As good as many points are in this summary it still seems to contain a lot of buzz-words and ideas that do not place the Sacraments at the heart.

In my experience, people leave the Church because they want to. They want to, in part, because they never had the authentic encounter with Jesus Christ or stopped expecting and nourishing it.

I came to the Church for one reason-Jesus Christ. The priest who baptised me was a disaster and the congregation was largely unwelcoming. I had no catechesis. What I did have was a clear recognition of the presence of the person of Jesus Christ in the Sacraments, particularly the Eucharist. I stay for that. I struggle for that. He continues to be merciful.

The Pauline Model is simply an exposition of the living presence of our Lord in community. As a “model” it is just as lifeless as any other model.

If lived, it will be different in each specific community to a certain extent having a dynamic form that adapts.

Fr. Gregory is correct though, unless our seminaries work to nurture the love of Christ in those who attend, they work against the Lord.

A key to the “Pauline Model” is the laying on of hands. Period.

But we lay folk have been encouraged not to trust that because our Bishops are flawed. We have been encouraged to trust instead our own understanding and will rather than humbling myself in repentance –refusing to speak of the sins of my elder brothers–knowing that my sins are even darker.

Congregations have the clergy they both need and deserve. Clergy have the congregation necessary for their salvation as well.

The difficulty is each wanting the other to be different and ignoring the reality of the Person of Jesus Christ in our midst.

Jesus Christ is to be loved not thought about.

Let me add that, in addition to what you point out here, another problem is that many Orthodox clergy have no relationship with Jesus Christ. They aren’t pastors in the biblical sense because they aren’t disciples of Christ. As a result, as Theodore Kalmoukos points out in the article you quote, clergy become little more than religious tax-collectors.

Or to put it more gently, a clergyman who never formed as a disciple of Christ, can’t fulfill his role as pastors. And so, as you point out, his understanding of his ministry, the congregation and himself is framed not by the Gospel but by the ever-shifting values and expectations of a fallen world. As a result, can’t witness to the joy that comes with serving Christ and His Church because he hasn’t experienced it.

Until the personal spiritual formation of the clergy–both those preparing for ministry and those currently serving–is at the heart of what our seminaries do, the pastoral situation in the Church will only become worse. The Pew studies on religion in America confronts us with the facts on the ground. The Church in America is shrinking and shrinking fast. To take only one example, between 2007 and 2014, 30% of those who joined the Church as adults left.

Though precise numbers are hard don’t exist, when you recall that new people were coming in the front door while converts were leaving by the back door, this gives us a likely defection rate of at least 40-50%. If we can’t even keep the people who make a decision to join the Church, what kind of future do we have as more and more of those baptized as infants drift away?

Again, thanks for the insightful–and needed–review!

In Christ,

+FrG