The Contribution of the Social and Human Sciences to Spirituality

An earlier post argued that theological reflection is an insufficient basis for living a Christian life. Detached from a connection with not only the life or prayer, on the one hand, and a connection with daily life on the other, theology risks becoming a self-indulgent fantasy. We need the contributions and insights of the social and the human sciences. The best way to see that is to simply apply the insights of the empirical studies to a pastoral problem in the Church.

Think of the number of adults who join, and then, leave the Orthodox Church. If better than 50% of those who enter the Church as adult will eventually leave it would seem that we are overlooking something in our catechesis and reception of these people. What we are missing is not in the strict sense a theological but empirical question. Indeed theology as such, does not have the resources to even uncover the fact that many of our converts will later defect from the Church. This is an insight that we owe to the work sociologists.

I think it was James Fowler, who studies the psychology of faith development, who said somewhere that social scientists are professional gossips. What is meant by this is that the social scientist specializes in those sources of information that are not necessarily officially sanctioned, but which nevertheless "everybody" knows, but that they don't necessarily know that they know. Especially in matters of Church life, because we value unity of faith, we sometimes overlook or leave unspoken those things which would contradict our desire to appear as one.

And this then is the second epistemological element of the social and human sciences. Whether quantitative or qualitative in content, empirical work is often subversive in character. Owing to this subversive tendency, the social and human sciences are often allies of different political or moral ideologies such as feminism or gay rights. But this tendency toward what in American would be considered a more leftist or liberal agenda is not inherent to empirical work as such. It reflects as much the character and interest of the researcher as it does his or her science.

At its best, empirical work helps us call into question our own preconceptions and prejudices about the world of persons, events and things that make up our everyday life. For example, there is interesting research being done at George Mason University in the economic study of religion. Some of this research suggests that "strict" religions tend to grow while "non-strict" or "liberal" religions do not. Examining the research a little more closely and we see that "strict" doesn't mean authoritarian, much less abusive, but rather refers to those religious traditions that have relatively high expectations for who their members will behave. "Liberal" religions, on the other hand, tend to have minimal expectations for their members. Further, when we look at questions of ministry, "strict" religions tend to encourage members to be actively involved in some aspect of the form of service valued by their tradition. On the other hand, "liberal" religions tend to see themselves as providing services for their members.

In other words, a growing parish is likely to encourage young mothers to work together to meet their own, and other people's child care needs. A declining parish would simply establish a day care with paid staff. Or, to take another example, a growing church is growing because it expects, and makes possible, people's commitment to serve others both inside and outside the their tradition while declining churches tend to see themselves as there to take of their own members.

Interestingly enough, none of this is linked to whether or not the community is theologically conservative or progressive. Rather, and this is worth reflecting on at another time, it seems to be that growing communities are outward looking in their service and are so because they view God as actively engaged in creation. In other words, if we preach a God Who is actively engage with humanity, and then actively encourage and support each other in imitating that God in our personal and communal lives, we are likely to grow. And again, this has very little to do with the usual typology of "liberal" and "conservative" as those terms get taken over into religion from politics.

If over 50% of our converts leave, we might at least wonder if it is because we have no ministerial opportunities for them after we receive them. Interestingly, a large number of male converts who stay, go on to take holy orders (even as, I suspect, a large number of female converts marry to, or will be married to, men who are later ordained). But for the majority of converts, there is simply no place for them to use their own unique gifts and talents.

Compare this to say the situation in a large Greek ethnic parish. The annual Greek food festival, to take but one example, provides an opportunity for a large number of lay people to share in a project that offers a valued service to those outside not only the parish but also outside the community's ethic and theological tradition. Often (in my experience at least) while the majority of those who participate in the food festival are Greek, a fair number are also non-Greek parishioners (whether converts or cradle Orthodox Christians). This helps me at least answer a question that I, and many have had for a while. Why is it, and contrary to what seems to be a general preference for English and a less "ethnic" (i.e., Greek, Russian or Arab) feel even among cradle Orthodox themselves, that ethnic parishes continue to exist and even grow numerically? I suspect that the parish institution of the food festivals are a significant factor in why even intentionally and heavily ethnic Greek parishes are successful (and they are, often fostering not only converts, but also vocations to seminary and monastic life).

My pastoral problem I have with food festivals is not with the festival as such. It is rather with the relative lack of other, equally valued and socially supported opportunities, for service by parishioners to those outside the parish. (If anyone is interested in working with me to generate ideas in how to build on the food festival and use it to expand the ministry of the Church, please feel free to email me privately.)

I hasten to add, that this is not universally the case by any means. There are, for example in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, several standout communities (for example, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church in Mount Lebanon, PA works extensively with the Orthodox Christian Mission Center providing both financial support and missionaries. Another stand out program is Camp Axios for inner city children sponsored by Saint Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church in Los Angles). But even in those parish that more oriented to outward service, there is a tendency to be more concerned with serving "our people" rather than in encouraging "our people" to serve. And again, it is important to emphasize that the specific content of service is less important than the fact that service, ministry, by the parishioners themselves and for others (especially, though not exclusively, outside the parish) is not only expected, but fostered, encouraged, and supported.

Theological scholarship can, and certainly does, support the findings of the social and human sciences. But left to itself, Orthodox theology does not necessarily have the resources to translate faith into action. This is not, I should add, to say that the social and human sciences should replace theology. Just as we aspire to a syndiakonia between clergy and the laity, likewise scholars in theology and the empirical sciences should work together for the sake of the building up of the Church.

Some of this work is already being started.

For example, Alexei D. Krindatch, who administers the "Parish Life Project" at the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute in Berkeley, CA, has done several empirical studies meant to examine "the inner realities of Orthodox parish life in the United States and to investigate major problems facing American Orthodox Churches." While this work is valuable, more needs to be done. Sociological studies such as those done by Krindatch need to be extended up and complimented by studies that help us understand the experience of the faithful in the parish.

In my next post, I will examine how the findings of the social and human sciences can help the Church meet the need for the spiritual formation of both laity and clergy in the parish.

As always, your comments, questions and criticism are not only welcome, but encouraged.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

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Announcement: Board Nominations

A Request for Palamas Institute Board Members. As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I lived in Pittsburgh, PA I worked with other Orthodox Christians to develop the general framework for the Palamas Institute, an independent Orthodox educational and research ministry for research in pastoral ministry, especially clergy continuing education/training, adult religious education and spiritual formation.

After much prayer and research, I believe it is now time to take this project to the next level. To accomplish this, I am asking the prayers and help of those who read Koinonia.

As a non-profit organization, the Palamas Institute needs to have its own board. For this reason I am asking interested Orthodox Christians to submit their names and qualifications for consideration for inclusion on the founding board for the Palamas Institute.

