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...]
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...]
On the Joy of Service, Well Done
One of the many things I am thankful for in being an Orthodox priest is that the most important thing I do is scripted. As a musician, I was never inclined to jazz (or any kind of improvisation); I found my greatest joy when playing difficult pieces with a group that worked well together. E … [Read more...]
On the Problem of Scientific and Spiritual Validation
As a social scientist, I was trained to test models based on their internal and external validity. A good model would explain a significant portion of the variation within the sample data (i.e. have internal validity) AND have applicability beyond that sample (i.e. in the "real world" or on … [Read more...]
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