I've been doing some thinking tonight on my forays into the world of Facebook.
After being involved with Facebook for about a year now, I can say that my experience with it has been a mixed bag. I have learned some things.
My original intent was to use Facebook as a tool to promote the new Saint Laurence Retreat Center and Western Rite Orthodoxy, as well as Orthodox Church Planting.
Instead, I was bitten by the "Facebook Bug" and attempted to contact old college associates.
The positive thing is that I gained two lasting contacts from my college days at my first college, Biola University.
I didn't graduate from Biola. I graduated from Southwest Baptist University after transferring to the SBU Colorado Branch Campus known as Colorado Baptist University.
The most intense college experiences of my life happened at Biola. Biola was the place where my hopes were white hot before being dashed by "The Divine Thwarter."
I had high hopes for a number of reunions and the restoration of some lost friendships. I was looking for absolution. In some ways I found that absolution. In other ways, loose ends remained.
I gained / regained two lost colleagues as a result.
And for this I am thankful to God and grateful.
However, I contacted at least ten former classmates. I only received feedback from four and only two of those had staying power.
It's interesting to look at the nature of the hopes that Facebook generated in me.
I hoped for a lot. I hoped, as John Eldredge writes, "for things the way they should be, not for things the way they are."
I've concluded that the hope I felt properly belongs to a new world, and not to this one.
In the new world that God is creating for all faithful Christians, hopes for joyful reunions will be realized.
In this present world in most respects, such hopes will have to remain deferred.
I can hang onto my hopes for the coming new world. I need to let such hopes in this world go.
The new world can witness the restoration and purification of things I hoped for back then. Those hopes were dashed, but maybe not forever. Maybe those hopes will get replaced by new and better hopes.
Should I reach The New Heavens and The New Earth, I will be able to enjoy the friends I thought lost forever. I will be able to do this as a New Creation. The old will pass away and everything will become new.
I will be able to enjoy all my friends from a sound position of sinlessness and wholeness.
That will be heavenly indeed.
Blessings in the Holy Trinity, One God
Columba Silouan
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Joint Anglican Orthodox Worship Workshop?
This past Sunday, I became involved in a discussion about the frustrations of some local young men who have aspirations for the Holy Orders in a local AMIA church I used to attend.
According to a source at my home parish who has a family member who is an AMIA communicant, some of these young men want to go deeper into Liturgy and reverent worship but are being stymied.
At this point, an idea came to me.
As an Eastern Orthodox Christian in the Western Rite, and with a new conference center at Tallahassee Creek in Fremont County, we have an opportunity to address this need.
We could host a worship conference where we train these Anglicans in how we worship in the Western Rite. We could also expand the conference to be a men's retreat.
The new basilica at Tallahassee Creek can be used in this way because it is not strictly an Orthodox building.
We couldn't pull this kind of thing off at our own parish church because our Eastern Orthodox canons wouldn't allow non-Orthodox Christians behind our altar.
At Saint Laurence, however, a full Western-Rite service with Anglicans could easily be pulled off. The Orthodox wouldn't be able to commune with the Anglicans, but could help them through all the steps of the Liturgy.
Establishing friendly ties with the local Anglicans in our area is a good idea. After all, not too many years back, most of us were together in Episcopalian parishes before the final apostasy of the Episcopal Church.
If we teach young men like these deeper ways of worshipping God, it will lead the AMIA in our area closer to Orthodox norms while truly bettering Anglican parish life.
And some Anglicans will be drawn to convert to Holy Orthodoxy.
We get the best of both worlds. Anglicans who are more Orthodox and new Orthodox Christians who decide to come all the way home.
And here's an absolutely crazy dream, while I'm at it.
Wouldn't it be a hoot to invite John Eldredge to speak at any "Men's Conference" portion of such a weekend?
I would love to see John exposed to the way we worship. He attended an Episcopal Church in the Springs for a period of time according to his own writings.
Pulling all of this off would be a huge coup for the new retreat center and I think would bear lasting fruit.
Blessings in the Holy Trinity, One God
According to a source at my home parish who has a family member who is an AMIA communicant, some of these young men want to go deeper into Liturgy and reverent worship but are being stymied.
At this point, an idea came to me.
As an Eastern Orthodox Christian in the Western Rite, and with a new conference center at Tallahassee Creek in Fremont County, we have an opportunity to address this need.
We could host a worship conference where we train these Anglicans in how we worship in the Western Rite. We could also expand the conference to be a men's retreat.
The new basilica at Tallahassee Creek can be used in this way because it is not strictly an Orthodox building.
We couldn't pull this kind of thing off at our own parish church because our Eastern Orthodox canons wouldn't allow non-Orthodox Christians behind our altar.
At Saint Laurence, however, a full Western-Rite service with Anglicans could easily be pulled off. The Orthodox wouldn't be able to commune with the Anglicans, but could help them through all the steps of the Liturgy.
Establishing friendly ties with the local Anglicans in our area is a good idea. After all, not too many years back, most of us were together in Episcopalian parishes before the final apostasy of the Episcopal Church.
If we teach young men like these deeper ways of worshipping God, it will lead the AMIA in our area closer to Orthodox norms while truly bettering Anglican parish life.
And some Anglicans will be drawn to convert to Holy Orthodoxy.
We get the best of both worlds. Anglicans who are more Orthodox and new Orthodox Christians who decide to come all the way home.
And here's an absolutely crazy dream, while I'm at it.
Wouldn't it be a hoot to invite John Eldredge to speak at any "Men's Conference" portion of such a weekend?
I would love to see John exposed to the way we worship. He attended an Episcopal Church in the Springs for a period of time according to his own writings.
Pulling all of this off would be a huge coup for the new retreat center and I think would bear lasting fruit.
Blessings in the Holy Trinity, One God
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
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
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
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