Renowned Siberian pastor converts his community to Orthodoxy
11 Μαρτίου 2011
Pastor Igor Zyryanov from the Irkutsk Region after 18 years of working at Protestant meetings and two years of pastoral missionary work converted to Orthodoxy together with his family and community.
“It wasn’t easy for us, but now and in future we will further study and follow the Lord on Orthodox thousand-year path. But the most important is that now we enjoy plenitude as if I was searching for 18 years and couldn’t find, was drinking but couldn’t quench my thirst, was eating but couldn’t satisfy hunger,” Zyryanov writes in his article The Lord took me home! published at the Irkutsk Diocese website.
According to him, members of his community until this moment “were floating on the river of Protestantism and suddenly our horizon broadened and infinite ocean of Orthodoxy has opened for us.”
After finishing school, Zyryanov practiced as extrasensory expert and opened his own cabinet. Since 1990s he started visiting meetings of the Blagaya Vest Protestant Church as thus he first thought to attract new clients. The future Orthodox believer considered Christ “a great extrasensory expert.”
Zyryanov was going around villages as a missionary and delivered about four thousand sermons. However, he soon was disappointed with Protestantism, he considered Protestant communities “pieces, fragments of the Church as if it was a church, but damaged, without plenitude,” and he could not find “a Church with capital “c.”
Several years of reading Holy Fathers and talking to Orthodox priests, who “dramatically differed with their humility and kindness from Protestant pastors filled with pride” led Zyryanov to a decision to convert to Orthodoxy. Thus he, his family and the Bayanday village community have become Orthodox believers. Today Zyryanov is a member of the village parochial council of St. Michael.
