Selections from Seminary

This is the making of a paschal troparion, the hymn “Christ is risen from the dead…”, in the Thai language and from the Thai culture. For obvious reasons—my wife is Thai and the whole family is highly affected by our ties to Thai culture—we have closely watched the progress of the Orthodox Church in Thailand. If there had been a paschal troparion in Thai, we would have been using it in our house years ago. But instead, every year, we bemoan the lack of a Thai troparion and talk about how wonderful it would be to have one. It is a small consolation that we have a Chinese paschal troparion that we love, one that feels Chinese, and thus a little bit closer to our Asian home. And then, a Thai troparion appeared. A few weeks ago, my wife showed me a Facebook post with a Thai paschal troparion, sung by Matushka Ksenia , wife of a Russian priest serving a parish in Thailand. (In that video, he is singing the isan, the drone note, but it is my understanding that she wrote the troparion.) Jus...

St. Jacob of Alaska was also an astute observer of the native people: their habits, their customs, and sometimes even their disposition towards the gospel. Every once in a while, his journals have an aside to explain points of interest—the dangers of navigation and shipping in Alaskan waters, the entryway of native houses in different regions, and such—in some of which, he speaks about the people’s receptivity to the gospel: “In matters of religion, I found the Kuriles to be devout or, as one may say, ready to be devout. However, presumably because of very rare approaches to them on behalf of the Christian Religion, they have no proper understanding either of the Christian faith or of their obligations as Christians.” In another of these asides, St. Jacob offers an almost humorous comment on the Tlingit people as he dwells on the prospects of a Protestant missionary who has come to convert them: "February 28: (1829) A second three masted American vessel [the barque Volunteer, Capt...

Importance of Family Our town or region may not compare to 1800s Alaska, but there are plenty of lessons to be learned from St. Jacob that can be applied to any situation. Though little is made of it, St. Jacob’s relationship with his family seems to be key. He sailed to his first parish in Atka, his own mother’s villiage, with his wife and father. This simple fact challenges our modern, individualistic and independent thinking. Limitless Travelling It would be hard to find a page of St. Jacob’s journals that does not include travel in some form. Not to say that travel is the lesson we need to learn...maybe the opposite. And also not to encourage our modern propensity to extend ourselves beyond all healthy boundaries in the pursuit of achievement at work. Here is a man who would travel for months on the open sea, or on foot or sled to reach interior villages, not for personal glory, nor for good pay, but solely to fulfill the call of the gospel. The Love of the People It is clear that ...

St. Jacob followed in the footsteps of many who came before him, not only the big names like St. Herman, St. Juvenaly, and St. Innocent, but more than that, the faithful, everyday folks who worked for the Russian-American Company and lived a faithful witness among the Alaskan peoples. What we find all over St. Jacob’s journals is mentions of locals who had been baptized by laymen and just did not have access to a priest. “It remained for me only to establish them in the faith and chrismate them." "I began baptizing 72 women in the morning. In the afternoon I baptized 54 older children of the parents who had been recently converted. The rite was finished by evening, a total of 126 persons, 33 boys, 93 women and girls. From this activity I became dreadfully tired and felt pain from standing so long... However, the spiritual joy at the sight of so many souls joined to the flock of the Christian Church compensated for everything, and the bodily weaknesses disappeared. That night ...

St. Jacob of Alaska has left us a wealth of information in his journals. We have translations of his journals, with entries almost every day spanning nearly forty years of missionary efforts. It is clear in many sections of his journals that part of the purpose of journaling was to record vital statistics to pass on to superiors in the Church and in the Russian-American Company. Though not often mentioned, there is also a feeling that he thinks of these journals as, what we might call, clinical notes: partially processing what is happening, partially recording information that might be useful to himself or others who come back to these same places, and partially studying his own mission efforts so that he may improve upon his methods over time. As such, these “missionary clinical notes” provide us with a wealth of information for our own missionary endeavors. Studying his processes and thinking provides us with lessons that would apply to any number of situations, even though the speci...

Finding some good lenten reading is always a good idea. It is always during Clean Week, that the kids start asking what we are going to read this year. So, here we are, dinner on the first day of Clean Week, and they started asking. Our trouble this year was that two of the books we love reading and seem perfectly fitted for reading with the family, we have already used twice each for other lenten seasons. We cannot recommend them highly enough, especially because they are so well written and clearly convey Orthodox life lived out. Everyday Saints and Other Stories is one of our favorites. The children enjoyed this so much that the two older ones have read through it a time or two on their own. In it, you will gain a much broader view of what "Orthodox life" looks like, which is helpful both for the convert that just has not lived a long life within Orthodoxy yet, and also for the cradle Orthodox who needs to see Orthodoxy outside of their own particular context. In other wo...

