This article originally appeared in AGAIN Vol. 28 No.3, Fall 2006.
A Call to Serve
By Fr. Kevin Scherer +++
Today, most of us in the Church are familiar with the old adage that ten percent of the people do ninety percent of the work. The real statistics may be even grimmer. The Church is full of burned-out priests and stressed-out parishioners who regularly make real sacrifices for the good of the local parish, only to find that their personal offerings are met with indifference and criticism.
Discouragement and even despair run rampant in the Church. Year after year, the Church loses more and more good workers because they simply refuse to put up with the stress anymore. Despite the best strategies and creative ideas of these few, most of the members of the average parish seem comfortable with a passive role and unwilling to change. Who can blame the workers who have given up? Many of them have suffered personal health problems and family strife due to the stress of their commitment. In many cases, priests even feel guilty asking for help, because they know what eventually awaits the eager response of the innocent and naive.
The Workers Are Few
Jesus reminds us, when He laments to His disciples that “the harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Matthew 9:37), that this is not just a contemporary problem. In fact, we find the very same problem from the beginning of time. In Genesis 3, God Himself has difficulty finding laborers for His new creation. Instead of gratefully and obediently accepting their life and identity as workers in the Garden (Genesis 2:5, 15, 18, 20), Adam and Eve are duped into believing they have been shortchanged of their divine right to be like God. With their newfound attitude of entitlement, they begin to seriously doubt if they can find real life in working for God; so they rebel.
Most of us are more than content to sit back when others step up. Our tendency toward laziness is a very common and real distortion of our true identity and vocation. We are called to work because we are made in the image of the One who works. God the Father creates, begets, heals, raises—He works. And in His Son Jesus Christ, we witness the perfect incarnation of this work on the cross. Jesus comes to do the work of His Father (John 5:36) and calls us to partner in this work, before the night comes and no one can work (John 9:4).
I’ve always been amazed at Jesus’ response to His disciples in Matthew 14, when they urged Him to send the crowds away because of their deserted location and lack of food. Instead of taking personal charge of the situation, Jesus looked at His disciples and said, “You give them something to eat.” Jesus wasn’t passing the buck or skirting responsibility; He was simply challenging His disciples to exercise the ministry, the work, to which He had called them.
This scenario was commonplace in Jesus’ ministry. Time and time again, we find Him entrusting His disciples with the work of the Kingdom. From the very beginning, He told them He was going to train them to “catch men” (Luke 5:10). He modeled for them what it meant to preach and heal, and then He sent them out two by two to do the same (Luke 10). When He taught, He warned His disciples of laziness and the judgment that awaits those who fail to use the talents God has given them (Matthew 25). And in the end, before His Ascension, He commissioned His followers to finish the work of making disciples of all nations.
Jesus was always looking for workers and always seeking to give His ministry away. Sadly, however, both the Scriptures and church history bear witness to the fact that the Kingdom of God has always wrestled with the burden of rebellious indifference and laziness. It is the reality of broken humanity.
A Scriptural Model of Ministry
How should those of us who do work react to this reality? Do we give up and wallow in self-pity, or try harder, hoping to beat the odds? Most of us, if we’re honest, can attest to having tried each. Neither option works, however, and both leave us feeling even more empty and lost than before.
I know countless priests who have given in to the passive culture of their parishes. In a noble effort to exercise their ministry and further the Kingdom of God, they simply take over and do it all. In their minds, it has to be done; and so, if no one else will do it, they must. It seems like the reasonable thing to do.
In reality, it’s the absolute worst thing a pastor can do. St. Peter reminds us that all Christians share in the priesthood of Christ (1 Peter 2:9)—we are a “royal priesthood.” When a pastor assumes the responsibility of all the priests in his parish, he not only assumes an impossible load, but he also trains his parishioners not to exercise their priesthood. In this way, priests unknowingly cripple their own parishes and the Church as a whole. When a father does for his children what they can and should do for themselves and the family, we call it dysfunctional and enabling. Fathers are to nurture healthy independence and maturity in their children.
Much of the Church’s problem is systemic. We have raised immature and lazy spiritual children because we have fallen prey to an overly clericalized model, which praises priests who work themselves to death and unintentionally micromanage their parishes. To my knowledge, the Scriptures never condone any pastoral model that does not emphasize and respect the individual spiritual gifts and priesthood of every believer (Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 12). An outsider might conclude of the Orthodox Church that holiness, evangelism, service, teaching, and all other aspects of pastoral ministry have only been entrusted to the ordained clergy.
