As a spiritual discipline, iconography is to be considered a vocation, on the same level as any other ecclesiastical vocation. It is certainly so in the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is not be considered a “job” in the profane sense of the word, or some mundane commercial venture. It woul...
even if they’re not paid staff. The people who are paid staff often go above and beyond their job roles to keep the church running. Putting on an awards program that recognizes the hard work those people offer is a way to raise some money while thanking the people who support you. ...
to prepare, to restore, to make fully ready. Equipping is basically just providing the tools and training that the crew needs for the job. And just like on any construction site, God has given us the necessary tools for the job.
Some of these are healthy losses like job transitions or college student move-aways, and some are due to spiritual backsliding and the church hoppers that we all know so well. This means that for a church to grow annually by 10% it actually needs to grow by 20%. As I’ve written in ...
In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah, speaks of those God commissioned as watchmen. However, he does not commend them for a job well-done; in fact, he rebukes them as nothing more than “dumb dogs”. He indicts them as “blind” and “ignorant”. He suggests they value the comfo...
Of course, this kind of people-as-commodity thinking is compounded by living in a highly mobile society. We can move on from a job, move on from a school, move on from a church, any time that relationships become difficult. We can move halfway across the county if we wish and “star...
musicians and writers, Zabel admires her namesake, Armenian poet Zabel Asadour. `Her deeply felt verse is a constant call to never forget our homeland and yet adapt,' she says. `I live with the wonderful people of Mumbai by the tenets we get as a baptism blessing: havatk, hoous, ser...
Tired of being undervalued at his job, 18-year-old Dick Stack took a $300 loan from his grandmother and opened his first fishing tackle shop in Binghamton, New York in 1948. Three decades later, he expanded his offerings, selling equipment for all kinds of athletic and physical endeavors, ...
All those voices. Job, scratching his sores in the ashes of his life with a shard of broken pottery. Elijah, splitting a bull into four blood-soaked pieces and calling down the fire of God to defeat the prophets of Baal. Sort of a my-God-is-bigger-than-yours. St. John of Patmos ...
Syd wrote songs and not all of them were about one person or another. It was his job. His songs were more often a jumble of ideas put together to serve his purpose. I think it’s risky, even though you like the idea, to project this as it just leads to further mythologizing. Syd...