And how do we apply all these ideas in our parishes today? Do we build our own mission parishes here at home or send money to foreign “missions”? I do not want to go too far, as if to suggest that the Protestant drive toward missions that I grew up with is completely misplaced, because, otherwise, “how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?” And truth be told, their zealousness toward missions shames us. However, I would say that using money to support people to go and live among another culture often gives us a false sense of self-accomplishment. We feel like we are “doing missions”, but we choose to ignore the negative effects of what is actually happening. Your parish will choose how to use your money and how to engage in missions. However, there is one waning sign I would like to share, something that might be helpful in determining to whom or to what organization you should send your money. An organization totally focused on evangelism and without any mention of es...

 “If you are called to be in the monastery, you better not go [into missions], and if you are called to go, you better not be in the monastery.” How these words came from the mouth of an Orthodox Christian deeply involved in missions, I cannot understand. In context, it was clear that this viewpoint came from someone who sees monasteries as merely a place to provide spiritual health to parishioners in the world, maybe something like a retreat center. Even if that was all monasteries were, then we should we not start monasteries wherever we are involved in mission so that the host people can also have the benefit of that spiritual guidance? But it is not a well thought out viewpoint; it is (as a best case scenario) an accidental misunderstanding of monasticism and the various vocations of the Christian faith, likely from a leftover Protestant, Romo-phobic viewpoint. Point 1 : the easiest case to make for monastics in missions. Later in the same person’s talk, there was an encouragem...

 The term “incarnational missions” is one of those catch phrases used so much it almost lacks any meaning when we hear it now. It seems that now, all it really means is ‘to go and live among a people’. The idea of incarnational missions is based on the Incarnation of Christ, God taking on flesh, the uncreated entering into the created. St. Gregory of Nazianzus’s oft-quoted, “that which is not assumed is not healed”, not only helps us understand the impact of God’s Incarnation, but would naturally also extend to incarnational missions. As for the Incarnation of Christ, he becomes fully man...every aspect of man. Therefore, every aspect of man is healed as it is united to God. And in missions, the extent to which we are truly incarnational will be the extent to which the world will be able to be healed by the gospel message. In the past twenty-five years, as we have watched “old school” Protestant mission efforts be retired out and new missions methodology implemented, we have also s...

Heading toward a fuller understanding of what it means to live incarnational lives, whether you stay in your local parish or are sent out to cross into another culture and incarnate Christ in that context, we should first investigate some key words from the gospels to build an appropriate understanding of what it means to “bear witness” to the gospel. Witness , testimony . Maybe some of you have heard this before, but it is a good reminder: the word “witness” and “testimony” are the same word in the Scriptures. To bear witness, false witness, give a testimony, “his testimony is true”, and every other instance, are built on the same root word in Greek. And that is not all. The root on which they are built is the word martyr . So, intentionally transposing these words in English will help us feel some of the nuance that word holds in all of its various contexts: “There was a man missioned from God, whose name was John. This man came for a martyrdom , to bear forth a living martyrdom of...

What do all these words mean? That will greatly help us understand the commission given to Christians to “go and make disciples...teaching them to observe”. And particularly, we need to look at the difference between missions and evangelism. Missions . Think of the word missive , as in ‘to send out a missive ’. It is ‘to send’, which would mean it carries the same meaning as “apostle”, ‘one sent out’. A disciple is a learner, but the Disciples became Apostles when they were sent out. So, missions is when someone is sent. A missionary is the person who was sent. “Mission parish” is a small problem, unless we think of it only as a parish established in a place that required the Church to stretch out and develop a parish in a new place; that could be seen as ‘sending’, I guess. Evangelism . From the Greek word for ‘good news’ or ‘good message’. An angel is a messenger, and even in today’s English word, you can still see “angel” inside of “evangelism”. The word “evangelism” is directly tie...

Trick question for you: what does it mean to “preach the gospel”? To tell others about the death and resurrection of Christ, right? Then, what did Jesus mean when he said to the disciples of John the Baptist: “‘The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them’”? Jesus was not yet crucified and resurrected. So, what was this gospel they were preaching? And that is not the only challenging use of “gospel” in the Gospels. When Jesus sends out the Twelve, tells them to take nothing, staff, bread, or money; shake off the dust if a city does not receive you; the passage then says, “So they departed and went through the towns, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.” And again, elsewhere, “Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.’...

Another unarmed black man dies at the hands of police. This throws me back into an old struggle of mine, a series of thoughts that makes me question my own motivations, my own assumptions, my own safely-white existence, and above all, the question of why the Church, the very Church established by the Apostles, the Church which has collectively retained the unadulterated truth of the Gospel, the Church which obviously is for all mankind, the Church which prays "that all would be saved"...why is that Church mostly white? ...well, why is it mostly white in this country ? In a way, I feel powerless to say anything, because I am white. Who wants to hear another white guy defending his conscience? Well, I am not going to say I am not racist. That is too easy. These ways of operating are often among the involuntary sins for which we ask forgiveness, the habitual sins that we commit without even knowing it, sins that are only revealed to us through years of Confession and guidan...