Instead, what we find when we read the Scriptures is something completely different. Note carefully in the following quotations from Ephesians 4 what the Scriptural responsibility of a pastor is: “And [Christ’s] gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry” (vv. 11–12, RSV—emphasis mine).
A pastor’s job is to equip. He’s a trainer, a coach. His work is to train others to do the work. That training will certainly include modeling what it means to work, but it does not include taking personal responsibility for someone else’s work! St. Paul outlines the whole goal of this model in verses 12 and 13: “for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
The goal is maturity—the fullness of Christ in every Christian. Only when a pastor calls his parishioners to their true identity as priests and equips them to use the different spiritual gifts God has given each of them can the Church realize her true identity and calling in this world. St. Paul attests to this in verse 16, when he writes that the body only grows and matures in love when “each part is working properly” (emphasis mine).
As the Church begins to actualize this model, she will also begin to realize its fruits: “we [will] no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (vv. 14–15).
It’s clear that though we profess to be a scriptural Church, we struggle to live it. Most of the pastoral ministry of the Orthodox Church in North America is conducted from the top—the episcopacy—down. Our bishops are seen and experienced as the final word and authority on all things ministerial. We expect our bishops to create, design, and initiate all forms of ministry within our dioceses and jurisdictions.
Once these ministries have been identified, they are passed down to the clergy, who seek to raise the necessary funds and carry them out. Because of the number of duties and responsibilities these ministries demand, the clergy often seek the help of various boards and parish councils. These boards and councils are often charged with the material or financial demands of the ministry, leaving the more spiritual requirements to the clergy.
Finally, the great mass of the people, the parishioners, simply watch the entire ministry take place. In fact, most of the time, they view themselves as the recipients of these ministries. They grow up believing that they come to church primarily to get, and not to give. We train them to be a passive audience who watch the bishop, his clergy, and their respective boards and councils do the work. In this model, it’s no wonder that ten percent of the people do ninety percent of the work.
The model we found in Ephesians 4, however, is the reverse of this. Instead of the bishop being an authoritative dictator, he is, in imitation of Christ, the chief servant. He is the one who gives his life on behalf of all and for all. He selflessly and tirelessly guards the deposit of apostolic truth (2 Timothy 1:14) and then rightly interprets it (2 Timothy 2:15) so that his priests can preach it and use it (2 Timothy 3:16) to equip their parishioners to do the work of Christ (Matthew 5:13–14).
In this scriptural model, the various boards and councils are responsible for creatively assisting the clergy in any way they possibly can to implement the full equipping of every parishioner. In this model, unlike the previous one, everyone is active. There is no passivity because everyone shares in the same priesthood and ministry of Christ.
Putting the Model into Practice
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Orthodox Church in North America has enumerated many noble goals: administrative unity, education, missions and evangelism, charitable works, and more. But in each of these areas, the Church is barely limping along—and in comparison with some of the other Christian traditions in North America, embarrassingly so. None of our goals will be fully realized unless we become serious about implementing St. Paul’s ministerial model. I believe that any serious attempt at putting this model into practice will include, at the very least, the following resolves:
First, the Church must free its episcopacy to return to its primary function of “handling” (KJV) the apostolic truth. Unfortunately we have tied down our bishops with every burden under the sun except for that which is necessary. Have we forgotten why the Twelve appointed deacons in the first place? In Acts 6:2, the Twelve admitted that “it would not be right for [them] to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.”
The world desperately needs the apostolic truth to be interpreted and applied to its ailing life. The faithful need to hear the collective voice of the episcopacy as it relates to the modern issues of their generation. And the ordained clergy need to hear a cohesive episcopal vision of this life-giving truth that inspires them to action and courage.
As is evidenced in Acts 6, the Church has struggled from the very beginning not to reduce the functionality of its episcopacy to arbitration and social service. The mission and health of the entire Church hinge upon the scriptural ministry of the bishop. If the history of the episcopacy has, at times, been riddled with control, greed, and territorialism, perhaps a great deal of that blame belongs to the faithful, who, like the Grecian and Hebraic Jews in Acts 6, have unknowingly shaped the ministry of the episcopacy by their own petty and sinful desires.
