thankfully, our Prelate and Religious Council now require that any applicant for the priesthood obtain at least a four year undergraduate college degree and have sufficient training, both within the seminary and in serving the community, before the deacon trainee takes his vows and becomes a priest within our church.

Finally, the parish itself needs to change and provide administrative staff and resources which allow both the priest and church to evangelize and teach those who reside within their communities. In a country in which most churches have persons within their parishes outside the priesthood who serve as directors of religious education, youth ministry, development, or of senior programs, not one parish within our Prelacy has a paid staff member serving in any of these positions or capacities. The result is that the parish priest is required, for lack of other staff members, to do a number of functions which can and should be accomplished by others within the parish. While it is true that the church and our Prelacy will always utilize and benefit from the efforts of volunteers who gladly donate their time and talents, it is equally true that the demands of modern society and the geographic dispersion of families away from the physical location of the church, make reliance solely on the efforts of volunteers an ineffective means for the church to provide all that our parishioners and others demand of us.

Second, in addition to understanding the role our clergy play without our parishes and Prelacy, a second area in which we need to focus our energies and talents is in the educational materials and programs the Prelacy offers its parishes and those whom we serve. Regardless of how well our clergy are able to undertake their responsibilities and mission, without the availability of materials to teach and our ability to provide programs through which we can learn about our Christian and Armenian heritage and way of life, it is hard to understand how we can effectively “live together the imperatives of the Gospel and strive for the full realization of the community of God”.

In this area of understanding our mission, our resources, at present, are woefully inadequate. Our Sunday Schools and Armenian one day language programs effectively have no standards by which we can measure their ability to teach and evangelize our community. Our Sunday schools still rely, in many instances, on materials developed in the 1970s by Der Goriun Shrikian and Der Mesrob Tashjian which were the last materials developed by the Prelacy for Sunday School teaching. Other Sunday school programs utilized materials from the Diocese which are also very much out of date or materials from non-Orthodox religious educational sources. Little, if any, materials exist which take advantage of the technology many of us use in our daily lives.

Those who volunteer to teach within our Sunday and Armenian school programs often have little training in what it is they are teaching or in how to teach to help their students learn. This is not a new phenomenon or something which should come as a surprise to any of us. There is a wonderful passage in Arpine Mesrobian’s book, “Like One Family: The Armenians of Syracuse” in which she speaks about the Armenian and Sunday school programs Syracuse had after the First World War. Ms. Mesrobian writes,
“In 1932…there were few trained teachers anywhere and none were available in Syracuse, so the community relied on volunteers to take over …the two dozen children of various ages and levels of attainment who met once a week, on Saturday mornings, in a changing series of locations…
There appeared to be no set program of study or syllabus, except that prepared by the teacher. As the teachers changed often, so did the program…Much of the emphasis during the school year was usually placed on teaching the children Armenian songs and recitations to be performed at the annual or semiannual hantes (program)…The totally uncritical public took huge delight from these performances, enjoying a mistake as much as polished delivery.”

Although our educational programs have progressed considerably from those found in 1932 Syracuse and we have established programs such as the Datev program and an annual Sunday School teachers training retreat and conference, the fact remains that we have a wide variety of program materials and texts which need to be standardized and implemented throughout our Prelacy. In this area, the Prelacy can serve as a useful resource in setting the standards and programs which can meet the needs of our young Sunday and Armenian school students, utilizing such tools as on line video and other technological enhancements which will allow use to deliver quality educational materials even in parish communities which are small or located away from the main centers of our demographic base.

Our need for educational materials goes beyond the needs of our Sunday and Armenian school programs. Even within our churches, there is a wide variety of sacramental texts used for badarak and other sacramental services. Often, our churches have virtually nothing which can be handed out to choir members or visitors to our churches which will allow them to learn and participate in the services which are being offered when the sharagans are specially sung for that day or for when persons are being baptized, married, or buried within our churches. In my opinion, every church should be able to provide its parishioners and guests with pew books for any services being offered and families who come to our churches for baptisms, weddings, and funerals should be given sacramental texts as a remembrance of these special days in their lives. In many instances, the texts for these services exist but have not been updated or distributed for a number of years. In this regard, the work of Oshagan Srpazan and the Religious Council this past year in finalizing a standardized badarak pew book will go a long way towards allowing us, at last, to meet this fundamental need our community.

Beyond the basic sacramental texts, there is also a pressing need for our Prelacy to develop religious and educational materials which go beyond our sacramental texts. There is no textual material available, in Armenian or English, Prelacy or Diocese, which sets forth the basic catechism of our church. To the best of my knowledge, the last catechism for the Armenian Orthodox Church was written in the 1930s by Papken Vehapar of blessed memory to deal with issues very different from those which face our faithful in the twenty-first century. It is hard for us to speak about mission if we don’t have a set of well defined beliefs such as those provided by a catechism from which to promulgate our faith.

