The Christian religion, unlike many other religions, was from the start supposed to be missionary in nature. During the first millenium or so, things went slowly, but certainly there were quite prominent attempts to do something. Nonetheless, from the beginning, in spite of the (theoretical) missionary nature of the Church, most Christians seem (practically) to have not been much interested in going forth to all nations, but instead the missionary ball seemed to have gotten rolling, outside of a small space in Israel, because of persecutions. (cf Acts 8:1; 11:19, etc.). Nonetheless, the stories about the Christians in the apostolic period talk about them going to everywhere from Ethiopia to India to England.
But what I don't understand is, after a thousand years of missionary activity, the Church had not gone any further into Africa, the Far East, etc. For the most part, the major missionary works were done in the immediate neighborhood. St. John Chrysostom (early 5th century) sent (and went) towards Armenia. St. Photius (9th century) tried to convert the Bulgarians. Cyril and Methodius (9th century) missionized Eastern Europeans. There were of course exceptions, such as the work of Innocent and other Russians among the Aleut, or Nicholas among the Japanese, but even in these situations there was mainly stagnation after the deaths of the original fiery missionaries (e.g., there are roughly the same number of Orthodox now in Japan as when Nicholas was there a century and a half ago, perhaps less).
Shouldn't the Orthodox, if God is powering them and their beliefs are correct, have at the very least a prominent representation in every country and culture on earth? Why is it that 90% or more of the world's Orthodox live in a relatively small geographical area? When people would ask about this in chat rooms when I was Orthodox, I used to say that the reason was that Catholics had us bordered on the West, and Muslims on the East, so the Orthodox were sort of stuck between. Is that really the best answer there is, though?