Second, the Church must give more attention and credence to the discovery, development, and exercise of the spiritual gifts outlined by Ss. Peter and Paul in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, and 1 Peter 4. These are the very tools Christ has entrusted us with to exercise our priesthood. Despite what appears to be a clear scriptural truth, these gifts are almost never mentioned in normal church life. When was the last time you heard a sermon or teaching devoted to the explanation and application of these spiritual gifts? It’s clear, at least from St. Paul’s perspective, that without them the Church cannot realize her mission or maturation.
Most Orthodox Christians who have been raised inside the Church understand very little about these gifts and even less about their connection to the Sacraments of Baptism and Chrismation. Each Orthodox Christian must be taught that he or she has a unique impression or thumbprint to leave upon this life—one that no other person, past, present, or future, can leave. The unique combination of each person’s spiritual gifts, abilities, knowledge, experience, and personality cannot be duplicated.
It should be the resolve of every priest to light the fire of these gifts within each of their parishioners. This is how priests equip the faithful. They inspire, educate, and coach their parishioners in how to use these gifts for the edification of the Church and the glory of God.
Third, as these spiritual gifts are being realized by the faithful, the Church must open its ministerial doors to the laity. For too long, ministry has belonged only to those who wear black. Even the very few departmental or organizational ministries that belong to SCOBA or the individual archdioceses, more often than not, are run by the clergy. In some cases, a theological degree is important and even appropriate. However, so many times the Church is simply too fearful to let go of ministerial control. When we fail to let go of our children, they fail to thrive.
Sometimes I wonder whether this fear stems from the need to protect a kind of good-ol’-boys’ club—a secret society of insiders. Maybe some clergy are threatened by the thought that their gifts might be somehow trumped by the remarkable gifts of others within their parish. This kind of insecurity and jealousy, if it exists, will certainly strangle parish ministry.
Instead, the Church must rediscover the spirit of Hagia Sophia in Byzantine Constantinople, where the various spiritual gifts of the faithful were recognized and a variety of major and minor orders existed. I’m not advocating the tonsuring of doorkeepers, exorcists, catechists, and choir members in our present context, but I am suggesting that we begin by not minimizing the various ministries of the Church and by looking for every way possible to open new ministerial opportunities for the laity, especially young people and women.
A couple of years ago, I was incensed when I heard a priest describe the role of a subdeacon as nothing more than a glorified altar boy. That comment and attitude is an absolute travesty of both ministries. How dare anyone minimize the grace and gifts that God has given to an individual. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Corinthians 12:21–22, RSV).
The clergy must always be looking for ways to give their ministry away and to affirm the priesthood of Christ in others. If priests monopolize parish ministry, the faithful will never develop spiritually or realize their true calling. It should be a priest’s greatest joy to share his ministry with others in the parish. Perhaps this is the reason St. Paul urged Timothy to entrust his ministry to other faithful individuals who could exercise that same ministry (2 Timothy 2:2).
The time has come for the Church to return to a biblical paradigm of ministry wherein the one priesthood of Christ is shared by every baptized Christian. In order to realize this, the clergy must seek to give away their ministries with humility and generosity, and the faithful must obediently embrace the spiritual gifts God has given them through their baptism. When this happens, the Church in North America will finally discover its true identity and become a light to the nations.
This article originally appeared in AGAIN Vol. 28 No.3, Fall 2006.
This article originally appeared in AGAIN Vol. 28 No. 3.
An AGAIN Interview with Dr. Bradley Nassif, Theologian and Witness
Bradley Nassif has been a courageous and enthusiastic pioneer of Orthodox-evangelical dialogue around the world. Dr. Nassif holds a Ph.D. from Fordham University, where he was one of the last students of the late Fr. John Meyendorff. He also holds an M.Div. from St. Vladimir's Seminary; an M.A. in New Testament Studies, Denver Seminary; an M.A. in European History, Wichita State University; and a B.A. in Religion and Philosophy, Friends University (Wichita, KS). Dr. Nassif is currently professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at
A consultant for Time and Christianity Today magazines, Dr. Nassif has been a television commentator for the documentary series "Christianity: The First Thousand Years" and "The Jesus Experience: Jesus Among the Slavs." Much of his work over the past 30 years has been devoted to introducing evangelical students and faculty to the riches of the Orthodox tradition. He served as the director of academic programs at Fuller Seminary and was a visiting professor at
Among his numerous publications are the chapters entitled "The Evangelical Theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church" (in Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism, ed. James Stamoolis, Zondervan, 2004), and "Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism: The Status of an Emerging Global Dialogue" in Daniel Clendenin's Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader, 2nd ed. (Baker, 2003). He is also the general editor of New Perspectives on Historical Theology: Essays in Memory of John Meyendorff (Eerdmans). The current focus of his scholarship is on a forthcoming book titled The Westminster Handbook to Eastern Orthodox Theology (
He can be contacted directly via e-mail at:
AGAIN: Welcome, Dr. Nassif, to AGAIN Magazine. We’re honored you’ve joined us. By way of introduction to our readers, could you tell us about your background and your personal mission within the Orthodox Church?
