A Visit to an Eastern Orthodox Church

Coming into the community of believers at worship should be disconcerting. It should leave the visitor with several impressions: whatever this is these people take it very seriously; I don't understand it; if I join I might have to change.

— Frederica Mathewes-Green in At the Corner of East and Now

Our first visit to St. Anne's Orthodox Church was the first Sunday of Advent, December 2, 2012. In my (Andrea's) previous posts I've explained why we walked in the doors in the first place. Here I will describe (as best as words can) what happened that first visit. For the sake of fluidity (and length) I will do as little explaining as I can in this post. As questions pop up ask in a comment below and those will be topics of future posts!

Why Randy's Going East - Part 3

In which I take an aside to briefly discuss my delay in writing, and where I finally explain how we came to attend St. Anne's. I must make the disclaimer that this is really long, and I've struggled to finish it for lack of memory on some of the details. I know I'm probably missing important details, expounding too much on trivial ones, and just generally not explaining myself very well. Please bear with me (or don't--you can stop reading at any time!).

Also, here are links to the previous articles:
| Part 1 | Part 2 |

Why Randy's Going East - Part 2

Previously, in Part 1, I shared that the EFCA seemed like a good home for us, denomination-wise, and that the particular church we were attending seemed like a very good one. To fill that out just a bit—talk about a family-friendly church. Our girls were very well-loved by the nursery workers and Sunday School teachers and it was hard to have to tell them we were leaving when the time finally came to do so. We were in a supportive adult Sunday School class of parents of young children, and enjoyed their company and sharing a little bit of our lives together. I say all this to emphasize that it was not because of the people at our last church that we left it. Quite to the contrary.

Getting back to the “Christian Libertarianism™” (I'm going to trademark that phrase and make MILLIONS!) thing... Looking back on our experience in the EFCA, in my opinion, if you're in a church that does leave a lot of doctrinal specifics up to the parishioner, the church ends up somewhere on this spectrum:

1. No one in the church will be able to agree on much of anything, because of all the differences in doctrinal opinion, and there will be chaos.
2. Everyone in the church will ”get along“ without really agreeing on deeper theological matters, and therefore just have a weak sort of surface unity.
3. There will (mostly) be a unity of doctrinal belief—it just won't be codified.

A sneak-preview of my thoughts on Thirsting for God in a Land of Shallow Wells

Note: All scripture quotations herein are from the New King James Version (NKJV).

I definitely need to and want to do a full commentary on the book, Thirsting For God in a Land of Shallow Wells, by Matthew Gallatin. However, For now I want to just share a few little bits that have really blown me away.

Why Randy's Going East - Part 1

So, following Andrea's series on her backstory of why we're attending St. Anne and are seriously considering becoming Orthodox, I felt it was time to present my perspective. If I don't get around to it now I don't know when I will! Plus I don't think I'll feel like I can write on other subjects until this has been written. So, without further ado...

Where to begin? It is indeed hard to pick a point of beginning. My whole life, in a sense, has brought me to this point. For now, I'll try to stick to what's happened since we've been in Oregon.

OK, so for pretty much all of 2012 (through November, that is) we had been attending an EFCA church. We chose this church for a number of reasons, but a big one was their acceptance of members with a wide variety of positions on what they called “non-essentials”. I have to almost chuckle a bit because the EFCA, in attempting not to make doctrinal statements about certain issues, does so anyway by calling them “non-essentials”! But to be fair, they essentially hold to generally Reformed Evangelical theology.

Why was this “Christian Libertarianism” so attractive to me, you might ask?

Reevaluating Our Beliefs - Part 4

In Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 I (Andrea) have explained three of four streams that have flowed together causing us to explore Eastern Orthodoxy. This will be my final post on how we've gotten here; Randy may give his perspective in other posts. We will certainly have other posts on various theological and practical issues that we hope challenge you, you can learn from and will comment on.

In Part 3 I talked about several ways in which my role as a mother was causing me to doubt our current choice of church. This post will detail one more aspect of childrearing that was making me look elsewhere.

Reevaluating Our Beliefs - Part 3

In Part 1 and Part 2 I (Andrea) discussed the first two of four main threads that have led me (and Randy by extension) to discover and explore the Eastern Orthodox Church.

In choosing where to attend church once we moved to Oregon we found one we thought was perfect. No, we didn't really think it was "without issue" or "without problems." We just thought it fit the bill of:

• On the conservative end, theologically and socially.
• We would not be required to be re-bapatized.
• We could both commune.
• It was not too far to drive.

Other things that seemed like positives included a good balance of contemporary and traditional music in the worship service, established children's programming (i.e. nursery and preschool Sunday School available so we could be free of the girls during both adult Sunday School and the worship service), established community groups/Bible studies we could join (especially important for Randy to make friends in this part of the world).

In researching the theology of the Evangelical Free church we found it very appealing that they espoused "Unity in essentials," allowed for "diversity in nonessentials," and "charity in all." For our Protestant minds, frustrated by the division in the church, this was quite refreshing. God, however, had other ideas.

Reevaluating Our Beliefs - Part 2

In Part 1 I (Andrea) laid the groundwork for the long answer to the question "How long did it take you two to reevaluate your beliefs? It seemed rather quick." I ended saying I decided to see what the Orthodox church had to say about Calvinism and Arminianism. A quick and dirty Google search took me to a forum where the answer to the question "Does the Orthodox church believe something closer to one or the other?" appeared to be they believe both, depending on each individual and his needs and situation. Which is something we'd said, in jest, at the time of the discussion in Bible study. That itself was pretty awesome, actually, since it implied that God's salvation was not just one-size-fits-all (again, I find myself not fitting molds lately, so this was appealing.) ***I have since learned this is not the best way to describe Orthodox salvation theology, but I'm giving the play-by-play, so bear with me.*** Suffice it to say I was intrigued, at least.

