Mr. Bobby Maddex: Welcome to Ancient Faith Presents… I’m Bobby Maddex, station manager of Ancient Faith Radio, and today I will be speaking with Fr. Martin Ritsi. He is the director of the Orthodox Christian Mission Center, or OCMC. OCMC is the official sending agency for Orthodox missionaries worldwide. Welcome to the program, Fr. Martin.

Fr. Martin Ritsi: Thank you, Bobby. It’s great to be here with you.

Mr. Maddex: Yes, and I should add that Fr. Martin is here live at our new Ancient Faith Radio studio, and we’re so pleased that we have the opportunity to do this sort of thing now, and so glad that he made the trip out here to be with us. Fr. Martin, tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you to OCMC.

Fr. Martin: Great, I will say that, first, Bobby, you have a beautiful studio. I would encourage others traveling in the area to come on by and visit and see these wonderful new facilities that you have for many years. May the word go out to many, many people.

Mr. Maddex: [Laughter] Thank you.

Fr. Martin: So what first brought me to OCMC: you know, it’s something that began very early in my life, as a young child, finding out about a mission agency called M-A-F, MAF: Mission Aviationary Fellowship, and being fascinated by pilots who would fly out into the bush and carry the Gospel in dangerous, difficult, and remote situations. I used to take my allowance and save it up and send it off as donations. As life goes on, come to the point of college and finishing college and thinking about, “I’d like to do something like that,” and the response in our church was, “Well, we don’t do that.” That was pre-1985, because 1985 is when our missions began. But the seed was always there in my heart, and, thanks to God, at the right time, the mission center was born, and I was able to go out.

Mr. Maddex: So tell me a little bit about the history of OCMC itself.

Fr. Martin: Right, well, as we had just said it was in 1985 when the Archdiocesan Mission Center began. That’s the predecessor of OCMC, mid-‘80s. In the early ‘90s, that then became a pan-Orthodox effort, and took on the name Orthodox Christian Mission Center. It began as a small effort, with a budget under a million dollars. For much of that early history, it was involved with sending a missionary or a missionary couple out and supporting a missionary couple, supporting clergy, some small groups of clergy around the world, and annually sending 25 people out someplace to do some kind of a project on behalf of the Church. So, since that time we have grown, we have expanded, we have new facilities, our staff has grown, our budget has more than tripled, and we’re still just at the tip of the iceberg of what’s possible for us Orthodox here in the United States to be supporting and doing as faithful.

Mr. Maddex: Well, speaking of facilities, you have one in St. Augustine, Florida. Can you describe that facility and what kind of work takes place there?

Fr. Martin: Well, I’m going to start with a little humorous story. I served in the field ten years, first in east Africa and then in Albania, and came back to go straight to the mission center as the executive director, as my predecessor was becoming a bishop, and I was asked if I would take over. So we had just driven across the country—I am previously from California—put all our stuff in a U-Haul, drove across, reached St. Augustine, first time in my life in Florida, down this little side street, and we roll up to a little green house on the side of the road. There was a sign out there that said, “Orthodox Christian Mission Center,” and Presvytera, my wife, looks up. She says, “Is that it!?” Just a little old building, assuming that the scope of our work was so important and huge that there would have been some huge center there that we’re coming to take over!

It wasn’t very long, Bobby, before we outgrew that facility. It was wonderful to watch the growth in those early years. This was 1998 when we drove down that road. Soon afterwards, a few years later, we had outgrown the facility. We were then in a strip mall for a while, while we were searching for property, and have now managed to build a beautiful 12,000-square foot facility on 20 acres of land, so we’re poised for growth, not to be land-locked, but to be able to grow according to the vision of what we believe missions can be.

There are 16 staff, full time, at the headquarters there, doing the work that we do, which is administrating all of our programs, but also half of the facility is training in dormitories. So we will bring in missionaries who are pursuing a career in missions and doing our pre-training, training once they’ve decided to become missionaries, and then bringing them back at various times throughout their career, along with bringing in all of those persons who go out on our shorter placements.

Mr. Maddex: Well, that sounds like stupendous growth. I know when you think historically about missions in the Orthodox Church over all these centuries, we know we have a very rich heritage—I mean, the faith has spread—but here in the US, sending out missionaries is kind of a relatively new concept. Why do you think that is?