Bradley Nassif: First, please allow me to thank you for the honor of this interview. Your magazine is reaching some of the most important people in the Orthodox world, namely the laity, so I am especially privileged to serve them in this capacity. I believe the future of our Church rests largely with ordinary Christians, so I hope my answers will encourage them to fulfill their gifts and calling. I hope our clergy will also be strengthened. They need all the love and support we can give.
I can summarize my career for you very simply. I’m a “kerygmatic” theologian—a witness to the fullness of the
I’m a cradle Orthodox, born of Lebanese parents. I had originally intended to become a priest. But although I was religious, I was also spiritually lost. Even though I went to church every week, had read a lot and was morally upright, I had no personal relationship with Christ, nor did I have a clear understanding of what the Gospel was. When I was 17, however, I had a life-changing experience with God, due in part to the outreach of evangelical friends in high school. Looking back, I had what Ss. Makarios of
In my professional life, my energies have been directed toward the academy and the Church—both are important. Until recently, most of my academic work has focused on ecumenical theology. I’ve been very concerned to build bridges between Orthodoxy and the Protestant community. I’ve represented SCOBA in the Orthodox-Lutheran Dialogue of North America, and started the Society for the Study of Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism in 1990. Over the past 20 years, it has been my privilege to introduce the Orthodox tradition to Protestant evangelical students and faculty in North America and
On the writing front, the most important chapter I’ve written so far is titled “The Evangelical Theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church” (in Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism). There I try to show readers that Orthodoxy has a very distinct evangelical character to its theology and that it is imperative for priests and people to recover it as the centerpiece for church life today. In defending our faith against evangelical Christians, we’ve often failed to see the evangelical character of our own tradition. So in that chapter I try to explain the evangelical vision of the Orthodox Church in relation to its liturgical and theological history.
I’m still very active in ecumenical dialogue. I really would like to see Orthodox churches partnering with evangelical communities as much as the Church’s theology will allow it. That still needs to be worked out, but it’s starting to happen very slowly among a small number of courageous priests in all the jurisdictions of
My current focus, however, is now shifting to Orthodox theology itself. That’s where my forthcoming book The Westminster Handbook to Eastern Orthodox Theology will come into play.
AGAIN: In this issue, we're focusing on the different roles members of the Church play. Can you speak to what you've learned about what it is like to engage with people in and out of the Church as a lay professor, historian, and theologian?
BN: One task of a good theologian is to critique the contemporary life and practices of the Church. Theologians must know the tradition well so they can help the Church stay faithful to it. One of the key areas I’ve been concerned about is the need to empower the laity, and help them redeem the routines of everyday life.
In working with ordinary Christians over the years, I’ve concluded that most of us have underestimated our spiritual potential. Our existing attitudes and practices in many Orthodox parishes around the world have effectively disempowered common Christians as second-class citizens in the Church. Many—by no means all—of those ordained to a hierarchical ministry frequently misinterpret the Ignatian model of ministry along the lines of a dictatorial or “guru” form of leadership, in which the deacon, priest, or bishop thinks and acts as though he is above and beyond accountability to those he serves. All this has led to a widespread systemic illness in the Church from the top down. Church leadership ends up virtually controlling the laity and weakening their ability to fulfill their spiritual gifts.
Fortunately, this crippling state of affairs is gradually beginning to change in some parts of the Orthodox world, such as the Greek Orthodox clergy/laity congress and the Orthodox Christian Laity organization. Still, I’m convinced that it’s time for us to unleash the laity! Bishops and priests need to work harder at exercising a Christ-based model of leadership which empowers their flock with the gospel so that the whole body of Christ may function effectively.