Key board responsibilities will include setting and implementing the vision of the Palamas Institute.
Implementation of this vision will include fundraising and administrative oversight.
Setting the vision will include collaborating with the director to determine viable research and training projects for the Institute.

1. ­ As part of the research program, board members will be responsible for working with the director to develop venues for the dissemination of Institute research findings. A critical component of the Institute’s success will depend upon identifying productive networks that could develop into meaningful long-term distribution systems.
2. As part of the educational its mandate, board members will be responsible for developing and facilitating continuing education opportunities for Orthodox clergy and lay leader. Ideally, board members will contribute to the research and/or educational mission of the Palamas Institute will be “hands on” as either researchers or teachers.

The invitation to the work of the Palamas Institute, is I believe, an invitation from Christ to build on what the Church does well and correct ourselves where we are less than our best communal and personal selves.

In Christ,

Rev. Fr. Gregory Jensen, Ph.D.
Director
Palamas Institute

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“Why Do Converts Leave?”

Reflecting on the great number of adult converts who have over the years left the Orthodox Church (over 50%) it is clear to me that something is drastically wrong with how we catechesis, form and integrate new adult Orthodox Christians into the life of the Church.

Falling back on my own training in the social and human science, I would like to understand how our pastoral practice is failing so many who join the Orthodox Church as adults. As part of my attempt to understand, I would invite those who read this blog and who have left the Orthodox Church to contact me either in the comment box of this post or by clicking the red reachby.com on the lower right side of this page. Alternative, if you know someone who has left the Church, I would ask you to direct them to this blog and encourage them to speak with me.

Basically what I would ask from those who contact me is that they put written form a brief summary of what it was that lead them to leave the Orthodox Church. Let me be very clear here. Though I am an Orthodox priest, I am not asking for this to convince someone to return to the Church. Ideally I hope your comments will provide the Church with a better sense of why people leave. Eventually this might help grow into a research project to develop pastoral strategies to improve the retention rates for converts. It is even possible that, as a result of your participation in this project that you might reconsider your decision to leave the Church. But these are all secondary to my primary concern here which is to understand what has lead people who have joined the Church as adults to later leave.

Finally to those who wonder if what I am proposing is in the best interest of the Church, let me leave you with an observation of G. K. Chesterton: "What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism." If anything has become clear about the life of the Orthodox Church (especially in the United States) it is that we cannot fulfill the great evangelical and pastoral work that Christ has given us without appreciative self-criticism. Everywhere the Church in America is faltering, and however it is faltering, it is because of the absence of appreciative self-criticism. What I hope to do with this invitation is to build on what the Church does well so that we can, by God's grace and our own efforts, correct ourselves where we are less than our best communal and personal selves.

In Christ,

+Fr. Gregory

Theology Isn’t Enough, We Need Spiritual Formation

It was the spirituality of the Church that attracted me first to Orthodoxy.

By spirituality, I mean the whole package of the Orthodox Christian life: not only Liturgy and theology, but fasting, icons, art, architecture and music. Truth be told, even though I became Orthodox later in life, I also find the various and sundry ethnic customs (at least in small doses) to be life-giving.

From a more systematic point of view, what I was attracted to was the anthropological vision of Eastern Christianity. Above all, it was the idea that salvation as theosis, that is deification or participation in Divine Life and the spiritual life as therapeutic, that really captured my heart.

Begging your indulgence, I'll skip the examples, and simply say in recent years I've come to the rather uncomfortable conclusion that the things which most attracted me to the Eastern Church are honored more in the gap then in practice by most Orthodox Christians.

As I have thought and prayed about this state of affairs, I have found my own priesthood more and more concerned with the spiritual formation of the laity. Especially in the parish, it is spiritual formation, which is most neglected in the life of the Church or so, I would say based on my own pastoral experience and my conversations with both clergy and laity.

What, you might ask, do I mean by spiritual formation? Simply, spiritual formation is the art and science of helping people shape their lives according to the Tradition of the Church in light of their own vocation and the concrete circumstances in which they live. Or, to put it more simply, spiritual formation is about the application of faith to daily life.

This then becomes the central question of my own ministry as a priest and scholar: Together with the whole Church, how do I help the people Christ has entrusted to my care apply the faith and spirituality of the Church to their daily lives?

Answering this question in practice is significantly more involved than simply celebrating the various liturgical services of the Church and teaching people the catechism. Yes, the services and the catechism are important—but their importance is structural. They provide us with the grammar and vocabulary of the Christian life to be sure and so are essential. But as anyone who has tried to learn a foreign language (and I have failed to learn, in order, Spanish, German, Latin, Hebrew and Greek), competency, much less fluency, requires much more than simply knowing grammar and vocabulary. As for eloquence—while this requires that we not simply think in German, for example, but do so "thoughtlessly"—that is, without effort, naturally and fearlessly.

And this brings me back to the formation of the laity (and we ought not to forget, since we draw our clergy from the laity—a deficit in lay formation means a later deficiency in the spiritual formation and leadership provided by the clergy for the laity). While the tradition of the Orthodox Church is almost unimaginably rich, it seems to me that we seriously neglect the formation of our laity (and so necessarily of our clergy, but that is for another day). While some would object to this, I would simply point to the findings of the recent Pew Charitable Trust study of religion in America. Almost a third of those baptized as infants leave the Church as adults. Only about a third of all Orthodox Christians attend Liturgy on a weekly basis. And how can we think we are succeeding in the formation of the laity when over half those who joined the Orthodox Church as adults will eventually leave?

Whatever may be the tradition moral teaching of the Church, the findings of the Pew Survey reports that we are, in the main, a pro-choice and pro-gay rights community (these later two, I should add, have not gone unnoticed by those outside the Church. See for example the posts found in the Catholic blog The Black Cordelias, here and here.) Combined all this with the relatively low rates of participation in Holy Communion and even fewer who come to Holy Confession and a picture of a spiritual weak laity comes quickly into focus.

Somehow, for all that we talk about the Fathers, about being the Church that never changes, about being the True Church and holding to the Historic Christian faith where are found the fullness of the means of salvation, for all that we easily, even glibly, point out the failures of Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Mainline Protestants, Evangelicals Christians, in practice Orthodox Christians are often no better and in some case worse.

