General Advice for Priests (I think these are important for just about all of us just about all the time): Develop and maintain a good relationship with your choir director, lead chanter (Dyak), and chanters. This involves listening to them and taking their concerns seriously. Remember: they h … [Read more...]
Ten Suggestions for Chanting
Ten Commandments of Chanting and Singing Bring and maintain peace in the kliros. It’s a witness of cooperation, harmony, and reverence – nothing else belongs there (any more than it does in the altar or nave). I'd rather have tone deaf screamers at the kliros than grumblers, divas, and assa … [Read more...]
The Priest and the Parish Council (by Fr. Lawerence Farley)
Parish Councils are like personal computers in a number of ways. The initials for both are P.C.; neither existed before very modern times, and we can scarcely imagine life in the church here in the West without them. It is sobering and somewhat instructive to learn that in the early church … [Read more...]
Orthopraxis and Theosis – The role of ritual in the training of the mind
Here is the paper I presented (warts and all) at the St. Sophia Institute Conference on Vladimir Lossky's The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. The conference was excellent and recommend such things to all those interested in such things. The paper may be useful to priests and church lead … [Read more...]
You Can’t Plan for a Funeral
This title is not making a theological statement; of course we can and should prepare for our own funeral. This is about something else. There's a joke that is popular among priests. It goes something like this; Bishop: Father, I need you to come in for an important committee meeting on the … [Read more...]
Pastoral Strategy in an Iterated Game
As I mentioned yesterday, one of the first thing social scientists do when they want to model interactions is figure out whether the interactions are iterated (i.e. repeated). The vast majority of the work pastors do consists of repeated interactions. While this does take the pressure off of each d … [Read more...]
The Joy of Ministry being an Iterated Game
When social scientists model interactions, one of the first things they have to figure out is whether the interactions are iterated (i.e. repeat themselves) or not. Non-iterated games are rare (the classic "Prisoner's Dilemma" is the one most people are familliar with; the game of "Chicken" is … [Read more...]
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