Fr. Martin: I think it’s part of the tragic history of Orthodoxy. We are not coming from countries that were continually expanding in their history, but we come from countries that were persecuted, either by Islam or under the rule of Communism. And that wasn’t for 10 or 20 years; I mean, you have centuries of occupation in Orthodox lands. That produces a certain psychology, even a certain way to look at church, and over centuries that infiltrates our identity. We become victims of that persecution. So when we came to the United States, who came here? Conquerors, or immigrants escaping terrible situations, trying to get up on their feet? That’s the roots that we have as Orthodox here in our recent history, but of course not in our further history. Orthodox history has vibrant, vibrant and sacrificial efforts of carrying the Gospel to the ends of the world. And that is exciting that we have been rediscovering our roots and our history and mission and absolutely critical.

Can I tell you a little story?

Mr. Maddex: Oh, please! Please.

Fr. Martin: I got back just a few days ago from Tanzania, and I had gone there to visit a bishop that was in the central part of Tanzania, a new bishop. He’s only been a bishop for three months, living in this area. I had been to that very same area 30 years ago as a young, newly starting missionary. But why? Because there was an expatriate Greek community that started the church in that area. They came as persecuted peoples, peoples looking to establish themselves, went to this area of Africa, which at that time was not developed: there were no towns of any substance near them, no electricity, no doctors, no mechanics, markets, and groceries in their nearby area. And they took on a task of trying to start a cash crop for the country, and that was something that the president said: “You can have all this land, and would you try to introduce a cash crop for our country, to help lift up the country and have exports?”

Well, as faithful Orthodox, they built their own church and their own community center, and at the point of my visit, it had been after most of the immigrants lost their materials because they were confiscated by the transitioning government, and the communities had pretty much died out. I was brought to the area for a funeral and came across a locked-up church that had no priest serving it, a small community center that was not fully functioning, and it was so sad to see what had happened with the faith. It had been retained by those people and not spread to the local population. So when some of those people left, it died.

Now I’m back 30 years later. 30 years later and in that very same region there is now a bishop.

Mr. Maddex: Whoa.

Fr. Martin: An Orthodox bishop. And 18 clergy. And 30 parishes. 30 churches surrounding that very same region, just 30 years later. What made that happen? It was the vision for mission, of one of those local families [who] gave land to the Church, and said, “Please, we want our faith to be spread to the people around us. Bishop”—and this was the one in Dar-es-Salaam—“would you do something?” He built a mission center, started building churches, OCMC partnering with them, started ordaining clergy, and now we have a vibrant Church spread to the people that are there.

I bring this up because we talk about sending missionaries being a new concept in the United States. Doing mission is central to being the Church. We are made disciples in our baptism of Christ. As disciples we are called to go and to spread our faith. “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” Well, when we do that, we come alive; if we neglect it, our church will die.

So often in my travels around the US, I hear, “Fr. Martin, churches are losing membership or losing our youth.” What we need is that same spirit of mission that we saw happening there in Africa equally to be alive in the United States, not just overseas where OCMC is working, but we need that here. So the vision for mission, it’s central to being faithful Orthodox. It’s in our history. It is resurfacing again, and it is our future.

Mr. Maddex: Well, there are obviously many types of missions work. There is work done, just feeding the hungry, taking care of the poor; but there is evangelization. What drives the mission of OCMC? Is your primary purpose to evangelize groups of people, or what are you trying to do?

Fr. Martin: So this is where an Orthodox concept of mission comes into play. We are trying to evangelize. Right now, you have the majority of the world is not Christian. It is not able to call on and to know all of what we experience, the richness of what we experience in our faith, our traditions, and more importantly the relationship with Jesus Christ and the hope of the resurrection that he offers to us and the transformation of our daily lives right now, as we learn what love is. So we are concerned about that. We are concerned that a quarter of the world, roughly, over a billion people are said to have not heard the Gospel yet today. The Lord sent us out as disciples, and yet a quarter of the world—it’s amazing that we don’t really think about that—has not heard the Gospel. That drives us.

But at the same time, what do we do? I’ve been out in remote regions. We’ve brought out groups of people. We evangelized persons who had never heard of who Jesus Christ is before. Is it enough to tell them who Jesus Christ is, and then they say, “Yes! We believe! This is a wonderful message you brought us,” and then to leave them and not to come back again and not do anything further? For us, aligning yourself, being baptized into Christ, begins a lifelong process. That process happens in the Church, through the sacraments, and as a body of believers. So we understand then that, for the Gospel to spread, the Church must be established, and people must be incorporated into that Church. So that is the second prong of what we’re doing: trying to help churches become established throughout the world in these places where people are being evangelized and being brought to Christ. That’s an extremely large effort. It takes up probably the majority of our focus.