As I said in an earlier post on preaching, spiritual formation needs to be Christ-centered and systematic. It must also take into account the unique vocation and life circumstances of the person and/or community. Too much of what we do, I fear, is not done systematically and done with only a vague understanding of the life circumstances of the laity. As I pointed out in an earlier post on the response of the Orthodox Church to same-sex marriage, to simply assert that an issue is not compatible with the tradition of the Church, or, as the Orthodox Peace Fellowship did in response to the US invasion of Iraq did with the just war doctrine, assert that a given moral issue is not addressed in the tradition, is insufficient. As with Bishop Hilarion argument about theology so to the pastoral life with the Church: "It must be patristic, faithful to the spirit and vision of the Fathers, ad mentem Patrum. Yet it also must be neo-patristic, since it is to be addressed to the new age, with its own problems and queries."

Orthodox spiritual formation is, or rather should be, both patristic and neo-patristic. Especially as it pertains to historical, dogmatic, and liturgical matters we excel as a community on the patristic side of the question. But we have very far to go in fulfilling the "neo-patristic" dimension of our tradition, especially as it pertains to parish ministry.

In the next few post, I hope to address this lacuna in Orthodox practice by looking at (1) the contribution of the social and human sciences to spirituality,(2) the practical elements of spiritual formation in groups, and (3) some ecumenical possibilities that I think are worth exploring.

As always, your comments, questions and criticism are not only welcome, but encouraged.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

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In Our Beginning We Find Our End

Summer, 2008 will end for me in much the same way it began—with my serving the funeral of a friend.

In May, I served the funeral of Khouriya Joanne Abdallah, the wife of Fr John Abdallah. The service itself was large, 8 bishops, 20 (or more) priests, several deacons, and over 200 people in the congregation.

Tomorrow I will serve the funeral for another friend, Charlene Cannon. Like Joanne, Charlene lived with cancer for many years—for almost the whole of the 15 years I've known her in fact. And like Joanne, Charlene was usually cheerful and optimistic in the face of her illness.

Unlike Joanne's funeral, tomorrow's for Charlene will not be as grand. There will only be two priests serving Divine Liturgy for her funeral, her pastor Fr Jonathan Tobias and me. And yet, for all the service will be smaller, it will be no less significant for that fact. In the Gospel Jesus challenges us: "Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" He then asks us more directly: "Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?" (Mt 6.26-27)

The great paradox of the Gospel is that our trust in God arises not out of intellectual reflection or study, but from the living sense of our own powerlessness:

"So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? "Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. (vv. 28-33)

St Irenaeus, in his reading of the fall of humanity recorded in Genesis, makes much of the fact that God closes our first parents in "garments of skins." As did some of the Fathers who would follow him, Irenaeus saw God clothing us with these garments as an act of divine compassion. God eases the burden of my shame. But He does so in a way that will remind me of my powerlessness, my absolute dependence on Him and my relative dependence upon others.

The "garments of skin" are all of those experiences of my own contingency that I would turn away from; primarily sickness and mortality, but also failure and my seeming insignificance in the eyes of the world.

Both Khouriya Joanne and Charlene lived for many years with a more intense experience of the "garments of skins." Bearing up under their own illnesses as they both did with grace and good humor, allowed God to use their illnesses to transform them those around them.

Thinking about both women, I realize that they were both open-hearted and hospitable. Certainly they were hospitable in the sense of welcoming others into their homes. There was also in a more fundamental hospitality that both embodied however.

This more basic hospitality is one that welcomed people into their hearts and allows their presence there to shape their lives. Hospitality of home allows the host to do for the visitor; hospitality of the heart allows the visitor, to transform the host; to allow visitors in their need and with their own gifts to become someone through whom Christ can redeem their host.

These two hospitalities are not opposed to each other; far from it. But of the two, it is the hospitable heart that is the more demanding ascetically. Why? Unlike a hospitable home, which in Charlene's case was always welcoming, but cluttered, a hospitable heart must always remain empty of the passions and any hint that I would impose my own will and desires on you. This certainly was the case with both Charlene and Joanne's hearts—their hearts were always empty in order to make room for others.

Years ago I heard a tape of a lecture given by Fr Henri Nouwen on the spirituality of marriage. Reflecting on the Ark of the Covenant, he pointed out that the cherubim that God ordered to be placed on the Ark faced each other. And it was there, in the empty space between them, where the Glory of God dwelt. Charlene and Khouriya Joanne each in her own way and in a manner compatible with the circumstance of her own life, where able to create in their own hearts that empty space in which God's glory was able to dwell among us.

These women whose death serve as bookends for the Summer of 2008 embody for me the great mystery of the Christian life—it is only by self-emptying that I am able to fulfill my own unique vocation. How could it be otherwise? What else does the example of Christ tell us but that the Glory of God dwells among us only in human poverty? For me at least, it is easy to lose sight of this. To forget that the failures, the disappointments, the miss opportunities, are all part and parcel of how God makes room in my heart and life for His Glory.

Thinking of how Summer 2008 began and now ends, I am put in mind of the hymns sung at Matins for women martyrs:

Made radiant with the beauty of the noblest contest, you were revealed as shining lamps, Maidens of Christ, with shining rays making resplendent those who cry: Glory to your power, O Lord! You were made beautiful, O Virgins, and radiantly glorified, having loved without limit the glorified Word, wounded by whose love you most valiantly endured the assaults of sufferings. By your intercession with Christ drive away the attack of the varied temptations and dangers of me, who fervently celebrate with you all-festive memorial, O worthy of praise. (Ode 4, Matins for Women Martyrs)

Except for those who knew them, and unlike to the women martyrs of old, Joanne and Charlene, wives and mothers both, lived and died in relative obscurity. And granted as well, the "lawless tyrant" that caused their deaths was illness and not Caesar. But for all these and other differences of time and place between those ancient women martyrs and them, I think Joanne and Charlene both stand now before Christ wearing a martyr's crown. Not because they suffered Caesar's lash, but because they suffered with nobility and charity under their long illnesses and in so doing bore witness to

"the beauty of the Bridegroom, with an unswerving intent towards him God-bearing Maidens, you contemplated immortality while in mortal bodies, therefore you are fittingly called blessed. You appeared as spotless lambs in the midst of tyrants like ferocious wolves, overthrowing their savagery, and being brought to Christ as acceptable sacrifices. Together you wove a garland that does not grow old, O Virgin. You attained divine glory and were found worthy, as Martyrs, to obtain a truly unshakeable kingdom with the Martyrs. As you have freedom of access to the Master, holy Virgins, intercede that those who celebrate your memory with love may attain the glory of which you were found worthy and the choir which you attained. ." (Ode 9, Matins for Women Martyrs)

As we sing in the Funeral Service:

May he who has authority over the living and the dead, as immortal King, and who rose from the dead, Christ, our true God, through the intercessions of his most pure and holy Mother, of the holy, glorious and all-praised Apostles, of our venerable and God-bearing fathers, of the holy and glorious forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of the holy and righteous Lazarus, dead for four days, the friend of Christ, and of all the Saints, establish in the tents of the righteous the soul of his servants Khouriya Joanne and Charlene who have gone from us, give them bith rest in the bosom of Abraham, and number them with the righteous; and have mercy on us and save us, for he is a good God and loves mankind.

