Thank You! Thank you for supporting Faith Encouraged Ministries for #GivingTuesday this year! We had a goal of $1000 for that day and we raised almost $2000 between our FaceBook efforts and our PayPal donation button! This was so Encouragd=ing to Fr. Barnabas and the whole Faith Encouraged Team! We...
I was blessed to be one of the guests on a recent Stewardship Calling podcast on Ancient Faith radio. My friend and parishioner, Bill Marianes, invited me to speak about the theology of the Orthodox Church regarding abortion, and we had a lively discussion about this very passionate and painful...
It was insulting. It was hurtful. And, to make matters worse, it wasn’t fair. I was shocked when someone I truly cared about started saying some very hurtful things about me to someone else. I guess my ego was so big that I believed no one would ever do such...
He loved scaring me. I had a buddy of mine who thought it was hilarious to sneak up behind me and yell as loud as he could. Of course, I’d jump two feet off the ground and he’d just laugh and laugh. After I stopped shaking, I’d laugh with him....
The word Holy means “set apart for a specific and exclusive use.” Something or someone who is holy is singularly dedicated to a single purpose and action. No wonder the Church gives us the gift of marriage as an icon of faithfulness and dedication to teach us about our true...
I’ve been saying “Orthodox on Purpose” for so long that sometimes I wonder if I’ve grown deaf to the wisdom behind the words. After all, the danger for any minister is to keep all the words of his purpose and forget the meaning behind them. Terrifying! But I’ve discovered that...
Today is Giving Tuesday. This focus started several years ago to help us reorient ourselves away from the overly hyped shopping frenzy of the holiday season so we don’t tumble into the sad prison of merely consuming! So Giving Tuesday has become a time where we donate to non-profits that...
As a boy, I loved the old Popeye the Sailorman cartoons. Every afternoon, we’d come home from school and my grandmother would let us watch the Popeye Club on Channel 5. It seemed each episode would have the patient and good Popeye put up with some shenanigans from Bluto. But...
St. Basil said, “And so let us be glad and bear with patience everything the world throws at us, secure in the knowledge that it is then that we are most in the mind of God.” What a true blessing to read and know, especially in a moment in human...
I hated what was coming and, what made it worse was, it was unavoidable. It was a confrontation with a supervisor that had been building for some time, and it wasn’t going to be pretty. As he and I sat in the office of the consultant that the company had...