There’s one other dimension that comes into play. Many times, the places where the Gospel hasn’t been heard are in places that are remote, difficult to get to, and suffering, physically, in various ways: either lack of clean drinking water, lack of food, lack of medical care; people who are marginalized in societies. As you come carrying the Gospel of truth, carrying the Gospel of love, from one of the most if not the most privileged countries in the world, it’s impossible to look at that suffering and to proclaim Christ, knowing that they will take up their cross and follow him and start to reach out to each other, but we as a Church also enter into that process, to relieve the suffering of these people. So we get engaged: in drilling wells, bringing water, and all types of programs to meet the needs of the peoples.

So we have three foci. One is bringing people to Christ through this evangelism process, through raising up local indigenous missionaries who are evangelizing those around them. Two is working in partnership in these countries with the hierarchs to firmly establish the churches that these people are then to be brought into. And three, we also engage in some acts of philanthropy and charity towards those people that are brought in, when and where there are needs.

Mr. Maddex: That’s a ton of work, Fr. Martin! And I would imagine it requires quite a few individuals. Let’s talk just briefly about the scope of OCMC. How many missionaries are actually out there, and where all throughout the world are they deployed?

Fr. Martin: Well, do you want the good news or the bad news, Bobby?

Mr. Maddex: [Laughter] You tell me!

Fr. Martin: Well, I once sat a table with the heads of mission agencies from various agencies here in the United States. We try to gather with them annually just to share knowledge and trends and to give each other some support for what we’re doing. And we were going around the table, and people were saying—they were bemoaning the fact that they had lost, most of them, across the board, had lost numerous missionaries. “Well, you know, we lost 10% of our missionaries. We lost 5%. We lost 20% this year.” And I smiled, and I said, “We doubled as Orthodox! We’ve got twice as many missionaries this year as we had last year!

Mr. Maddex: Yes, but what does that mean exactly? [Laughter]

Fr. Martin: Right? They all looked at me, their eyes opening up, and they were just like: Really!? I say, “Yes, we have gone from six to twelve missionaries!” So right now we have tripled from that point, and we have approximately 18 missionaries out in the field. So, tripling, I guess, is the good news; the bad news is what tripling represents, and that it’s just 18 people, for a Church that’s our size and our capacity.

It’s exciting, though. There’s two sides to it. When we look at what our potential is and what God calls us to as a people, it can be frustrating. On the other hand, if we look at where we were just a few years ago and how fast we’ve grown and what’s been established and what is happening, then it’s extremely exciting. I mean, to have 18 people, career people, living around the world—we have people in Alaska, Albania, Guatemala, Kenya, Mongolia even, and Romania; people as graduates from seminaries with theological degrees, teaching in seminaries, training up new clergy; school teachers, youth ministers. We’ve had lawyers, we’ve had construction people out on our teams as missionaries, doctors. So we’ve had such a wide spectrum of people serving, and it’s very exciting that we’ve got this caliber of people that are out in the field doing this work day in and day out as Orthodox missionaries.

Mr. Maddex: Well, Fr. Martin, as a fellow non-profit organization, we understand that some of the hardest parts about conducting work like this is the funding of it. So what is the funding model for this handful of missionaries that you have, as well as for the organization of OCMC itself?

Fr. Martin: The funding that we have as an organization is raised by the love and the generosity predominantly of the faithful in the United States. There are not government grants available to convert the world to Christ, so we have access to some grants from faith institutions, and we’ve been very thankful to Leadership 100, the Farah Foundation, the Kulis Foundation, National Philoptochos. These are some organizations that have given us grants throughout time, but, aside from this, the predominant revenue that comes into the organization is through the charitable donations of the faithful. We do have contributions that come in from the churches, but again, from the faithful, and some of the jurisdictions will also contribute to the support, but predominantly it’s coming from the people. Our budget right now is about three, almost three and a half, million annually.

The thing that I’m really encouraged about is how we’ve transformed in being able to support our missionaries. When I went out into the field, it was: Your salary will be cut in half, and as far as what happens when you get back, there was nothing in place for that. Now our missionaries go out, and they can choose this as a career. They can know that they can serve as missionaries and not come back to live on the streets but to take their place in society, being honored for this great work that they’ve done. We have a whole system of taking care of people in their health care, in pensions for when they come back, and then making sure they’re taken care of in the field.

