Summer Thoughts

The first official day of Summer just came and went. This is my first posting on Orthodox Parker since April the 13th.

That's quite a long time between postings. Too long, in fact.

Since my last posting, I've set up a "trading months" situation for the Adult Sunday School Class at our parish. The other teacher is our assistant priest, Fr. John Falconi.

I've settled in to my second position at Dish Network, which is a Materials Handler position at Corporate Headquarters. In this position, I have all the old duties I used to have when I was a corporate mail clerk for ten years.

Lord willing, this position looks to be stable and long-term.

Between my last posting in April and this one, I briefly kicked around an idea for an Ecumenically shared ministry. I learned about a new Lutheran denomination called the LCMC which came about as a direct result of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's decision to ordain actively homosexual pastors.

A local Lutheran church in Parker voted to stay in that denomination, prompting the orthodox (with a small "o") pastor to leave, move down the street and begin a new parish.

So now there is a Lutheran version of the Anglican Mission in the Americas.

I had the novel idea of a ecumenically shared parish made up of an AMIA group, an LCMC group, and an Orthodox group.

The idea is especially novel because it is the least likely to happen from the Eastern Orthodox side of things.

The fictional parish would be created along the lines of the Church of the Apostles parish in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. That parish is shared by Episcopalians and Roman Catholics. They do communion apart, but do everything else together.

My concern is that christianity is getting more and more subdivided into smaller and smaller groupings. This means less impact on our culture, more unproductive competition with each other, and diminished opportunities for growth and stability.

I am a sucker for christian architecture and art. I have a nostalgia for "good old days" when a more united christendom built churches like the Hagia Sophia and the great cathedrals of Europe.

The smaller we are, the harder we fall?

This may seem like a silly concern, but as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I am, by definition, not an Iconoclast in any way.

Christianity has a visible and physical presence in the world. Jesus Christ came in the flesh to save us. This means it is a-okay to have a Christianity with maximum amounts of sacred images and art.

Of course, from the Orthodox perspective, The Church is not divided. This is true, but christianity with a small "c" is certainly divided whether we acknowledge it or not.

The divisions in christianity still harm the Orthodox, even if supposedly we're "not involved" in those
divisions per se.

Divide and Conquer. I'm sure our enemy the devil is still using this time - tested strategy against us to great effect.

I'm tired of the balkanization of christianity. I dream of the time when christianity is more unified, even if some of the groups have to remain apart during communion.

If we could marshall our efforts as much as possible, what might be accomplished?

I would like to see what Dr. Francis Schaeffer once called "an ecumenicism of orthodoxy."

The splits between conservative christians and liberal christians have created an unbridgeable chasm between Lutherans and Episcopalians, but perhaps the conservative Lutherans and Anglicans could work together with Western Rite Orthodox Christians . . .

If only there was the vision for it.

Blessings in the Holy Trinity, One God.

Columba Siluouan