Our Prelacy needs to develop materials which speak directly to our faithful about the moral and ethical issues which face us in our daily lives. In this regard, the Prelacy has asked Dr. Vigen Guroian to write a series of eight pamphlets which discuss moral and ethical issues, the first of which is due for publication later this year. However, in the same way that a number of religious texts, in English and Armenian, have been developed throughout the years which can help us learn and better understand our faith, although Dr. Guroian’s pamphlets will help meet a pressing need, the publication of pamphlets of this nature without the necessary means and programs to communicate and teach these materials will likely result in few benefiting from what the Prelacy has to offer in this area of our religious life.

This leads me to the third of the six areas which we need to focus on if we are to fulfill our mission as a church, the need to better communicate in order to evangelize our people and to spread the word of our Christian faith and programs. Although there is much within our Prelacy which is positive and focused, we do a very poor job of communicating what it is our Prelacy and churches do to our own congregations and to those whom we can and should serve.

In this regard, our data base software is six years old, woefully out of date, and no longer being supported by the manufacturer. Our web site is still a work in progress which we budget for annually but never seem to find the time or financial resources to complete, much less maintain. Prelacy links to such useful information as daily Bible readings typically lead to outdated information as the link is not maintained on a regular basis. Although we do communicate by e-mail weekly through our Crossroads publication and less frequently through our quarterly publication, Outreach, in many instances our parishes do not incorporate these materials into their communication efforts or utilize the educational and informational materials which are being offered.

Even more basic to our mission, far too often our ability to communicate fails at the local parish level and we are not seen as a welcoming church. Certainly, many of our parishes have fellowship hours after church services but do we really try to reach out to those who are new to our community or who may come because of a hokehankist into what, to them, may very well be a strange environment? Do our parishes reach out to greet those who come to our churches for baptisms or weddings? Do we share in the bereavement and support of those who have lost a love one? If you think our services in this area are at least adequate, how do you explain the declining membership in some of our churches which exist in growing communities and the inability of our parish boards to attract new people to serve in a number of different capacities within the church?

Finally, there is a pressing need for our parishes and Prelacy to communicate better and in a more meaningful way with each other. Without close and constant communication between our parishes and the Prelacy, we are less likely to achieve our mission and the goals we have set for ourselves.

Fourth, the mission of our Prelacy has to focus on the development of our parishes as a home, a welcoming place where people have a sense of belonging and can connect with others like themselves. Our challenges in this area are both geographic and demographic.

Our challenge is geographic because, like the rest of America, our population is moving away from those communities in which our parents and grandparents lived when they came to this country. Ridgefield which, in the 1950s was in the center of the New Jersey Armenian community now is the home to virtually no Armenians and is surrounded by a large and growing Korean community. Dearborn now has the largest Arabic community in the United States and a declining Armenian population in the city and surrounding communities. Even my home parish in Glenview, Illinois while still centrally located to many of our parishioners, has members who routinely drive forty-five minutes each way to participate in church services. Here, in some instances, it is clear that our church has to relocate to be more centrally located and accessible to our parishioners and community. Equally important, our local parishes need to create ways in which they can reach out and evangelize the church and its mission away from our church and community centers. There is no reason why, from time to time as the need is apparent, church activities can be held away from the church itself. Some of our parishes already do this with bible study programs in the home but this is only a small slice of what could potentially establish satellite parishes within metropolitan areas in which we already serve.

The challenge we face is also demographic. Armenians, like others in America, are moving to the south and west and away from the Northeast corridor where our parents and grandparents originally settled. Communities like Niagara Falls and Syracuse, original members of our Prelacy with Armenian populations that date back well over one hundred years, are in economic decline. Instead, we have communities forming in such places as Atlanta, Ocala, and throughout Florida, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Texas. These communities have founding populations with very different backgrounds and experiences from those which formed our original parishes. Our challenge is to develop ways to reach out to these fledging communities, to provide them with the sacraments, to evangelize and promulgate our faith in ways which, in many instances, exceed our present abilities. But clearly, if we fail to meet these demographic challenges, we also will fail to achieve that which is expected of us in the future.

Finally, our mission in developing our parishes also requires our Executive Council to assist the local boards of trustees help themselves. Board of Trustee and parish general membership meetings, by and large, do not deal with the spiritual life of the church and outreach programs but tend to focus on the routine with repetitive reports and great emphasis on minutiae. Part of our mission as a Prelacy is to help insure that the mission of the parishes is in sync with and complements the mission of the parishes, often by helping the parish with resources and training which they may not be able to provide for themselves. “For each other and With Each Other”, the phrase so often used by our Prelate, has clear meaning when applied to this aspect of our parish and Prelacy life.

Fifth, and perhaps the area of greatest change as we review our mission and programs, is the role of our church as a national home to the Armenian people. Here, we need to understand that the concept of a national home differs greatly from that of being a nation in exile. The issues of our being a nation in exile were resolved favorably in 1991 with the establishment of the Third Armenian Republic.

