What To Expect At Services

We welcome all who seek the fullness of God. We are blessed to have many visitors, and we are truly glad to welcome visitors to our Church. Because Orthodox Christianity is unfamiliar to most people in this area — it was new to many of us as well — we have written this to help you know what to expect.

Getting To The Church

We are located in Beaufort, South Carolina which is between Hilton Head Island and Charleston. Our address is 9 Tekoa Lane, Beaufort, SC 29901. Tekoa Lane is just south of La Nopalera Mexican Restaurant on Ribaut Road. The building will be on your left as you drive down Tekoa Lane, and there is visitor parking available in the front of the building. See our Calendar for our schedule of service times and days. Our typical weekly schedule includes a mid-week service, a Saturday evening service, and a Sunday Morning service.

What You’ll Find

The beauty of Orthodox worship must be experienced to be understood. The Divine Liturgy expresses the entire Christian faith in a continuous song of praise and prayer addressed to God. It is focused on God, not on us. There is nothing just for amusement or entertainment. Since much of the service is the same every week, worshipers can grow to know it and can participate personally, either by singing along or just by prayerful attention. Inside the church, we are surrounded by icons: images of Jesus Christ and the saints. Icons are “visual scripture,” telling us the stories of the Bible, while also relating to us the lives of Christians throughout the centuries. They remind us that we are participating while on earth in the worship of all the angels and saints in heaven. While some Orthodox churches offer services in the language of their own specific ethnic origin (Russian, Greek, Arabic, etc), services at St James are offered in English. And as is typical of most Orthodox worship, the singing and chanting in our church is acapella.

Participating In The Services

  • Body Worship — Orthodox worship with their bodies as well as with words. You will see that people at times bow, make the sign of the Cross, etc. If you are not Orthodox, of course no one expects you to do these things — just sit or stand and listen, and participate to the degree that you wish.

  • Communion is understood by Orthodox as a sign of membership in the Church and an act of commitment to the Church, so it is reserved for baptized Orthodox Christians who have prepared themselves to receive communion by recent confession and by fasting appropriately from the night before. Orthodox Christians who are visiting our parish are encouraged to contact the priest prior to the visit, just to let him know to expect them. Visitors can expect some of our members to offer them “blessed bread, called antidoron, as a gesture of kindness.

  • Standing (and kneeling) are the Biblical postures for prayer and Orthodox Christians traditionally stand at Sunday services. But for most people this takes some “getting in shape”, so feel free to sit as much as you wish. We have enough seats for those who wish to sit.

  • Children — we don’t have a nursery during the services because we believe it is appropriate and beneficial for children to be in the services as much as possible. It may take a few visits, but young children can learn to settle down, and it’s surprising how much even toddlers absorb. It’s no problem if they move about quietly — we have a number of children ourselves and are used to some movement — but please be considerate and take them out briefly if they become very noisy, especially during the sermon.

  • Visitors Welcome — In our parish, out of respect for those gathered in worship, we try not to talk too much during the services. And so it may be that no one will greet you until the service is over. After Sunday services we have Common Meal, a time of food and drink together in the Parish Hall; you’re invited to join us there so we can get to know each other. No one will put any pressure on you to join the Church; many people “visit” our Church for years. We look forward to “breaking bread” with you in fellowship!

Saturday: Vespers

The normal Saturday Evening Service is called Great Vespers. This is the service most often recommended to those who are visiting an Orthodox Church for the first time, as it is relatively brief (45 minutes to an hour long) and it is the most “user friendly” of our services..

Orthodox Christians, like the Jews before them, believe the new day starts on the evening before. Great Vespers is a preparation for worship at the Sunday Divine Liturgy. It consists mainly of singing of Psalms, especially Psalms 104 and 141, the “evening offering of incense,” and the hymns “O Gladsome Light” and “Lord, Now Lettest (Luke 2:29).” It has themes of Creation and Resurrection as the “eve” of the Day of Resurrection, the first day of the week.