Closely related to that is the need to help parishioners integrate their faith with the workaday world of everyday life. I try to do this by offering weekend seminars in our churches entitled “Desert Spirituality for City Dwellers.” When I worked as a Honda salesman, I found myself in need of integrating faith with the marketplace. I ended up viewing my job as a spiritual arena where I would die to self and grow through all the various tasks I did throughout the day. Making 20 phone calls a day became an exercise in ascetic discipline; responding to a rude customer became an opportunity to grow in patience; working with a joyful heart gave witness to the Resurrection of Christ in my soul. I began seeing my daily tasks in a new light. I transformed my vision of work into a spiritual cause. That’s what I mean when I say we need to help people connect the dots between Scripture and what they do at work and home.
AGAIN: Based on your experience introducing evangelicals to the riches of the Orthodox tradition, do you find there are certain key elements, certain fundamentals of the Orthodox Christian faith, that are essential to share with people about Orthodoxy if you want to spark their interest in the faith?
BN: In my classes at
AGAIN: What has your continuing engagement with evangelicals taught you about your own faith, and about evangelism and the Great Commission in particular?
BN: There are at least three things I’ve learned from evangelicals in relation to your question. First, it is possible to be “sacramentalized” but not “evangelized.” By that I mean it’s possible to be religious but lost. Our people can go to church every Sunday, take communion, tithe, even be ordained, but still not know God. That is a great tragedy that can be easily overcome by our own mystical theology.
Second, we need to focus on the centrality of Christ, not the centrality of “Orthodoxy.” Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not against the creeds, councils, and Fathers of the Church, nor am I minimizing the fullness of the tradition. How could I and still be Orthodox? Rather, I’m against the formal, dead sort of Orthodoxy. Too often we become obsessed with Orthodoxy as a sick religious addiction. We think that just because people go to church, they must know God, when in reality many do not. Just because the Gospel is formally included in the liturgy doesn’t mean that our people have understood and appropriated its message. Many of our churches really need to recover the evangelical dimensions of the faith. I believe our Church is ready for renewal, and I’m ready to help the bishops and priests if they wish to ask me, because I’m fairly certain about where the Church has been and where it needs to go in light of our mystical theology.
Third, we need to be clear about the gospel and make it the core of our life and ministry. Following our Trinitarian and Incarnational vision of life, we need to constantly recover the personal and relational aspects of God in every life-giving action of the Church. We need to be clear about the message we preach. Jesus, in His Trinitarian relations, died for our sins on the cross, rose from the grave, and is coming again. He is Lord of all, and that needs to be proclaimed in every way possible, which is exactly what our liturgy does.
The most urgent need in world Orthodoxy at this time is the need for an aggressive internal mission of rededicating or converting our priests and people to Jesus Christ. The Great Commission demands it. But we aren’t focusing on that. Instead, we’re constantly contrasting ourselves with the Catholics or Protestants and letting that dictate the emphases of our ministries. This is very dangerous because it takes our attention off the Lord and onto theological differences. As a theologian, I know very well that differences do matter and it’s important for our people to become aware of them—especially in the Bible belts. But enough is enough. We’ll be better off spiritually if we take massive action to help our parishioners simply grow in theosis (divinization).
AGAIN: CS Lewis, speaking about evangelism, said: "I am not sure that the ideal missionary team ought not to consist of one who argues and one who (in the fullest sense of the word) preaches. Put up your arguer first to undermine their intellectual prejudices; then let the evangelist proper launch his appeal. I have seen this done with great success." It seems that in an academic environment, most of your evangelism would be of the kind that speaks to the intellect. Is this actually so? And do you think that this kind of approach to evangelism and outreach – an appeal to both mind and heart - is what we should be aiming for?
BN: About seven years ago, while living in
One of my best friends was Sam, a Mu
So should we use both mind and heart? Absolutely. But always with love. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” said
AGAIN: Do you believe there are particular lessons we can learn from the way evangelicals have encountered Orthodoxy that are important for reaching out to people of other faiths as well, both Christian and non-Christian?
