Our Parish : Visitor's Information

Home › Our Parish › visitor's information

Visitor's Information

Welcome to Holy Cross!

New to Orthodoxy? New to our parish? This page may help you feel more comfortable.

If you were walking through our door on Camp Meade Road, a member of the parish would greet you and ask whether you want to use a worship book, and would otherwise try to make you feel at home. People arrive on the doorstep of Orthodox churches from many different places. If you're already Orthodox, what you find when you go on through the swinging doors into the temple itself will be mostly familiar. But if this is your first visit to an Orthodox church, a number of things may be unfamiliar; this brochure is designed to cover those basics.

Our Faith

The Orthodox faith is held by one universal church, but instead of having a single, world-wide centralized government, it is organized generally at the level of tribe and tongue and people and nations (Revelation 5:9). So there are Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and others, but they are all part of the same communion. Our parish is within the jurisdiction (not denomination) of the Antiochian Archdiocese— the ancient church of Antioch, where the disciples were for the first time called Christians (Acts 11:26). Though immigrants in the last two centuries established churches that were daughters of other dioceses, today the Orthodox in America are in the process of dismantling these bureaucratic divisions and re-forming as a united American Orthodox Church. In 1993, Fr. Gregory Mathewes-Green and his family left their mainline Protestant denomination and became Orthodox, and founded Holy Cross Church. Read a little more about our parish.

Learn More

Perhaps you have already done some reading about Orthodoxy, and are hoping to learn more? Here are some books we recommend; you will probably also like to contact Fr. Gregory. He can answer most of your questions, and also regularly holds inquirer classes.

Another resource is this page on the website of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese. Here you will find contacts with many people who have converted to Orthodoxy from some other tradition. If you have questions unique to a particular theological tradition, you can look for someone here who is familiar with that background.

What to Do

One of the things that may surprise you, when you step into our temple, is that there are very few chairs. Most worshippers stand for the entire service, and sit (on the floor) only for the sermon. The absence of pews makes the congregation more of a single body, and the practice of standing underscores the respect we show our Lord and King. But it, along with other Orthodox distinctives, subtly alters the expected "etiquette rules" inside the temple. Feeling unsure of what's right to do can make you feel uncomfortable. These links explain some of the general "Ps & Qs" observed by adults and children in our parish, but please… don't feel intimidated by them!

Come and See

Though there are a variety of books and other online resources, we do hope that you'll visit an Orthodox Church to become part of it's life and worship. As much as we value the internet, the ancient Christian life is not lived online but in community. Should you visit our community at Holy Cross, we hope that you feel welcome and will continue to join us in the love and worship of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

—Khouria Frederica Mathewes-Green

Holy Cross Orthodox Church