Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, head of Department of External Church Relations, Patriarchate of Moscow and All Russia

We have to overcome the millennium-long inertia of our church life.

For a thousand years, our people have been inchurched in a natural way - in their parish churches. Nobody had to be invited to church, as everybody was in it from childhood, praying at divine services, making confessions, taking communion, listening to sermons. So the clergy have developed a 'parish' psychology: be always in church, celebrate reverently, preach, and people will come.

But the Lord said to His disciples: 'Go, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit' (Matthew 28:19). He did not say, 'Sit and wait till they come to you', but said, 'Go and teach!'

And this movement towards society, to people, is the essential mission of the Church today.

source:  Europaica 79   http://www.orthodoxeurope.org