Question on men vs. women leading reader's services

[Katie L.]

I'm not sure if this is exactly the right place to post this, but anyway: at my tiny mission church, we only have a priest serve twice a month, so the majority of our services are reader's type. The question is, if the reader himself isn't there, they require a lay-man to lead the service, or we're not allowed to have the service at all. To me, this seems a little odd - in women's monasteries they don't have men to lead the service, so why would it be that way in a church? Anybody know the reason behind it? :)

[Olga]

Hello Katie, and welcome to the forum!

From my observations, women can be readers and singers/chanters(including those who read the Hours following Matins), despite not being tonsured (this is not rare in the Slavic tradition, likely more rare in the Greek). However, it would be a good idea to run your concerns past your priest, as he does have authority over your mission.

[D. W. Dickens]

Our choir Director is a woman. In fact, our Matuska. She regularly reads, even when the Priest, the Deacon and the Reader are there. Most of the choir reads when needed. Men, women, without concern. No one has ever raised objection.

But all things should be done in obedience. Perhaps we need an acronym. AAAYP (as always, ask your priest)

[Olga]

Yes, choirmistresses (Matushki or otherwise) are not uncommon in parish choirs of the Slavic tradition (practically unheard-of in Greek tradition, apart from monastic choirs at women's monasteries), and I can say that the choirmistress at the local Russian church near where I live reads at every vigil, as do some of the men who sing in the choir. This church also has a regular female reader of the Hours prior to Liturgy.

AAAYP - I like it!

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

I'm not sure if this is exactly the right place to post this, but anyway: at my tiny mission church, we only have a priest serve twice a month, so the majority of our services are reader's type. The question is, if the reader himself isn't there, they require a lay-man to lead the service, or we're not allowed to have the service at all. To me, this seems a little odd - in women's monasteries they don't have men to lead the service, so why would it be that way in a church? Anybody know the reason behind it? :)


Perhaps another issue behind this is that of leading the service. (at an English mission in our city that doesn't have their own priest yet the very same question came up). If this then is the question then it should be understood that at a reader's service the reader who leads is not fulfilling a priestly or clerical role. Therefore a woman could lead the reading if no actual reader was present.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Katie L.]

Thanks to all:)

Fr. Raphael - yes, I think that's more down the line of what I was meaning. Our priest comes from another parish twice a month, so the reader is more or less in charge of the church(and if he can't be there and no men volunteer to 'lead', the service is canceled). So put more plainly, my question is; does this come from a certain tradition or whatnot, or is this just my church?

[Father David Moser]

Our priest comes from another parish twice a month, so the reader is more or less in charge of the church(and if he can't be there and no men volunteer to 'lead', the service is canceled). So put more plainly, my question is; does this come from a certain tradition or whatnot, or is this just my church?

Your priest is "in charge" of the mission, whether or not he is there. He is the delegate of the bishop who is ultimately "in charge" of all the parishes in his diocese. It could be that the priest has delegated the day to day management of the mission to the local reader (a common and very smart thing to do) however the policy of having only men lead the services or canceling otherwise would be set by the priest (or perhaps ultimately by the bishop, but such a detail is not something that would normally go that far up the food chain). Thus the best place to get an answer to your question is from the priest who comes to the parish.

Specifically to your question here: As far as I know there is no reason that a reader's service can't be "led" by a woman - to the best of my knowledge it certainly isn't the case anywhere in ROCOR (or probably in any Russian Church).

Fr David Moser

[Nina]

Katie, there was this little church which opened after the collapse of communism in southern Albania. And since previously it had been converted by the communists into a pigsty, you can immagine that there were no altar, icons/iconostasis, or anything what we have today in an Orthodox church. So this was a small church part of a small monastery from the 17th century and dedicated to Prophet Elias, so when this church was reopened, people went there with the gratitude of being able to go there and light a candle (whereas before they had to crawl in the dark, up the hill, overcoming stones and being scratched and bleeding from thorns, crawling quitely to the back of the church, light a small candle and quickly dissapear for fear of persecution had they been seen - my mom and my grandmother had done this but thank God when I grew up communism collapsed, the church opened so I was blessed to just hike normally in the middle of the day to the church on the small hill :)).

After communism collapsed a priest from Greece would visit there only for Easter, (maybe Christmas), and on Prophet Elias day. This was the area where my maternal grandparents were exiled to so I was there in summer always; and on Sundays I would walk to the church of Prophet Elias, with grandmother, mom, aunt, cousins, friends etc. and then go to the beach. When we would arrive there we would find either a couple of other ladies, or no one. So we would start cleaning the small church floor because the building was very empty and there were no icons or anythings else to arrange, or dust. Therefore when we would finish looking after the floor and outside the church for anything to fix we would just stand in the middle of the church and look to the little dome where there were rays of sun coming through the small windows of the Byzantine style building. And then we would take turns to say little prayers that we had learned after communism collapsed, such as Our Father. Also my grandmother would chant hymns she knew and we had never heard... it is funny because she would chant even hymns from the Holy Friday "All the Generations" in summer, just because those were some of her favorites :) . So there was no order on how to conduct a service, no books, Bibles, literature, Divine Liturgies, Reader Services in brochoures. Just us and what God had allowed us to remember. In all the imperfect ways we conducted this "worship" those Sundays, it was in a way perfect because our hearts were in flames with thirst and love for God since we had missed Him (the Church) so much! Yes, we were women but there were no men with us to pray, or chant. I do think God has accepted our prayers there. In special circumstances there are always special things happening. And I think special angels surround us... and maybe they conduct the Liturgy there but we are not yet worthy to see them. :) We are all souls in need of salvation and to glorify God and praise Him is the duty of all living creatures.

Christ is Risen!

[Alice]

What a beautiful and poignant post, Nina...thank you for sharing it--so eloquently and beautifully from the heart!

Your 'imprompto' service may have been even more pleasing to God even than many of the perfectly served Divine Liturgies, because it was served with great love and pain from persecution...I thought of the very earliest Christians when reading of your experience...I am sure that their services were not much different in the days before the Divine Liturgy was officially put together...

Your post is a personal witness to remind us to NEVER take for granted the freedoms we Christians have...for one day, God forbid, they could be taken away from us again.

In Christ,
Alice

[Irene]

A few years ago, the then Archbishop Hilarian of ROCOR, gave his blessing for us to run an Orthodox Community and Mission doing readers services. We are all women except for my son, who has only since then became a young man, and the only other male is still a small child. To this day we run regular readers services and they are very beneficial to us who have the priviledge of reading. (The community being so small that we all get to take part in services). We use seniority of age as a way to govern who does what.

[Anthony Stokes]

We use seniority of age as a way to govern who does what.

The idea of seniority is something that comes up in Reader's services a few times. The texts for Reader's services usually have two places where it mentions the most senior person present. Notice, it does say person, and not man.

At Vespers, the text usually says something like "A regular censing can be made at the normal time by the Deacon, Subdeacon, Reader, or most senior person present using a hand censor."

The other time is the dismissal. No matter who is reading the service, the most senior person is called to give the dismissal "Through the prayers..."

So, according to the service texts, it does not specifically say a man has to run the services. As others have noted, it may just take a question to your priest, which by now has probably already happened, since I see that this thread is 2 weeks old.

Sbdn. Anthony