They live and we strive to have people live at the level of the people that they serve, but equally not to jeopardize their lives and to know that “I can take this as a serious, substantial career and offer my life to it.” So we have a beautiful system of support for those that are out there, and pretty much predominantly supported by the gifts—the individual gifts and charity—by the faithful here in the United States.

Mr. Maddex: Okay, so let’s talk about things outside of long-term missions work. Are there other programs that are part of OCMC that you would like to talk about today?

Fr. Martin: Well, the long-term missionaries, the career missionaries that go out into the field, that’s our focus and our main focus, but, as we had said, it’s not just evangelism, and in establishing churches, missionaries are a part of that, but we go beyond. One of our programs, we call it Support A Mission Priest; it’s SAMP. This is still a very important program that we have at the mission center, where we send out to Asia, to Africa—the predominant two places that we support, but not only—funds that go towards the support of the local indigenous clergy. And those clergy are the evangelists in these areas that we’re reaching out to.

As the Church strives to grow, they have the ability to bring in new people. They have the ability to bring in clergy. But in that mission situation, they need that way to fund them. So this mission that we have to fund them helps that church to grow faster by providing a subsidy for the salaries. So persons can sign up with OCMC, $50 a month. You’ll be assigned a person, given a little biography of the country and the person that you support, and you can help them to support these individuals, especially in Africa and in Asia, who are carrying the Gospel and are doing the hard work, traveling miles and miles on foot or on bicycle and sometimes a motorcycle or cars to do that.

I’ll mention two other programs. Another one is the grants that we give. We have… Our grant-giving covers theological education, covers construction of churches, clinics, schools, operation of schools, orphanages, drilling of wells, and various other types of philanthropic development work that goes on in the communities that we interact with. The funds for that, a portion from it, comes from just the pennies and change that’s put into cannisters that go out, and many people who call in, saying, “We’d like to do a well. We’d like to build a church. I’d like to do something in this area, in this direction. We want to help establish a well.” So the sending of the grants for this work, especially to reaching out to the suffering of the people we work with, is another focus.

And then the final one, it’s very similar to that of missionaries: we send people. We either send technology, people, or money. That’s what we can send from the United States. The sending of people, we try to focus on sending career people who will go, learn the language, live with those that they are serving, and make a substantial impact over a number of years; but we also have to have an opportunity to go and taste and see and experience the mission field, and that’s our short-term mission program that we have. So that would be the other aspect that I would mention.

Mr. Maddex: Yeah, let’s talk briefly about that short-term mission program. I would imagine that most of the people listening to this interview today, they have their day jobs, but they still want to be a part of and support Orthodox missions around the world. What if someone wants to give a week or two of their time somewhere? Is there…? How would they go about doing that?

Fr. Martin: You bet. That’s a possibility that people can definitely engage in right now. If you went online today, ocmc.org, click on “teams”—we call them teams—you would be able to see all of the different places we’re going to this year. We’re in Africa, we are in Indonesia and Asia, we’re in Eastern Europe, we’re in Latin America. We’re in teams. We send people out on these shorter excursions to taste, feel, and to offer something while they’re there, in areas of youth ministry, medical care, catechism, sometimes working in schools and as teachers, providing training, and numerous other ways that people can interact. It’s a wonderful program.

We ask people to try and raise their support for participating in this so that the funds don’t come straight out of their pocket but it becomes a community effort, so that it’s a community that sends this representative who then goes in the field to experience what’s there, to be transformed by what they see, to offer the love from the United States, and then to bring that back into their community and to the people they come from. So it’s a good way to experience, if you feel God might be calling you to mission service. It’s also a way to experience the life and the breath and the power of what the Church and what God is doing in the field of missions.

Mr. Maddex: Well, you’ve talked a lot today about the encouraging—although small—growth that OCMC has been experiencing. Where do you see the most need right now in terms of where you want the organization to grow?

Fr. Martin: Our major focus at this point in time is to increase the missionaries. You would think that if Christ’s last words on earth before he ascended into heaven was, “Go and make disciples of all nations,” that as a Church, living in the United States with passports that take us almost anywhere in the world, being native English speakers who can go and communicate with peoples all over the world, with the resources that we have coming from this nation, that in an Orthodox Church our size, we know we have the capacity to send more than twelve people—that’s not stretching our ability!

Mr. Maddex: No kidding, yeah.

Fr. Martin: So we’ve recently undertaken a goal internally, to strive to encourage and enable more people to go out into the mission field, because that’s where we have our largest impact.

