Good Guys Wear Black | Discerning Your Vocation In The Orthodox Church
For Orthodox Christian Men Discerning A Vocation
by Ruth Siemens VIII. What Value Has Paul’s Strategy For Us Today? I am convinced that Paul’s strategy for producing missionary lay movements, for exponential growth, holds the solution for world evangelization for the 21st century! I think we cannot fulfill our mandate without Paul. So what can we derive from a study of Paul? 1. It gives us a tested and proven strategy to adapt and implement Paul gives us our only N.T. Read more…
by Ruth Siemens How Well Did Paul’s Strategy Work? Many of his lay evangelists were from unsavory, uneducated, pagan backgrounds. Most were slaves. None had anthropological or missiological training. It cost Paul dearly to bring them the gospel, and they risked their lives without pay to take it to others. Paul had provided a model of suffering. In ten years (the three journeys took a decade) Paul and his friends (a small team Read more…
by Ruth Siemens What Was Paul’s Strategy and How Effective Was It? It would take a longer paper to pull all this together, but I will just suggest a few points in Paul’s strategy. This “apostle to the Gentiles” had received a daunting commission from the risen Christ. He set out to evangelize the Roman empire, but with no source of personnel or money. But the Holy Spirit helped this strategic thinker to devise a plan that Read more…
by Ruth Siemens Why Did Paul Work When He Did Not Have To? We will consider only three of the several reasons he gives. The first two are part of his formal defense in 1 Cor. 9 and the third is in 2 Thess. 3. 1. Credibility Paul says twice that he works in order not to put an “obstacle” in the way of the Gospel, so his message and motivation will not become suspect to the Gentiles. (It was fine for Peter and others to get Read more…
by Ruth Siemens Orthodox Christianity thrives when both laypeople and clergy are intensely committed to evangelism and mission work, and some of the best work is done by 'tentmakers' - clergy and laity who work in the world to support themselves, but whose purpose in life is building up the Body of Christ. I say 'tentmakers' for clergy also, because although some may refer to a priest as a 'part time priest', I have not yet ever met Read more…
by Art Lindsley The number one fear of the millennial generation is living a meaningless life. In a recent informal survey of undergraduate students at Regent University, 27 percent of students asked expressed anxiety when considering their vocation. “Scared,” “uneasy,” “unsure,” “confused,” and “apprehensive” were common words in describing the way they felt about their future vocation. But college students Read more…
by Fr. Gregory Jensen In my last post (here), I talked about the search for a meaningful life. The argument I made is that together with marriage and family life, work is the natural context for meaning. Unfortunately many clergy frequently undervalue or dismiss work as valuable for the spiritual life and so many laypeople experience a schism between what they do Monday through Friday at work and what happens in the family or on Sunday Read more…
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