Eternal your memory, our sisters, worthy of blessedness and ever-remembered.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Site News

A little over a year ago I had surgery on my left elbow for nerve damage. As result, typing can be well, rather painful for me. As a result of all the work that I've been doing here on the blog, I've had a bit more pain in my left hand. At the suggestion of one of my loyal readers, I went out today and bought Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.0. This is a marvelous speech recognition software that I will be using in the future to compose entries for this blog. While the software does an amazing job in recognizing my speech I need to get some practice in learning how to do dictation. Frankly, I'm used to just sitting down typing reviewing editing, and then posting.

Using the software requires that I learned some new skills and my hat and I learned a new way of relating to my own ideas and to the text that I compose. I think there will be a little bit of a learning curve for me. Somewhat ironically, the software is significantly "smarter" than I am; it has learned to understand me. Now I must learn to understand it and select how to use it effectively.

So posting for the next several days in possibly several weeks will be a little bit more intermittent. I ask your indulgence and your prayers. To be honest I really do not want to go back and have surgery on my arm. The last time I had surgery, had to lie on the couch for the better part of three weeks. It was painful it was miserable I do not wish to do it again. So to avoid doing further damage to myself. I'm going to shift how I do composition. For this block, ask your patience, and hopefully I will be up and running with the software very soon.

In Christ,

+ Father Gregory

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ABC’s of Preaching & Teaching

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Audible,

Brief,

Christ-centered.

I learned of these three things years ago in my charismatic days.

A testimony, so we were told, had to be audible, brief and Christ-centered. As with the last post on consistency, a very basic framework to be sure, but a good one on which to build ministry.

But because ministry is always serving people in concrete life situations, keeping in minds some very simple practical and theological basics has been very helpful for me. Like Israel in the desert, it is often best when following God to travel light and live in tents. Sometimes we simply try and do too much, we think we need to use all the tradition or all our education.

But why?

Ours is a 2000 year old tradition—if we model our approach to ministry on conformity to that tradition, we will fail. We none of us can put into practice everything that was done by everyone at all times and in all places. Take the liturgy for example. A friend who is a monk of the Monastery at Valaam tells me that every day the monks not only chant every word of the liturgical hours they also celebrate Divine Liturgy. Chanting quickly, and assuming that it is not a festal or penitential season, it takes the monks 8 hours to complete all the services. If Valaam is the standard of success, then what parish isn't a failure?

The standard though is not Valaam or any human being or community that we might theoretically be able to imitate but can't practically. No the standard is always and everywhere, at all times and for all people, Jesus Christ. With Christ as our standard we all of us fall short, but in so doing our unique differences are radically relativized and so there is room for a healthy diversity.

So back to the ABC's.

AUDIBLE

Our preaching and teaching needs to be audible; if people can't hear what we are saying it doesn't matter. For me that means, and my wife is always reminding me of this on Sunday morning, I need to remember to speak up! In my sermons I tend to let my voice get softer and people have trouble hearing me. Many Orthodox church buildings are not well designed for preaching. If this is the case then the parish needs to invest in the best professionally designed and installed sound system they can afford. This is not a luxury but a pastoral necessity. In addition, people need to not talk during the sermon or come in to church in the middle of the sermon (or the readings for that matter).

So too classes, whether for children or adults, whether continuing education or for members of the catechumenate, need to be held in an environment where people can hear what is being said.

Audible is not an end in itself, it service comprehension. Sermons and lectures (and they are different, I touch on that later) need a content that is appropriate to the listeners. Preaching and teaching are done for the listeners and so the content needs to be gauged for their needs.

This more extended sense audible as in the service of comprehension, is applicable to liturgical language. While in an American context most Orthodox Christians only speak English, there are many for whom the use of languages other than English, especially in the Divine Liturgy, helps them personally connect to the services. The absence of Greek, or Arabic or Slavonic, for example, makes the experience less than what it could be for these people. So audible preaching and teaching, may mean the judious use of languages other than English.

BRIEF

The average adult attention span for auditory stimulus is 45-50 minutes. This not a goal for the length of sermon; this is the upper limit beyond which I am certain to have lost of my listeners. As an average though, I can be certain to lose people well before the 45 minute mark. Put these same people into a liturgical context of Sunday morning , have them stand for 30 or so minutes before the service, add a child or two or three (theirs or someone else's), and expect them to not have eaten breakfast in anticipation of receiving Holy Communion, and that upper limit drops quickly.

When I preach I try and stay between 7-12 minutes (though recently I've done more sermons that are 12-15 minutes and I'm working to bring myself back into line). With this as time frame I am reasonable certain to not lose people's attention. It does mean that the sermon leaves a great deal undeveloped, but so what? This is where coffee hour, adult classes and personal conversations can pick up the slack.

For class, I can go longer than say 15 minutes (though even here, a 15 minute mini-lecture can be fruitful)—especially if I have a group that likes to ask questions. But again, even in a lively class, briefer is better. Always leave them wanting more, not wondering when you're going to stop talking!

CHRIST-CENTERED

A priest friend of mine says that in his parish people talk quite a bit about the parish, somewhat less about the goings on in the Orthodox Church, still less about Orthodoxy, and the Christ and the Gospel hardly at all.

In all that we do, in our preaching and our teaching, the goal is always to tell people about Christ, to help them come to know and follow Him as His disciple. It is not, I hasten to add, to tell them about the parish, or the Orthodox Church, or why those who aren't Orthodox are wrong. Yes certainly, there is a place for all these things (and more besides). But always in the service of bring this person, or this community, closer to Jesus Christ and through Christ and in the Holy Spirit, to God the Father.

Centering our teaching and preaching on Christ means necessarily committing ourselves to the work of spiritual formation. Granted this isn't a term Orthodox use frequently, but as I hope to show in my next post, helping people shape their lives according to Christ's will for them is not only the very heart of pastoral care, it is also the hermeneutical key to the Tradition of the Church and the content of our evangelistic calling.

Next, individual and group spiritual direction.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Powerful, Responsible, and Accountable

Sunday, July 27, 2008: 6th SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST—Tone 5. Holy Greatmartyr and Healer Panteleimon (305). Bl. Nikolai Kochanov, Fool-for-Christ, at Novgorod (1392). Ven. Anthusa, Abbess of Mantinea in Asia Minor, and her 90 sisters (8th c.). Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Clement, Bishop of Ochrid and Enlightener of the Bulgarians (916), and with him Ss. Angelar, Gorazd (Horasdus), Nahum, and Savva, disciples of Ss. Cyril and Methodius.

