1. Thomas L. Palke
2. Ezekiel
3. Benjamin Harju
The next several posts will look at the public testimony of Fr. John Fenton, another pastor in the LCMS who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy.
Fr. Fenton offers great advice to members of the LCMS who are exploring Eastern Orthodoxy. He states:
During a break while walking on campus, I happened to cross paths with Bishop Kallistos Ware as he was arriving. I knew he was coming, figured out quickly it was him, and followed the two or
three people ahead of me in greeting him. No doubt, he noticed my awkwardness in the protocol of asking a blessing, and so engaged me in a brief conversation. I told him I was Lutheran, and was considering Orthodoxy.He told me not to become Orthodox if I was upset with what’s happening in the Lutheran Church because the Orthodox Church won’t fix those problems. He told me not to reject Lutheranism, but to thank God for the good it brought me. And then he said, “If you become Orthodox, do so because you want to be Orthodox.” That was essentially the same message I heard from the few professors I spoke with (Fr Thomas Hopko and Fr Paul Tarazi among them) and from the several priests, deacons, seminary students and laymen that I met. I also heard, both explicitly and implicitly, that the Orthodox Church was not nirvana.
Posts
1 comment:
I have to agree with Fr. Fenton. Leaving any church for another will require removal of any baggage, since I think it will otherwise come with you into your new church home, if not in another form. While I am discouraged by what I see in the LCMS, I mean them no ill and am grateful for the strong scriptural and liturgical foundation that I received there. Coming into the Orthodox Church needs to be on its own merits. Raised in the LCMS I had to really fight the tendency to try to couch everthing I saw in the Orthodox Church in Lutheran terms or through a Lutheran prism. It's a whole different animal, if I may say so. You can't always compare apples to apples, when comparing. The OC also has peaches, oranges, and other tasty things to experience that the Lutheran church just doesn't have, to it's own detriment. I find myself almost feeling sorry for those I left behind, because I feel they have a minimalist/vanilla understanding of the Faith. I must be hungry, I keep talking about food...
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