BN: I have strong opinions about that. It always saddens me to hear of Orthodox people (converts or cradles) distancing themselves from evangelical believers. That is a big mistake. We should fellowship with evangelicals, not engage in an Orthodox Jihad against them. I’ve been asked to go to
One thing I’ve learned from my Middle Eastern upbringing as well as travels to
So evangelical and non-Christian encounters with Orthodox Christians in those lands have not always been positive. Non-Orthodox people meet all kinds of problems and think that is what Orthodoxy stands for. Few leaders or laity seem to have a mature grasp on their own faith, and the Church is sometimes marked by ethnocentrism, religious bigotry, or declared disinterest in the Christian West by Orthodox rigorists. All this is bad advertisement for the faith.
There are two ways to address this: one is external, the other is internal. The external way speaks to those who peer inside our windows, so to speak. We need to help outsiders make a distinction between authentic Orthodoxy and folk religion. Explain that what they see is not necessarily what the Church stands for. Get their attention off the public reality and onto the Church’s faith. Make a distinction between the people’s poor witness and the true God whom the Church worships. There’s no other way I know to honestly address the low level of commitment and understanding among Orthodox Christians.
The other way to address these problems is through an internal approach. We need to be brutally honest by looking at ourselves and admitting that we are not relating very effectively to our contemporary world. Without sacrificing the content of our rich liturgical music and theological tradition, we need to find ways to contextualize our faith and liturgy effectively in the modern world. Fr. Edward Rommen, a priest who teaches at
We need to figure out how to relate to unchurched people in
Our Church music exemplifies the problem. Instead of creating new American tunes for our theological lyrics, we betray the faith by simply watering down Byzantine or Russian notation to make it palatable for Americans—as though there was something eternal about Byzantine or Russian sound! Think about it. How were the Slavs originally evangelized? By translating the Bible, Fathers, and liturgy from Greek into the language and culture of the Slavs. How did St. Athanasius defeat the Arians? By taking scriptural teaching and translating it into the Hellenistic concepts of pagan philosophers (for example, he redefined homoousios to mean Jesus is “consubstantial” with the Father).
So why are some American bishops so afraid of doing that today? I think it’s because they’re deathly afraid of making any changes that would alter the faith. That, of course, is praiseworthy, but it simply is not the way Orthodoxy has adapted to local cultures. The history of missions always tells us to contextualize the faith by putting it in the garments of the cultural idioms of the country it inhabits. We are not to fossilize it through a stifling theology of repetition.
AGAIN: You've worked extensively with the modern media industry. What do you think are three things Orthodox Christians can do to increase their exposure and influence through the media?
BN: First, be informed and balanced about our own faith. Before we can speak, we need to know our own religion and earn the right to be heard. Bad press—or no press—comes from people who have zeal without knowledge. Every television and radio interview I’ve ever done has been initiated by the interviewer, not by me.
Second, we need to know our audience. It makes no sense to talk about Orthodoxy in the abstract. We need to tailor our talk to the ones who hear us. Again, I come back to the word “contextualize.” We need to translate our concerns into the vocabulary of those who hear us.
Third, we need to “sell the difference” to the media. What do we have to say that others are not already saying? Once we answer that, the next step is to make ourselves available to the media.
These are commonsense answers, but I suppose that’s why I’m just a garden variety type of theologian.
AGAIN: What are your thoughts on the future of traditional Christian education in general, and Orthodoxy in particular, in academia?
BN: I’ll answer your question in relation to what is going on in mainline and state schools, evangelical seminaries and Orthodox institutions in the
Mainline and state universities such as Princeton, Harvard,
As for evangelical schools, most have closed their doors to any full-time Orthodox faculty. Wheaton College, Westmont, Fuller, Gordon Conwell, Columbia International University, Moody Bible Institute and others wish to retain a narrow definition of what it means to be an “evangelical” and thus (wrongly I believe) exclude the Orthodox from it. Some, such as
As for Orthodox institutions, they are few in number which only increases the importance of what they do. St. Vladimir’s and Holy Cross seminaries have some excellent teachers, several of whom are actually very open to evangelical scholarship (Frs. Stanley Harakas, Harry Pappas, Ted Stylianopoulos and Emmanuel Clapsis, for example). Still, I must say that these institutions as a whole are having a difficult time staying collectively focused on the basics of the gospel in their pastoral training programs. Future priests need their Orthodox teachers to emphasize the ABC’s of the New Testament in their ministries more than how many times to say “Lord have mercy.” I’m convinced that the only way this can happen is for us to recover the evangelical dimensions of our own theology and place it at the very center of all we do in Church.