So He got into a boat, crossed over, and came to His own city. Then behold, they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, "Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you." And at once some of the scribes said within themselves, "This Man blasphemes!" But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, "Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Arise and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins-then He said to the paralytic, "Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house." And he arose and departed to his house. Now when the multitudes saw it, they marveled and glorified God, who had given such power to men.

(Mt 9:1-8)

One of the great struggles I had when I was first ordained to the priesthood came to mind when I sat down and read the Gospel for this Sunday. The struggle, and I should hasten to add though less intense is still present, was (and is) how to exercise the extraordinary power given to me at ordination.

This struggle is not one which is unique to the priesthood. Indeed it is one that is common to all human beings but especially to those in positions of authority. How do I as a person in authority exercise wisely and justly the power that God has granted me?

As I said, this is not simple a problem for priest. It is a common human struggle. We have all of us been granted some power. As Christians though, we have been entrusted with the power need to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus' at the beginning of His earthly ministry sum up not only Our Lord's ministry, but the work that has been entrusted to each of us.

After His own baptism in the Jordan by John and after His own period to preparation in the desert, we read in Luke's Gospel Jesus

came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:

"The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,

Because He has anointed Me

To preach the gospel to the poor;

He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to the captives

And recovery of sight to the blind,

To set at liberty those who are oppressed;

To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD."

Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." (Lk 4:16-22)

Again and again, both as recorded by St Luke as well as by St Matthew is this morning's Gospel, people marvel at His "gracious words" (Lk 4: 23) and at "God, who had given such power to men" (Mt 9.8). As with Jesus, so too with us, we too have been give in baptism and chrismation the power to speak gracious words that can be for others a source of liberation from sin.

But sometimes it is difficult for us to act on this promise, on this great gift. Like those who heard Jesus in the synagogue, we are sometimes to familiar with ourselves, too familiar with our brothers and sisters in Christ and so can't see the great work of God that they, and we, are. It is easy for us to say, or at least, some variation of the words spoken about Jesus: "Is this not Joseph's son?" (Lk 4.23) Familiarity can breed if not contempt, then a temptation to minimize and overlook the gift that God has given us.

What I know though from own experience is that minimizing the gift, overlooking it, ignoring it, doesn't do away with the gift. It only means that I misuse what I have been given for my salvation and yours.

For some of us the hesitation to act on what God has been given us is the fruit of a misguided humility. "Oh, Father, I'm not important. I can't do anything. God hasn't given me any great gifts."

For others there is quite the opposite temptation. While some would refuse the gift and the power that comes with it, there are those who refuse the gift, but hunger for the power that comes with it. These individuals, and I should add they are not always clergy, live as if the power that comes at baptism and chrismation was their private position that they are free to exercise as they wish.

In both cases, though, there is a root problem: Whether we want the power or not, we refuse the gift because we know, even if we cannot put what we know into words, that with the acceptance of the gift comes a great responsibility.

Responsibility and so the responsible exercise of power and authority is an odd things. Just as happiness is not something we can seek, but is rather the by-product of human excellence in some realm, so to responsibility and the responsible exercise of power and authority is a by-product. I do not so much choose to be responsible as I learn to be responsible by accepting that I am accountable. Responsibility and the responsible exercise of power and authority is the fruit of accountability, to learning that it is not about what I want, even if what I want is good.

Look at Jesus. He was obedient to the Father, but He also lived under the authority of Mary and Joseph. He was respectful, even when unjustly tried, of the authority of the High Priest and of Rome's agent Pontius Pilate. His willingness to be accountable, to be obedient, cost Him His Life and earned us our salvation.

Learning to be accountable is a life-long task.

Priests are accountable to their bishop, but also (if in different ways) to their brother clergy and their parishioners. And all of this is taken up under a more fundamental and basic obedience to God the Most Holy Trinity.

Whether I am a priest or a layperson, whether a bishop or a simple monk, whether to my wife, husband, mother, father or child, having been made holy by God, set apart for His service, I must 'always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks [me] a reason for the hope that is in" me, and so "with meekness and fear." (1 Pt 3:15)

My brothers and sisters in Christ, we are each of us set aside by God as sacraments of His Kingdom, we are each us prophets and martyrs called in the concrete circumstance of our lives to bear witness by word and deed to God's will for us and the whole human family. We are called to be priests who will offer "ourselves and one another" and the whole creation to Christ our True God.

And we have in Baptism, Chrismation and Holy Communion been given the power and authority to accomplish all of this. To fulfill the great marvel of our vocation, we must learn to be accountable to one another—to be every willing, in meekness and fear, to give voice to the great hope that lies with our hearts.

And in the moments when we are without hope? When we would not, for whatever reason, accept the gift that God has given us? It is here that we might learn truly what it means to be accountable, responsible—because it is here when our bishop, our priest, our husband, wife, father, mother, child, friend or brother or sister in Christ may have to come a "speak a word" to us that we might live by returning once again to the path that we have accepted when we accepted the call of Christ for our lives.

God has given us power and authority above all to care for one another and, in so doing, bear witness to His love and mercy and forgiveness for the whole human family.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Consistency

Psychologically, we develop a sense of self and our own value through our parents' trustworthiness in meeting our basic physiological and emotional needs as infants. In a parish this translates into the central role of consistency. In simplest terms, "today" needs to look like "yesterday," and "tomorrow" we promise will look like "today." This is why liturgy is so important in the development of our own Christian identity. The liturgical cycle of the parish is in my experience the single most important element in establishing a sense of consistency in a parish.

The rhythm of the Church's daily and festal liturgical cycle, the periods of fasting and feasting, the times set aside for regular confession, and the annual cycle of more domestic events—not only house blessings, but the other blessings of the created world in the Church's liturgical life—set a pace to community's shared life. And this is why it is important that the parish liturgical life not only be consistent, but manageable for the community as a whole. Too much liturgical prayer is as bad, if not worse, than too little.

Again developmentally, a health self-image requires not simply consistency, but consistent success. Abuse can, and often is, also consistent. Too full a liturgical cycle and people simply don't attend. They get in the habit of not praying liturgically, not seeing themselves as part of the shared liturgical life of the Church.

Simply scheduling a service because we can is bad idea. Better, for example, to serve the Hours and say maybe the Pre-Communion Prayers before Liturgy that people are likely to attend on Sunday before Liturgy than say, a Matins (Orthros) service that people don't.

Additionally, consistency in the parish liturgical life means that services need to start on time. Sunday Divine Liturgy at 10:00 am should not mean Liturgy starting at 10:15 or 9:55. 10:00 am ought to mean 10:00 am. If Liturgy does not consistently start on time, then people are likely not to value arriving on time for Liturgy—and how can they since the start time isn't consistent?

