Monday, October 1, 2018

Real "Young Adult" ministry. Everything else is waste of time.


Posted by Byzantine, TX

10 comments:

  1. Fr Christopher MoodyOctober 1, 2018 at 8:36 PM

    Yes. I hate the proliferation of so called ministries. Back to brass tack ministry basis.

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  2. John (Ad Orientem)October 1, 2018 at 10:38 PM

    The best meme I have seen in a year.

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  3. 123October 2, 2018 at 9:32 AM

    The middle two are the only ones specific enough to have an effect. The first and last are just oddly constructed and require a whole host of assumptions. And the image itself would seem to apply only to the third, and a very specific, nostalgic longing for an media-created Americana for a certain demographic of white person a la MAGA

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    Replies
    1. Byzantine, TXOctober 2, 2018 at 10:33 AM

      That’s a lot of assumptions on your end too I’d say.

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    2. The Anti-GnosticOctober 2, 2018 at 10:37 AM

      I guess that's what separate countries are for, so people from different demographics can pursue their own visions of what constitutes the Good Life.

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  4. The Anti-GnosticOctober 2, 2018 at 10:58 AM

    This gets back to something I've raised before and oddly, for all my controversial stands, is the theme that's been most likely to get me censored on Orthodox blogs:

    "Evangelism" does not have a good ROI. Everybody knows where to find us, our liturgies and writings are all online, and we're not going to tell our Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim neighbors and business partners that they need to leave their faith and convert to Orthodoxy. We only tell that to Protestants, because they're less likely to refuse to speak to us again or punch us in the mouth for our effrontery.

    The best recruiting tool is in your own pews, with generations raised up and bound to the Faith through the life cycle-events of Churching, Baptism, Marriage, and Unction/Burial. Bonus if you really act like a community of Saints, helping your young people to get married and get jobs and supporting your elderly and sickly. Then you have something to tell people to "come and see." The Mormons, Hasidim and Anabaptists do this, so they get to be the ones who show up for the future.

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    Replies
    1. JakeOctober 2, 2018 at 1:36 PM

      Well stated The Anit-Gnostic. I would say however that the Great Commission does not relieve us from evangelizing Buddhists, Muslims, etc., its just that we are timid - we should risk a bloody mouth more often.

      Also, realize you will be misunderstood and accused of being "inward looking", proposing a "retreat", aping the Amish, etc., particularly from the intellectual class (think Public Orthodoxy) and unfortunately a great many of the clergy as well. These folks often seem almost uninterested in passing the faith on to our children, though most of them are in denial about how far secularism has reached into our parishes and how it is the "negation of worship" as Schmemann and others have pointed to. They all are saying "just keep the course, and all will be well, all will be will"

      In this environment, men such as Rod Dreher of Benedict Option fame are veritable prophets. Like or dislike his prescriptions, at least he has admitted and is thinking about the problem...

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    2. JakeOctober 2, 2018 at 1:42 PM

      Also Vigen Guroian has a book coming out Nov. 6th on the subject of secularism, culture, etc. both within and without the Orthodox Church in these western lands. He is more attuned to all this than most. I had very high hopes for the book but after reading an advance copy of a book review a friend wrote, I am a little more circumspect as it appears that Guroian might have pulled up a little short. I still believe the book will be well worth the time and will only contribute to this subject...

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    3. The Anti-GnosticOctober 2, 2018 at 2:37 PM

      "Guroian might have pulled up a little short"

      That seems to be a universal trait in the commentariat. Everybody agrees we are drowning in a rising tide of secularism and modernist heresy but nobody wants to "go there" and propose an actual Christendom.

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    4. JakeOctober 2, 2018 at 3:30 PM

      Well, even if you don't have a detailed proposal for a Christendom you have a widespread longing for it. Even the Secular/Orthodox hybrid that Public Orthodoxy and the like propose is a kind of Christendom.

      I personally lean toward the Scriptural understanding of in, but not of the world. I think Christendom(s) have been tried and come up short in all sorts of ways. Being a minority, a remnant, perhaps even a culture within a culture is realistic and what is before us. Longing for a triumphal Christendom is a vanity I think.

      Again, this is what Dreher sees and what the Ben Op is about. I think he has the lay of the (secular) land right, and is asking the right questions about how we as this minority live Faithfully in it...

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