But although the past fifteen years have changed the need for the church to speak with both a political as well as a religious voice, we still need to understand the Armenian Orthodox Church, like virtually all of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, still is a home which helps maintain the ethnic character and traditions of the Armenian people. As such, the church has an important role to play in sponsoring, encouraging, and supporting Armenian language programs, dance groups, and all things Armenian which are morally consistent with our mission as a Christian church and community, even when the sponsoring organization is one which is different from the church. Here again, Srpazan’s phase, “For Each Other and With Each Other” has a definite meaning and speaks directly to our mission and programs in this area.

Our mission as an Armenian Church is also manifested in our programs to evangelize those Armenians who live in present day Armenia. It is for this reason that we dedicate a large portion of our resources and outreach activity through the St. Nerses the Great Charitable Fund, the organization through which we sponsor orphans and undertake other missionary programs. Here, there is a need to review the work we do as Armenia moves away from the trauma of the 1988 earthquake and the wars of the early days of the Republic to insure that our efforts are both consistent with our mission and effective in meeting the needs of those whom we are called upon to serve.

Sixth, our mission as a Prelacy also requires us to focus on the financial resources we need to fund the programs and activities of our parishes and Prelacy. In this regard, there is a need to reevaluate the annual giving programs of both the Prelacy and its parishes. Prelacy programs like azkayin dourk, the Prelacy raffle, and our annual Diary appeal which were once a large percentage of our Prelacy income today make up about ten (10%) percent of the income within our budget and, in the present formats, are either static or are programs in decline. Parishes which rely on bazaars and bingo revenues to sustain their parish budgets are forcing to deal with competition from government sponsored gambling and a multitude of non-Armenian community activities which take away from the revenue streams these programs have traditionally provided.

Endowment Funds and endowments in general are becoming an increasingly large segment of our financial base and offer a source of funds which can sustain Prelacy and parish programs into the future. But here, again, there is little coordination of the donor’s wishes and the parish or Prelacy’s needs. We have little in the way of communication materials which can help our potential donors understand what our needs are. We do not promote those programs and activities which, with the use of donor advised funds, could help us “jump start” or advance our needs in a number of critical areas. We should not be surprised, therefore, at the large percentage of our endowments which are directed to orphans, for instance, an area in which our financial needs as a Prelacy are by and large fulfilled through annual giving programs.

Parish and Prelacy fundraising also tends to be badly coordinated and we find ourselves often competing for the same funds at the same times from the same sources. Here again, better communication and coordination combined with the establishment of a Development Office which benefits both parish and Prelacy will allow us to better meet our overall financial needs.

And yet, although the items identified above in this topic area are real, we also know that when our mission and programs are communicated effectively, those that support the Prelacy are very generous in their giving. The recently concluded fundraising associated with Oshagan Srpazan’s fortieth anniversary of his ordination, far surpassed our budgeted goals because the need was apparent, the programs for which funds were being raised was understood, and the occasion was one which shows the love and respect our Prelate has within our community.

So, with all that in front of us, how do we now move forward and turn this theoretical understanding of our mission and needs into an active presence and reality in the lives of our Prelacy, parishes, and community? Here, I would like to briefly suggest six points which I would argue should form the basis of our moving from theory to active programs.

First, the focus of all that we do has to be on mission and not minutiae. We spend far too much time on procedure and not on programs.

Second, it is important in reviewing our mission and purpose to know what we can do as a Prelacy or as a parish and what is beyond our ability to control. Our mission has to fit within the theology, canons, and liturgical traditions of the universal Armenian Church.

Third, it is important that we initially reevaluate those programs which are already in place and build upon these programs or determine that the programs no longer fit within our mission and purpose. To attempt to reconstruct our programs and mission from scratch and without regard for the positive and effective things which are already in place is to do a disservice to programs and activities which still hold an important place within our Prelacy.

Fourth, it is important to understand that progress is made in incremental steps and that we should not expect any activity to change our focus instantly. The Armenian Church is a national church which has been in existence for 1706 years. Although there is arguably much to do, the work to be done has to take place within the context of our history and traditions.

Fifth, we have to be willing to take chances which are calculated and educated risks and not to be afraid to either discard programs which no longer speak to our needs or which may only be effective for a limited period of time. Again, programs come and go but it is the mission of what we do which needs to be the center of our focus and attention.

Finally, we need to understand that any work we do needs to be reviewed and reevaluated from time to time to insure that the programs remain focused, effective, and relevant. To throw an idea on the table without also providing a mechanism for to insure that the mission and goals of the program are being reached is to deal in the world of theory and not practical reality.

In conclusion, as happens once each year, you have been called here as the delegates, clergy, and Board members from your respective parishes, to review the programs and mission of our Prelacy. It is your work, as the supreme legislative body of our Prelacy, to advise the Executive Council on the progress of its ongoing work and to propose programs which will enhance our ability to serve effectively and to realize our mission as a church. “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to everyone” is a simple yet powerful message. Your efforts “to strengthen our community of faith, …to live the imperatives of the Gospel, and to strive for the full realization of the community of God” through the Armenian Orthodox Church should serve as your guide in the workshops and other work you do during the course of this National Representative Assembly and in what you take away from these meetings back to your parishes and community.