Consistency is also important in the administrative life of the parish. Priest office hours (and his time off, weekly and vacation), regular parish council meetings, people's steward commitment (and the parish report on how well that commitment is being fulfilled) all need to be regular and predictable. I would also include here education classes that not only start and end on time, but also meet for a fixed number of weeks and only a publically announced theme.

When I was a college chaplain I would often say that I didn't schedule events with the expectation that students would show up. I scheduled events so that they kids knew when and where to find me before and after events.

Certainly consistency can become an end in itself and we always need to be on guard that this doesn't happen. But human beings need predictability. We will shape our lives and our identity around what we can reasonably count on happening. If I can reasonable count on Father being in his office on Tuesday afternoon, or taking Mondays off, I will come to see him, in small ways at least, as trustworthy. And human beings, being social creatures, tend to model our lives around those we trust.

Finally, and this has been for me something of a personal struggle, parishes need to plan. Too often we assume that a community can simply act spontaneously. Within limits that is true. Paradoxically though, healthy spontaneity must go together with healthy planning. Without planning, spontaneity is simply ego-driven inconsistency; planning without spontaneity will also become ego-driven. Without each other, spontaneity and planning become idols and the work of human hands. King David offers us a word of warning here about idols. He says of idols

They have mouths, but they do not speak;

Eyes they have, but they do not see;

They have ears, but they do not hear;

Noses they have, but they do not smell;

They have hands, but they do not handle;

Feet they have, but they do not walk;

Nor do they mutter through their throat.

Those who make them are like them;

So is everyone who trusts in them (Ps 115.5-8 NKJV)

Especially for more project-oriented planning (whether short or long term), I've found the following four questions helpful:

1. What do we want to do?
   
2. Why do we want to do it?
   
3. What are the steps along the way from now to our goal?
   
4. How do we know we have succeeded?
   

Elementary to be sure. But often all we really need to foster a health sense of consistency are elementary things, such as starting on time and knowing what we want in life and why we want it.

Next, the ABC's of Preaching and Teaching.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Why People Turn Away From Liberal Religions

As we discuss the pastoral future of the Orthodox Church I thought this clip from ER might be of interest:



H/T: Thinking On the Margins

A Pastoral Plan

When I lived in northern California I got to know well the different Orthodox Christian splinter groups. These included not only Traditionalist Orthodox Churches such at the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, and different Greek Orthodox Old Calendar communities that identified with themselves as part of the "Church in Resistance," but also a variety of non-canonical, pseudo-Orthodox and frankly cultic, communities that in one way or another appealed to the tradition of the Christian East (and occasionally the ancient Celtic Christian Church and the tradition of the pre-Vatican II and even pre-Tridentine Catholic Church). At one point, describing the various representatives of all of these different groups that floated in and out of my own parish, my bishop (only partially in jest) asked me if I was advertising for these people.

While these groups were different not only from the main body of the Orthodox Church, they were also different from each other. And while not all of them where in my view emotionally, much less spiritually, healthy communities, they did share one common characteristic that I found attractive. What united them is something that the economist of religion
Laurence Iannaccone identifies in his 1994 essay, "Why Strict Churches Are Strong" (The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 99, No. 5 (Mar., 1994), pp. 1180-1211).

In August/September 2008 issue of First Things, Joseph Bottum in his essay, "The Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Protestant Mainline," by summarizes this argument:

Iannaccone insisted that the stricter forms of religious life have benefits that looser and more liberal churches do not. Considered purely in economic terms, he wrote, religion is "a 'commodity' that people produce collectively." Precisely because the personal costs are so high, a strict church soon loses "free riders," the people who take more than they give. And the remaining members find a genuine social community: a tightly knit congregation of people who are deeply concerned with one another's lives and willing to help in time of need. They gain something like—intellectual community, as well—a culture of people who speak the same vocabulary, understand the same concepts, and study the same texts.

We need to be careful here.

Strictness does not have to mean punitive, harsh, authoritarian, perfectionism, or a group that values conformity over human uniqueness. Granted it often does—and this is certainly my experience with many of the splinter groups I've encountered over the years. Strictness in the spiritual and pastoral life of the Church can, and should mean, intentional and systematic and with an emphasis on helping people and communities discover and incarnate their own unique identity in Jesus Christ. In this sense, strictness can be joyful. Like the athlete who comes to love running precisely because it is hard and personal challenging, so to the Christian needs to be a challenge that bears the fruit in a life of joy.

This is a different approach, on the one hand, that what is typically done in Orthodox parish. More often than not, it is assumed that the simply explication or proclamation of the tradition is sufficient. The evidence from the Pew Charitable Trust Survey would suggest this is not the case. Simply presenting information does not change lives. One can be very well educated in the facts about the tradition of the Orthodox Church and still not be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

On the other hand, while this approach (which I have yet to outline I realize) is compatible with the tradition of the Church, it does suggest a radical re-orientation in how we approach that tradition. Certainly there is often piety and fidelity, but very infrequently is their the joy, the delight, that comes from striving to live a life worth living (if I may borrow from Bishop Fulton Sheen).

One of the great pastoral difficulties with splinter groups, and even parishes within the main body of the Orthodox Church, is that often our approach to tradition is one of external conformity. Ironically, to the degree this is the implicit norm in the main body of the Church, it is very difficult to offer a compelling argument to those in the more marginal groups. After all these groups (for a variety of reasons I don't have time to articulate here) are often better (in the sense of more highly conforming) at maintaining the externals of the tradition. It would seem that both mainline and splinter communities hold to the notion that if I simply do Orthodox things I will eventually (by grace?) become Orthodox. The road to sanctity, then, is very much an external road.

What I am suggesting is that we approach the tradition as a hermeneutic, a way of helping people and communities, understand themselves and their own experiences. Tradition is not so much that to which we conform, but rather that which illumines and deepens our appreciation of human experience in both its personal and social dimensions.

How might this happen?

In the next several posts I want to address three key elements:

1. Consistency
   
2. The ABC's of Preaching & Teaching
   
3. Individual and Group Spiritual Direction
   

To be continued…

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Catechesis and Spiritual Formation for Christian Discipleship

In matters of morality and the faith that guides our morality, Orthodox Christians seem not overwhelmingly orthodox. We are instead rather more inclined to take guidance in matters of faith and morals from the more secular elements of American society. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a clear majority of Orthodox Christians favor legalized abortion and a plurality are supportive of homosexuality. While we can certainly debate the extent to which these questions were understood by the respondents, my own pastoral experience suggests that the views expressed in the survey accurately reflect the views I encounter in parishes. Sadly, I would have to include clergy among those who hold such opinions.