Reevaluating Our Beliefs - Part 1

Jamie posed a great question in the midst of the latest Facebook dialogue about Orthodoxy. He asked, "How long did it take you two to reevaluate your beliefs? It seemed rather quick." I (Andrea) thought that was such a great question it warranted a blog post, not merely a FB comment. So thanks, Jamie!

The short answer is "Yes, it was a drastic and quick paradigm shift for us." Attending a typical, evangelical Protestant church for a year; before that being raised in the more traditional but still totally Protestant Lutheran and Presbo churches (that's for you, Scott!); attending thoroughly Reformed GCC. Yep, we were as steeped as we could be in Western, Protestant thought. So to suddenly be considering Eastern Orthodoxy, which is indeed in some ways externally similar to Roman Catholicism, and decidedly neither Western nor Protestant, is definitely eye-brow raising.

The long answer, however, is it has been brewing for quite a while, as described below.
:-)

I can picture it like it was yesterday sitting in one of the GCC Humanities Core classes when the Predestination discussion came up. I had never heard of it before (as Lutherans don't believe it in the same way Calvinists do.) As I learned about it I was always exceedingly uncomfortable. I couldn't fathom God being like that (i.e. deterministic in His sovereignty.) So mostly I just disagreed inside and rolled my eyes whenever the topic came up. For years.

Then we moved back here and I began listening to a Bible teacher who broadcasts on the local Christian AM radio station (comparable to WMHR, for the CNY readership). He is firmly non-Calvinist, but hesitates to call himself Arminian either (which in-and-of-itself I appreciate that he doesn't totally fit one mold or another, as I find myself more and more that way also.) Randy being Presbyterian by heritage I decided I better figure out whether or not I could ever sign on to Presbyterian theology, and predestination/TULIP seemed like a good place to start.

I listened to Steve Gregg's broadcasts and lectures until I was thoroughly convinced something closer to Arminianism made more sense than Calvinism or Lutheranism when it comes to how salvation is procured. This, providentially, coincided with our fledgling Bible study going through Romans. What I had been learning made so much sense I was actually able to articulate it coherently at Bible study without getting flustered or emotional even though I didn't have a perfect answer for every question raised. (Those of you who studied with me before may appreciate how huge this was for me.)

We are blessed to have in our group another history major who now teaches at a local Christian school. In addition to the knowledge and perspective that provides he grew up Pentacostal, grew disillusioned and discovered Lutheranism after college. In our discussions Joe often brings things back to "the early church" and the extant writings dating from the first and second centuries. In this discussion he said, "Well both Calvinism and Arminianism were 16th century ideas so I'd be more interested in what the Orthodox church has to say on the topic." So I looked it up.

Being Right, Pride, and Ruffled Feathers

It's funny how on one hand I seem to want to get along with everyone, but want to be a bit provocative and question people's assumptions (thus ruffling some feathers) on the other. Neither of these are great ideas. Being provocative for the sake of being provocative is just annoying--it means you're just trying to show everyone how right you are. Nobody likes that. But of course if I'm always just trying to keep quiet and not ruffle any feathers, then I feel like at the very least that I'm not expressing myself (21st c. language, I know) or being too wishy-washy or something.

It is with this in mind that I want to humbly ask the forgiveness of anyone on Facebook to whom I've come across as arrogant or snooty in discussions about the Orthodox faith; more specifically, discussions about Sola Scriptura. It is no doubt somewhat due to insecurity with these new-found ideas from the Orthodox church that I have probably argued a bit too strongly about the subject. It's one thing to open up a topic for discussion, but it's another thing to post a question with a hidden agenda of trying to convince everyone to agree with you. The thing is, I feel like all the Christians I've known (especially family) probably think I'm nuts or am abandoning the True Faith by moving towards something that looks so "Catholic". So to compensate I want to try to prove how my position is the right one--I don't want to look like a fool or heretic. So yeah, that would be my pride at fault. Please forgive me for putting my personal image above respect for you.

I do in all humble earnestness want to continue having discussions revolving around what we're learning on this new journey (there is so much!!!). I want to share why I am indeed questioning many bastions of Protestant thinking. I want people to know what Orthodoxy is, and what it's not, because, gosh darn it, I'm exited about it! My hope is that we can maybe have these discussions here on the blog, rather than on Facebook--especially since Facebook is for all to see and this is a bit more of a private matter than that. I'll probably link to the blog posts on Facebook, but keep the discussions in the comments here, if possible. We'll see how it goes. Of course that also means I'll have to generate content. But then I've been meaning to get going on that anyway...

May we all come to know God more deeply and fully through his Son, Jesus Christ.

+ Randy

Books, etc. (#1)

See Links, Books, etc.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles...

Hello, and welcome to my blog about (Eastern) Orthodoxy. Or maybe, my discovery of the Orthodox church. In actuality, this journey started in earnest a little over a month ago when Andrea, the girls and I visited St. Anne's for the first time for a Divine Liturgy service. A month ago today we attended our first St. Nicholas' Day service, and ever since we've been reading, reading, reading, talking with Father Steven and many others, while attending services on Sundays.

We are discovering something we never really knew existed. So many questions and thoughts have flooded our minds and discussion over the last month. I hope to begin to share some of that here, as a way of documenting our path, and maybe to enhance my writing skills a bit as a bonus. So far, blogging has not worked well for me, but I figure if I just share some of my little insights here and there, that will be a good start. I'll try to fill in the details of our greater story and how we got here as I can, but for now, I plan to start in medias res.