Orthodox Christian Network reaches out through media.

Steve Crowe - The Hellenic Voice

For a faith that takes great pride in its rich 2,000-year history and ancient traditions, it almost seems out of character for Orthodox Christianity to be at the forefront of cyberspace. But that’s where you’ll find the Orthodox Christian Network, a Website (www.myocn.net) that offers an ever-changing program of music, interviews, teachings and more, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Fr. Chris Metropulos, right, founder and executive director of the Orthodox Christian Network, chats with a group of students for the program “OTTO – Orthodox Teen Talk Online.” The show is one of dozens of programs on the OCN Web site (www.myocn.net).

It is the brainchild of Fr. Christopher Metropulos, who directs the operation from a second-floor office in the parish he has pastored for nearly 20 years, St. Demetrios Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

‘Sunday-only’ syndrome

The idea for using the media to communicate the Orthodox faith came out of his experience as pastor, where he has seen a growing trend of members who view church as a “Sunday-only event.”

“You don’t see them during the week,” Fr. Metropulos said in a recent interview. “They might come for a dance, but they’re not coming back for a catechism class.”

So if parishioners aren’t coming to the Church, the Church needs to go to them, he reasoned.

“We ask, how can we reach people in their homes, in their cars, on their iPods?” he said.

He looked at the religious broadcasting by other faiths, especially evangelical Christian ministries like James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family,” that spend millions of dollars on programming.

“Seventy-eight percent of the adults who attend church once a month or more listen to Christian media, and if there’s no Orthodox media presence, our parishioners are going to turn to non Orthodox sources,” he said.

"And who knows what they’re going to hear and what they’re going to believe.

“The reality is that we, as a church, have tried our best – I know that – but I don’t think we’ve done as well as we could to help our people learn more about the faith.”

The early years

Fr. Metropulos and his family have been at the church in Ft. Lauderdale for close to 20 years. He and his wife, Georgia Mitsos, have six children, ages 8 to 28, and recently became grandparents for the first time. The church community has grown rapidly and Fr. Metropulos expects it will eventually reach about 525 families.

After graduating from Hellenic College in 1977 and from Holy Cross School of Theology in 1980, Fr. Metropulos served parishes in Astoria, N.Y., Roslyn, N.Y., and at the Assumption Cathedral in Denver; he also served as dean of admissions at Hellenic College Holy Cross and as a council member of the Metropolis of Denver and Metropolis of Atlanta.

The Orthodox Christian Network began as a two-hour radio program, one hour in Greek and one in English, which Fr. Metropulos and his assistant, Emmy Louvaris, took from one radio station to another, carting equipment and materials in a shopping bag.

When Metropolitan Alexios of Atlanta and Archbishop Demetrios saw what he was doing, they encouraged him to take the program to other cities, which they did. But Fr. Metropulos saw room for improvement, so he joined the National Religious Broadcasting Association (NRB), most likely becoming the first Orthodox Christian to do so. He joined for two reasons: to bring respectability to the program and to glean knowledge from other NRB members.

A meeting with leaders of the Salem Communications Network, one of the largest Christian networks in the nation, convinced Fr. Metropulos to condense the weekly program to 26 minutes.

Meanwhile, a member of his board created a Web site that allowed Come Receive the Light to be heard on the Internet even as it was being broadcast on 17 radio stations and heard in 125 cities. Eventually, the Web site blossomed into the Orthodox Christian Network, which is now the parent organization.

Fr. Metropulos and his team then sought approval of the Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops in America to become an official agency of SCOBA, sharing the faith through media, in the same way the International Orthodox Christian Charities is the official philanthropic agency, the Orthodox Christian Mission Center is the official missions agency, and the Orthodox Christian Fellowship is the official college campus ministry.

Come Receive the Light continues to be the flagship program of the Orthodox Christian Network, but now it is surrounded by a growing playlist of programs (see related article). In addition to the half-hour programs, OCN also offers two Internet radio stations that can be heard for hours at a time: The Ark, which features contemporary music by young Orthodox Christian recording artists along with nine programs; The Rudder, which features traditional church music along with the same nine programs heard on The Ark.

Weekly brainstorming sessions

Fr. Metropulos and the OCN staff meet weekly to discuss topics, draft questions, and plan a weekly newsletter for listeners and the media.

A staff member calls prospective guests to arrange for a time when Fr. Metropulos can interview them, usually on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Sometimes he’ll sit in the studio for two or three hours straight, doing one interview after another.

The show’s producer, Fr. Spiro Bobotas, and engineer, Ron Spiegel, then edit the audio file to the finished product. “They continually make me sound good,” Fr. Metropulos said.

The audio file is then sent to a Colorado Internet media company, Next Wave Radio (NWRnetwork.com), where Mike Trout, a radio veteran with 40 years’ experience, including 20 with “Focus on the Family,” records an introduction for each program. He sends the file to a contractor in Kansas, John Dale, who edits the file and uploads to the OCN satellite and Web site, which is hosted on the NWRnetwork server.

Over the years, Trout has seen OCN make great strides, in terms of content and audio quality, to the point where OCN “compares favorably with any other program out there.”

“He’s a great visionary,” Trout says of Fr. Metropulos. “He’s launched as aggressive a media outreach as anyone, in terms of TV, radio and the Internet, for Orthodox Christians. He’s given voice to as many different groups within the Church as possible.”

Among the show’s guests are authors, clergy, scholars, journalists. Topics on OCN have ranged from relief efforts in Greece and the Republic of Georgia to advice for Orthodox Christians on encountering Muslims to reports of weeping icons at St. Nicholas Cathedral on Long Island.