In the full report on religious beliefs and practices (the PDF of which you can download here) published by the Pew Charitable Trust, 95% of Orthodox Christians surveyed said that they believe in God or a universal spirit. 71% are absolutely certain in their belief, 19% are fair certain and 5% are not certain. Curiously 4% of all Orthodox Christians surveyed don't even believe in God. Looking a bit more closely, what do we see about the God that Orthodox Christians believe in?

When asked "Which comes closest to your view of God? God is a person with whom people can have a relationship or God is an impersonal force?" we discover that less than half of those who believe in God believe in a personal God (49%) while just over one third (34%) believe that God is an impersonal force. These numbers suggest that relative to both the general American population (60% of whom believe in a personal God) as well as Evangelical Christians (79%) and Catholics (60%), the a fair number of Orthodox are frankly less than orthodox.

One of the points made in the Pew Charitable Trust Survey is that it is "constant movement" that summarizes American religious experience. While Americans are a religious people, we are a promiscuous religious people. Creedal fidelity is not our strong suit. For example, among who join the Orthodox Church as adults, over 50% will eventually leave the Church.

Contrary to what we often say, the primary pastoral challenge facing the Church in American is not evangelization. It is (relatively) easy to "make converts." The real challenge is not conversion but retention. The regular and habitual participation of the faithful in the sacramental life of the Church (especially Holy Communion and Confession) together with a willing eagerness on the part of laity and clergy to conform one's life to Christ and the Gospel is the goal. As the number suggest, whether we are looking at the experience of "cradle" or "convert," this is simply not happening.

And it is not simply a failure in the Orthodox Church. Other Christian communities are also failing in like manner. Whether we are looking at the experience of the Orthodox or Catholic Churches, the historic Black churches, the Evangelical Christian or Mainline Protestant denominations, all are struggling to make disciples of their own members.

That said, let's return to the Orthodox Church. The numbers suggest (to me at least), that what is lacking among us, is the solid catechetical and spiritual formation of the faithful (laity and clergy) that is required to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. This work is often neglected because it is labor intensive. And how can it not be? After making disciples is a highly personal and idiosyncratic work. While catechesis can be more general, formation is always
personal because it is always vocational.

Catechesis, whether in sermons or adult religious education classes, tells me what we believe. Spiritual formation tells me—or better yet, helps me—answer questions such as "Who am I in Christ?" and "What is Christ asking of me?"

What might such an approach to the pastoral life of the Church look like?

To be continued…

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Biology Professor Desecrates the Eucharist

P.Z. Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, has published on his blog that he has fulfilled his threat to desecrate a consecrated host taken from a Roman Catholic Mass. His blog post is below.

I simply have no words to express how sick to heart and sad I am that this man would do something like this. My deepest sympathies to my Catholic brothers and sisters. May God in His mercy speak to Dr Myers and bring him to repentance.

Again, I am so sorry.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Yes, the sad little cracker has met its undignified end, so stop pestering me. The cracker, the koran, and another surprise entry have been violated and are gone. You\'ll have to wait until tomorrow for the details, what little of them there are. I must quickly apologize to all you good Catholics who were hoping to attend Mass, since you can\'t anymore — I have been told many hundreds of times now that cracker abuse violates your right to practice your religion. I guess you\'ll have to adapt. Secular humanism is a good alternative, if you aren\'t already flocking to join the Mormons.

Anyway, I\'ve got important things to do today. It\'s my oldest son\'s birthday, and I told him that as a gift to me him, I\'d take myself him to see The Dark Knight. I sure hope the world doesn\'t end before the movie does.

“Orthodox” Moral Reasoning

There is an interesting conversation developing in response to one of my earlier posts, "Throne and Altar making A Comeback in Russian? (And not just there?)." You can read the comments either at the bottom of the post, or by clicking here (a new window will open in either case).

Thinking about this conversation as well as several others I have had in recent weeks (both online and face to face), there is in me a growing concern that most Orthodox Christians—both clergy and laity—don't seem to have a well formed conscience. Let me be clear, I am not suggesting rampant immorality here among the laity much less the clergy. What I am suggesting is that, in the main, Orthodox Christians tend to make moral and ethical decisions based not on who we are and are called to be in Christ. Rather, and this is something that is only a guess on my part and needs further study, as with most American, most Orthodox Christians implicitly subscribed to a type Consequentialism rather than an ethic based in Christian virtue. Moral reasoning then tends as well to be frankly utilitarian.

Saying this all I am saying is that, like most Catholics and Protestants, Orthodox not only hold moral positions contrary to the Gospel, they do so without a trace of concern and even justify their views by an appeal to the Gospel. This requires some explanation. Let me look, in this post at the first part and in my next post the later point.

The Pew Charitable Trust U.S. Religious Landscape Survey is helpful in demonstrating the widespread adherence among Orthodox Christians to a moral code drawn not from the Gospel but the values of the larger American society.

For example when asked by survey takers: "On another subject, do you think abortion should be (READ CATEGORIES IN ORDER TO HALF SAMPLE, IN REVERSE ORDER TO OTHER HALF OF SAMPLE) legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or illegal in all cases?" the majority of American think that abortion should be legal in all or at least most cases.

Where the findings are troublesome is that Orthodox Christians are even significantly more pro-choice than the general American population. Indeed, we are more inclined to support legalized abortion than either Evangelical Christians (33%) or Catholics (48%).

But this doesn't tell the whole story. Not only are we more inclined to be Pro-Choice than the general American population, Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics, we are also less supportive of the Pro-Life position.

While 43% of the general American population would see abortion illegal in all (27%), or at least most cases (16%), only 30% of Orthodox Christians are Pro-Life. And even here the more moderate Pro-Life position (illegal in most cases) is held by twice as many of us as the more stringent position (20% say abortion should be illegal in most cases compared to only 10% who say it should be illegal in all cases).

And again, this make us more "liberal" than not only the general American population but also Evangelical Christians (51% of whom are Pro-life, 36% saying abortion should be illegal in most cases, 25% saying it should be illegal in all cases) and Catholics (45% of whom are Pro-life, 27% saying abortion should be illegal in most cases, 18% saying it should be illegal in all cases). On abortion, Orthodox Christians hold a position more similar to mainline Protestants than our own tradition.

Tradition	% US Pop	% Evangelical	% Mainline	% Catholics	% Orthodox
Legal in all cases	18%	9%	20%	16%	24%
Legal in most cases	33%	24%	42%	32%	38%
Pro-Choice:	51%	33%	62%	48%	62%
Illegal in most cases	27%	36%	25%	27%	20%
Illegal in all cases	16%	25%	7%	18%	10%
Pro-Life:	43%	51%	32%	45%	30%
Don't Know/refused	6%	9%	7%	7%	8%

We see a similar finding on homosexuality.

