Our Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia is multifaceted. Here one can see parishes consisting of the descendants of those who founded the ROCOR, parishes founded after the collapse of the USSR, and parishes consisting of those who, while living in their own native countries, have been converted to the Orthodox Faith. The vast majority of parishes of the Southern Deanery of the Eastern American Diocese fall into the latter category.

When I was serving in St. Mary of Egypt Church in Roswell, Georgia, I could not help but think: how can it be that, on an average Sunday in Georgia, people were taking communion from three chalices? (More or as many as there would be on the same day in Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville…)

There was a whole array of priests in the church. After becoming a widower in 2019, Fr. John Townsend took monastic vows and now there is a monastic community with well-attended regular services following the Typicon.

Toward the end of my time down South, on August 17th, I served at the baptism of a mother and her two sons at St. Tikhon Orthodox Church in Blountville, Tennessee, on the border with Virginia. Archpriest Matthew Williams, the Rector of the church, showed me a whole list of names of people he had baptized this year. Candidates for reception into the Church must first undergo catechism and be clear that they are becoming Orthodox for reasons for faith rather than for other, unrelated ones.

In order for people to be able to attend church more often, Fr. Matthew has opened a new mission in honor of St. Peter the Aleut in the town of White Pine, halfway between St. Tikhon’s and Fr. Job Watts’ Church of St. Nektarios of Aegina in Knoxville, Tennessee.

St. Nicholas Orthodox Parish in Fletcher, North Carolina, where I also spent a weekend, is building a church. At the present time, the large community congregates in the dining hall.

An article of mine on our Seminary’s website about my work in Europe, titled “European Reflections on the Legacy of the Ladomirová Monastery of St. Job of Pochaev”, covered my talk at the congress of the ROCOR Diocese of Germany in Munich in December 2023. The subject of it was the history and life of Holy Trinity Seminary on the occasion of its 75th anniversary.

I gave the same talk at the aforementioned parishes in the South. In it, I touched upon events in the history of Orthodoxy in the USA in the early-mid 20th century, the emergence of the seminary, ideology, and the present day. At the end of the talk, I asked the audience why they thought the ROCOR needed Holy Trinity Seminary. The main response that I received to this question from different parishes was, “to preserve Orthodoxy”.

Such encounters and talks are a means of an exchange between the People of God and faculty from the sole institution of higher theological education in the Russian Church Abroad.