This order is higher than the [[doorkeeper]] (now largely obsolete) and lower than the [[subdeacon]]. The reader's essential role is to read the Old Testament and Epistle lessons during the Divine Liturgy and other services, as well as to chant the Psalms and the verses of certain [[antiphons]]. There is a special service for the [[tonsure|tonsuring]] of a reader, although in contemporary practice any layman may receive the priest's blessing to read on a particular occasion. The office of a reader subsumes that of a [[taper-bearer]], and the service of tonsuring a reader mentions both functions.

In the Pre-Nikonian Russian Church, there existed an additional junior grade of reader called ''psalomshchik'' (in Slavonic, Ѱаломщикъ), whose sole function was to read the long [[Kathisma]] Psalms, thus permitting the reader and chanter to save their voices. This office survives in those churches that utilise the Pre-Nikonian Russian ritual: [[Old Believers]] (both [[popovtsy|priested]] and [[priestless]]), those parishes under [[ROCOR]] or the [[Moscow Patriarchate]]. The title of ''psalomshchik'' survives in the later reformed Nikonian Russian rite as an alternative, slightly archaic and quaint name for [[chanter]].

A reader is usually tonsured by the bishop, though in some traditions, an [[archpriest]] or [[archimandrite]] may do the tonsure with the bishop's blessing if he is not available. In monastic communities, the ruling [[archimandrite]] may tonsure those monks over which he rules.