When asked: "Now I'm going to read you a few pairs of statements. For each pair, tell me whether the FIRST statement or the SECOND statement comes closer to your own views -- even if neither is exactly right. 1 - Homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society, OR 2 - Homosexuality is a way of life that should be discouraged by society," most Orthodox Christians answered in a manner not compatible with our own moral tradition.

Tradition	US Pop	Evangelical Christians	Mainline Protestants	Catholics	Orthodox
Should be accepted	65%	26%	56%	58%	48%
Should be discouraged	40%	64%	34%	30%	37%
Neither/Both equally	5%	5%	6%	5%	7%
Don't Know/refused	5%	5%	5%	7v	8%

While there is not majority support for homosexuality among the surveyed Orthodox Christians, a significant number are supportive of homosexuality (48%) rather than not (37%). Somewhat more of a concern to me is that another 15% seemed either indifferent or ignorant of the Church's teaching (7% answered "Neither/Both equally, 8% said that they "don't know" or simply refused to answer the question).

While we need to careful about reading too much into these findings, when taken with other survey data about what many Orthodox Christians believe relative to the Creed, a picture begins to come into focus.

For now though, let me simply say that the Pew Trust survey suggest to me that something needs to change in Orthodox pastoral praxis. In my next post, I will suggest a possible solution.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Be Doers of the Word

Fr. Jay Scott Newman, a Catholic priest in the Diocese of Charleston and pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville, South Carolina, has an interesting post on what he terms "Evangelical Catholicism."  While here and there an Orthodox Christian community might want to change a word or phrase, it seems to me that Fr Newman's description might be a good foundation on which to build, say, a parish mission statement.  I have included the whole of Father's post below and would invite constructive and appreciative comments about how what he says might serve to help clarify the mission of an Orthodox parish.  My emphasis is in bold, my comments in red.



In Christ,


+Fr Gregory

Elsewhere on this website, on the page called Catholics in the Bible Belt, I have offered a brief description of the term I use to unify everything we do at St. Mary’s. A fuller account of this concept is found in the Eight Principles of Evangelical Catholicism which I have drafted to help the priests and people of St. Mary’s think about the shape of our parochial life and guide pastoral practice. This list is not exhaustive, and I offer these eight simply as a catechetical tool in the service of living in its depth the dignity of our Baptism.

Evangelical Catholicism is not meant to be a movement within the Church, still less a sect or sub-set of Catholicism; it simply a way of understanding the vocation of every Christian and of thinking about the organizing center of the Church’s life. Evangelical Catholicism is a powerful remedy to the various counterfeit catholicisms (casual, cultural, cafeteria, etc) which afflict the Church in our time, and I offer these principles in the service of helping the people of St. Mary’s to follow the Lord Jesus ever more faithfully in the Way of the Cross through radical conversion, deep fidelity, joyful discipleship, and courageous evangelism.

The Principles of Evangelical Catholicism

1. The Lord Jesus Christ is the crucified and risen Savior of all mankind, and no human person can fully understand his life or find his dignity and destiny apart from a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. It is not enough to know who Jesus is; we must know Jesus.

2. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is divine revelation, not human wisdom, and the Gospel is given to us in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition which together constitute a single divine deposit of faith transmitted authentically and authoritatively by the Bishops in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. We must surrender our private judgments in all matters of faith and morals to the sacred teaching authority of the Church’s Magisterium if we are to receive the whole Gospel. (It is worth noting that while the Orthodox Church does not use the term "Magisterium" nor would we identify a single bishop as such as the locus of unity for the universal Church, nevertheless we would agree that there must be a willingness to surrender our private judgements in matters of faith and morals to Holy Tradition.  If our approach is somewhat more fluid--and it is not as fluid as many outside and inside the Church might think, we also teach that there is a communal standard to which all Orthodox Christians must hold.)

3. The seven Sacraments of the New Covenant are divinely instituted instruments of grace given to the Church as the ordinary means of sanctification for believers. Receiving the Sacraments regularly and worthily is essential to the life of grace, and for this reason, faithful attendance at Sunday Mass every week (serious illness and necessary work aside) and regular Confession of sins are absolutely required for a life of authentic discipleship. (Yup, what Father said.)

4. Through Word and Sacrament we are drawn by grace into a transforming union with the Lord Jesus, and having been justified by faith we are called to sanctification and equipped by the Holy Spirit for the good works of the new creation. We must, therefore, learn to live as faithful disciples and to reject whatever is contrary to the Gospel, which is the Good News of the Father’s mercy and love revealed in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

5. The sacred liturgy, through which the seven Sacraments are celebrated and the Hours of praise are prayed, makes present to us the saving mysteries of the Lord Jesus. The liturgy must therefore be celebrated in such a way that the truth of the Gospel, the beauty of sacred music, the dignity of ritual form, the solemnity of divine worship, and the fellowship of the baptized assembled to pray are kept together in organic unity.

6. Receiving the Sacraments without receiving the Gospel leads to superstition rather than living faith, and the Church must therefore take great care to ensure that those who receive the Sacraments also receive the Gospel in its integrity and entirety. Consequently, before Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion, and Marriage are administered, there must be in those who request these Sacraments clear evidence of knowledge of the Gospel and a serious intention to live the Christian life. (In all honesty, I would have to say I think typical Orthodox pastoral praxis is at least as far from this as is typical Catholic practice.  Even among converts, in both tradition, there is often a magical quality in people's thinking and participation in the sacraments.)

7. Being a follower of Christ requires moving from being a Church member by convention to a Christian disciple by conviction. This transformation demands that we consciously accept the Gospel as the measure of our entire lives, rather than attempting to measure the Gospel by our experience. Personal knowledge of and devotion to Sacred Scripture is necessary for this transformation to occur through the obedience of faith, and there is no substitute for personal knowledge of the Bible. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.

8. All the baptized are sent in the Great Commission to be witnesses of Christ to others and must be equipped by the Church to teach the Gospel in word and deed. An essential dimension of true discipleship is the willingness to invite others to follow the Lord Jesus and the readiness to explain His Gospel. (Where I think many Orthodox, and Catholics for that matter, get anxious here is that they assume that witnessing to Christ and explaing the Gospel means some variation of "knocking on doors" or asking intrustive questions.  It isn't.  Our ability to fulfill the Great Commission comes first of all from a faithful heart.  Out of that fidelity comes the words and deeds--not in imiation of others, but in a manner which is unique and personal.  That is, a witness that is truly and wholly my own and not my attempt to be like someone else.)