In Some Parts…

of the Orthodox Church in the United States there are a surplus of Priests. Now this could be seen as a problem. Not enough places for Priests. Those who have parishes staying on, recent seminarians placed over more senior clerics because their particular jurisdiction has invested in their education and needs to get a return, and more than a few serving in the potential never land of bi-vocational life. Or it could be seen as an opportunity to envision new ministries, even non traditional ones, and release the pent up energies of “excess” clergy in new ways. Certainly the demand for what Orthodoxy offers is not limited to currently existing parishes and just because we have an ancient faith doesn’t mean we can’t anticipate the future and actually be prepared for it when it arrives. The key just might lie in challenging and supporting the “excess” Priests to think outside the box, not the Faith, but the box of our limited horizons.

One thought on “In Some Parts…

  1. I can understand how some would be afraid of appearing “too protestant” they did things outside the box. After all, isn’t it the Evangelicals who are coming up with new and exciting ways of “preaching the Gospel?” But, like you said, you don’t have to change the Message in order to speak to this culture. I always loved Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill. He used the idols he saw around him to speak to where the people were at. He mentioned, “Idol to the unknown God” as a segue into preaching about the One, True God. The Orthodox must do the same!

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s