St Demetrios Church has been the home of Come Receive the Light and OCN from the beginning. The church allows the station to use several alcoves in the second floor for offices and a state-of-the-art recording studio.

Reaching an unseen audience

The list of programs is continually growing. Most recently, OCN announced a partnership with Icon New Media, out of San Diego, Calif., which produces a program called Journeys to Orthodoxy, about converts who find their way to the Orthodox faith. And Fr. Metropulos has also just added a new show called OTTO – Orthodox Teen Talk Online, based on his conversations with a group of young people in the studio.

“There’s literally something there for everybody,” Fr. Metropulos said.

Meanwhile, more and more Orthodox groups are contacting OCN to talk about partnerships, which is exactly what Fr. Metropulos’ vision to see the site become a portal through which we can deliver all kinds of media.

Fr. Christopher Metropulos records programs for the Orthodox Christian Network in a second-floor studio in St. Demetrios Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where he has been pastor for 20 years.

“God willing, in the future, when we put together a capital campaign and we can put some individuals in here who really believe in media and see the power of it for the church, there is no doubt in my mind that we will have a major effect for the faith in this country,” he said. Fr. Metropulos continued with, “we currently have an outstanding Board of Director’s under the capable leadership of Dr. George Mekras the son of the late and most respected V. Rev. Demosthenes Mekras”.

Fr. Metropulos doesn’t know exactly how many people are listening to the OCN programs, but he did receive a lot of positive feedback from many people at this summer’s Clergy-Laity Congress in Washington, D.C.

“With the Internet we know that we get tens of thousands of visits (to the Web site). We know that people are listening in 130 countries. But we don’t know how many souls we are touching. So when people come up and they say this program meant this to me, that gives us great joy. That’s what’s fueling our tank and keeps us going.”

Going where parishioners are

Fr. Metropulos has no doubt that the Church needs to be present in the media. He rattles off the numbers to prove it.

• 78 percent of adults who attend church once a month or more listen to Christian media.
• 55 million Americans listen to Internet radio stations.
• Teens spend an average of 72 hours a week using electronic devices.
• Internet radio is like FM radio was in the 1970s and cable TV in the 1980s (according to Arbitron international marketing research firm).
• It’s cost effective and reaches millions.
• 45 million Americans listen to church-related programs on the Internet.

“So if we’re not there what does it say? We don’t care?” Fr. Metropulos said. “I believe if Christ and his apostles were here and they had the ability to use media they would have used it.”.

Fr. Metropulos has great hopes to expand OCN, not only through programming but also through involving every Orthodox jurisdiction in America and any church that wants to be involved. He does different versions of the show for teens, one with members from the Greek Orthodox in America and another from the Antiochian Archdiocese, and hopes to do another with Orthodox Church in America students.

OCN is also offering parishes the ability to have their own internet radio stations, where they can offer recorded audio and video files of their weekly services, teachings, announcements and sermons. Each church could customize the Ark and Rudder programs by replacing one of the nine programs with programming of their own, in effect allowing the church to create its own radio station.

“We talk about unity all the time. We talk about doing things together,” he said. “Media works but it is expensive, so the more that we pool together and we leave our egos aside and we realize that we’re here to preach Christ – when we do that we will be successful.”

Sampling of OCN Programs

• Journeys to Orthodoxy: Jacob Lee interviews converts who share their stories of how they found their way to the Orthodox Christian faith. Example: Shawn Wallace, an African-American jazz musician and assistant professor of music at Ohio State University.
• Icons in Sound: Vladimir Morosan explores the beauty and theology of Orthodox Christian liturgical music. Example: Dormition hymns in three languages--English, Greek, and Church Slavonic.
• Come Receive the Light: Fr. Christopher Metropulos interviews authors, scholars, clergy and more. Examples: Dr. John D. Jones draws from the writings of the Church Fathers to connect our financial and philanthropic lives in modern-day America to our spiritual condition; Author Fr. Meletios Webber (“Bread & Water, Wine & Oil)” discusses how to conquer fear, doubt and distraction by learning to live in the present; Philip Mamalakis, professor of pastoral care, presents a series on listening to spiritual fathers and church leaders.
• OCN Now: Fr. Chris and other hosts report on issues of the day. Examples: Weeping at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of St. Paul in Hempstead, N.Y.; IOCC clergy responder and the floods in the Mid-West and efforts to assist the people of Georgia displaced by the conflict between Russia and Georgia
• OTTO: Orthodox teens discuss real-life issues. Example: Fr. Chris and the panel discuss body image relating to plastic surgery, piercings and the human body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.
• Theologically Thinking: Teachings from the brightest lights of Orthodoxy Christianity, like Fr. Thomas Hopko, Fr. John Behr, Fr. Stanley S. Harakas, Fr. Michel Najim, Fr. William C. Mills, and more. Topics: “Why Does Marriage Matter?” “Understanding the Wrath of God.” “Loving Those Who Annoy You.”
• Turning to the Fathers: Scholar Fr. John McGuckin speaks about the Fathers.
• Get Wisdom: A weekly program offering modern Orthodox Bible study for teens and young adults.
• Special Moments: Talks on contemporary moral and theological issues given by leading Orthodox Christians voice; lectures, and spiritual retreats around the country.
• OCN TV: Videos of services, music performances, etc.
• Just Thinking: Fr. Metropulos talks with Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News about the recent presidential candidate forum hosted by Pastor Rick Warren at Saddleback Church in Southern, Calif

This article was reprinted by permission from The Hellenic Voice.