After Great Vespers, the priest typically hears confessions from his parishioners.


SUNDAY: The Divine Liturgy

The normal Sunday morning service is called the Divine Liturgy. With sermon, it lasts about an hour and a half. It includes:

  • Responsive prayers called litanies.

  • Praise, usually Psalms 103 and 147 and the Beatitudes (St. Matthew 5: 3-12)

  • Procession with the Gospel Book

  • Hymns of the day, on Sundays especially of the Resurrection, and the hymn Holy God.

  • Epistle and Gospel readings and sermon

  • The Great Entrance, a solemn procession carrying the Gifts of bread and wine to the altar, representing the offering of our lives to God

  • The Nicene Creed, the summary of the Faith

  • The Eucharistic Prayer. We “lift up our hearts” to join the angels in singing Holy, Holy, Holy and offering thanksgiving (Eucharist) to God for all His works, especially remembering Christ’s saving work, and asking the Holy Spirit to transform our Gifts into Christ’s Body and Blood. It concludes with the Lord’s Prayer.

  • The Eucharist, or Communion. Orthodox who are prepared by repentance and fasting receive the Holy Gifts as a means of union with Christ. Our children receive because God’s work in us is not limited to what we can understand.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Theotokos mean? Theotokos (Mother of God) is a title for the Virgin Mary. Orthodox love and greatly honor (but do not worship) her because of our union with her Son. The attention given her in the Church also expresses our faith that Jesus Christ is truly human, born of a woman as we are, yet mysteriously has always been God, so His human mother can be called the Mother of God. In many hymns she is a sign of the Church as the beloved bride of God; her exaltation as “more glorious than the Seraphim” is a sign of the exaltation awaiting all who “hear the Word of God and keep it” as she did.

What are Icons? Icons are paintings of Christ and the Saints. They must be painted according to a strict tradition because they are an important way the Faith is handed down and taught. Icons and crosses are kissed (“venerated”), but –again– are not worshiped, as a sign of “the Incarnation”: this is the Christian belief that in Jesus Christ, God became man and took on a body of flesh, fully entering into our existence, becoming a part of our physical world so we could know Him. Other human beings who unite themselves with Jesus Christ become holy and the image of God becomes visible in them. It is with this in mind that we call such men and women “saints” and honor them in icons and in our Hymns and songs. They are not “exceptions” to the fact that we are all sinners, but rather they are “examples” to us of what it looks like to defeat sin and live God wholly.

Incense, vestments, candles are part of the imagery of heavenly worship in the Book of Revelation. Orthodox worship is physical in many ways, but especially in the fact that it engages us at the level of all of our senses, not just “in our minds.” In the Liturgy we participate physically and spiritually, here and now in this world, in the worship being offered by the angels and saints in heaven. We see the light of candles offered inn prayer, and smell the beeswax. We smell the incense and see the smoke rising as the embodiment of prayers being lifted up and rising to God. We hear the sound of voices and bells and chanting. We make the “sign of the cross” with our hands, creating prayer out of movement. We bow and stand in prayer. We kiss the icons and we taste the Eucharist.

Standard prayers and hymns are used rather than extemporaneous or modern ones because they contain the accumulated insights of many centuries of Christians, and most of them are packed with Biblical quotations. They are repetitious because that way they become rooted in our minds. They are chanted or sung rather than spoken so we are less conscious of the personality of the individual reader.

How can I join this church? We don’t hurry anyone to join; many people “visit” for years. But after visiting a while, if you wish to be a member, speak to the priest. Those wishing to be members are received as catechumens (learners), and usually spend at least a year attending the services and learning the Faith. Then if they have not already received Christian Baptism they are Baptized, and in any case are Chrismated (anointed with oil as the “Seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit”) and given Holy Communion, which makes them full members.

(Borrowed and adapted from St. Athanasius Orthodox Church)