At the same time, we’re seeing some needs in the churches, in a number of the churches that we’ve worked with for a couple decades. In those churches, the churches are built, there’s an infrastructure established, in many places there’s a way to train the indigenous clergy, and the step that’s now being faced by many of those churches is: How can they stand on their own? Support themselves, and make that final step and start sending their own missionaries to neighboring areas and to areas in their countries where Christianity hasn’t reached. So what we’re looking at and really grappling with is how to partner with these churches around the world to enable them to develop systems of stewardship and systems of support that can sustain the churches.

And then the third area, on our side, is trying to raise the funds that are necessary. I recently spoke with somebody and was telling him about the mission center, and he had heard about us and was kind of like my wife’s reaction when she saw the building that we were going to work in when he said, “Well, what’s the budget of OCMC?” And I said, “It’s just about three and a half million dollars,” and he said, “What!? Only three million dollars!? I had thought you were a $40-, $50,000,000 organization!” We have that capacity, and the need is there. The way that these funds are used and the breadth of what happens to those funds, it’s like a $40,000,000 organization, but it’s not. So that’s the other dimension that we definitely need to grow in, because to make this possible—to make so many of the things we do possible—we need the resources, the sacrificial resources, that enable this critical dimension of the Church.

Mr. Maddex: Fr. Martin, I guarantee that there is someone listening right now who is learning about the small number of long-term missionaries that you have and feel in their heart that this is something that they want to do, that they want to help; they want to help increase the capacity of OCMC; they want to help spread the Orthodox faith. What is your advice for someone, whether they’re young, whether they’re old; what advice do you have for them if they’re considering being a long-term missionary?

Fr. Martin: Talk to God. Our goal in life is—well, let’s say a goal or a way to look at our way in life—is to make sure that we are doing what the Lord calls us to, and that we are in the place that the Lord wants us to be. Unfortunately, I’ve read statistics that say that most people who felt a calling by God to be missionaries never entered the mission field. They get to the end of their life, they felt they were called, but for one reason or another they never pursued it. We now have the ability to send people, to take care of those people, and I would say to you, listeners, that if you’ve ever felt or wondered, does God want you as a missionary, to pray—to pray and to ask him, “Lord, is this a path that you want me to follow?” And if that’s the basis, there’s no other place you should be, regardless of what you’re going to face. We need to be where God wants us to be, and if you feel God’s calling, we would ask you to call in or go to the website and look at that section on missionaries and how to apply to be a missionary, or just give us a call, and we’ll chat with you about the potential of that calling and how to explore it.

Mr. Maddex: Well, I can’t recall at the moment, Fr. Martin, whether we gave that web address earlier or not, but why don’t we go ahead and give it again? And you also mentioned that there’s also an opportunity for them to call in, so perhaps you could give a phone number as well.

Fr. Martin: Right. Our website, our web address is www.ocmc.org, that’s standing for Orthodox Christian Mission Center: ocmc.org. If you’d like to give us a call, we have an easy-to-remember phone number. It’s 1-800-MISSIONS. I believe that’s it. Is that right? M-I-S-S-I-O-N-S, yes, that’s eight. [Laughter] I don’t do that too often, so 1-800-MISSIONS, and that will get you into somebody at the office who can talk to you and encourage you. And, please, I do ask and encourage all of our listeners to consider making missions a part of their life, either in prayer—well, not “either”: start with prayer, because that’s something we all need to do, to empower, protect, and sustain this effort in our Church—and then to contribute, in order that this ministry may continue and grow to the ability that God gives us here in the United States; and then finally to consider: Is God calling you to enter into the mission field yourself? as one of the representatives that are sent by our Church in the United States, to carry the love and the joy and the hope that comes in our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Mr. Maddex: I thank you so much for joining me today, Fr. Martin, coming out here to scenic Chesterton, Indiana. I really appreciate it. I hope it was as fun for you as it was for me.

Fr. Martin: It sure was, Bobby, and may God bless this ministry to continue in the vibrant way that it is, and all the work that’s going to happen in this new and beautiful facility here.

Mr. Maddex: All right, well, once again, I have been speaking with Fr. Martin Ritsi. He is the director of the Orthodox Christian Mission Center, also known as OCMC. I’m Bobby Maddex, and this has been a listener-supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio.

Hey, this is Bobby Maddex, station manager of Ancient Faith Radio, and we thought that it would be pretty important to correct a phone number that was misstated in the interview. The actual phone number for OCMC is 1-800-GO-FORTH; that’s 1-800-G-O-F-O-R-T-H. So please make note of that, and if you would like to support OCMC, please do so by calling that number. Thank you very much.