Expanding the Horizontal Call: A Typology of Social Influence on the Call to Ministry

This research examines the social actors and interactions that facilitate seminary students' sense of calling. Drawing from 36 in-depth interviews with first year Masters of Divinity students, we introduce six ideal typical social others who play a formative role in the early stages of a call to ministry: instigators, exemplars, interpreters, affirmers, challengers, and codiscerners. Together, these findings demonstrate that the call to ministry, while deeply personal, emerges through social interactions that facilitate and make plausible a person's sense of calling and that sustain it over time. Extending Richard Pitt's conceptualization of the “horizontal call,” this paper argues that social others help evoke and solidify—not merely legitimate—a personal sense of call. This research also highlights differences in the social structuring of call by gender. Despite considerable gains in the ordination of women, we find that many still face obstacles to experiencing and embracing a call to ministry.     

Discerning the Ministries of Women

In 1988, the historic Rhodes Inter-Orthodox Symposium on the Place of Women in the Orthodox Church encouraged, among other things, fuller participation of women in the life of the church. This article reports on the results of a study that solicited the views of Orthodox Christians regarding the participation of women in the life of the church. Nearly three-quarters of respondents clearly stated or intimated that they would like to see more opportunities for women to serve in the church. One-third of the respondents identified the issue of deaconesses in their essays. Responses here revealed a great diversity of experience, education, and opinion. Nevertheless, more than half of the respondents commenting on deaconesses showed an openness to this ministry. This may be a powerful measurement indicating that exploring the pastoral need for this and other ministries may well be long overdue.     

Save It for God: Confession and the Irrelevance of the Judicial System with Special Attention to Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

Confession is essential for spiritual growth, but the judicial system provides little room for it. The judiciary is particularly unequipped to help convicts grapple with their guilt. Dostoevsky was the first to raise this critique in The Brothers Karamazov.     

Spiritual Need Five: Providing Quality Pastoral Care as a Congregation

SUMMARY

Critical to the needs of older adults is the care and nurturing of the feelings and emotions that often offer context for the human spirit. Grounded in the history of pastoral care, this chapter explores an approach to pastoral care that is reflective of the author's study and experience in the parish.     

Chapter 8: “Always Green and Full of Sap”: Facilitating Wholeness in Aging

SUMMARY

Wholeness in aging is difficult to define, especially in the face of physical disability or catastrophic illness. How one meets the challenges of aging depends upon numerous physical, emotional, and spiritual factors. Rehabilitation may play an important role in restoring wholeness to those with physical disabilities. Likewise, a physical fitness program may lessen some of the effects of aging, helping the older person maintain a higher quality of life. The lived theologies of the older patients and their caregivers also interact, providing an important ground of connection in rediscovery of wholeness as well. Ultimately, our most important role as healthcare providers is to help our older patients regain and maintain this multidimensional wholeness even in times of physical challenge.     

Epiphanies: Small Miracles in Everyday Experiences of Dementia

This article approaches experiences of dementia from the perspective of key Quaker Testimonies, Quaker faith and practice. It is framed around five dimensions: the practice of reflection, the peace of silent worship, guidance of the Spirit, respect for “that of God in everyone,” and the mystery of faith. Each dimension includes contributions from persons with dementia and care partners. The stories illustrate times when individuals broke step with the old, made space for the new, reached for and experienced hope.     

Women’s Ministry in Ecumenical Perspective

Although discussion about the ministry of women seems to have come to a standstill as a result of arguments that don’t seem to change, the actual practices of the churches have evolved beyond doctrinal positions. In the Roman Catholic Church, many women have been appointed to positions in pastoral care and education, and even to decision‐making bodies. In the Orthodox Church, prerogatives previously reserved for nuns are beginning to be applied to lay women. But if we can entrust women with pastoral responsibilities, why is it not possible to move to include them in priestly ministry? To answer this question, we need to analyze the implicit levels of refusing the priesthood to women.     

What makes Christian bioethics Christian? Bible, story, and communal discernment.

Scripture is somehow normative for any bioethic that would be Christian. There are problems, however, both with Scripture and with those who read Scripture. Methodological reflection is necessary. Scripture must be read humbly and in Christian community. It must be read not as a timeless code but as the story of God and of our lives. That story moves from creation to a new creation. At the center of the Christian story are the stories of Jesus of Nazareth as healer, preacher of good news to the poor, and sufferer. The story shapes character and conduct and enables communal discernment.     

A Stark Examination of Prison Culture and Prison Ministry

Abstract : This article offers an insightful examination of prison ministry from the inside, from someone who has been involved with this ministry for over forty‐five years. The author discusses four major issues that are particularly costly, both in terms of personal human costs and also financial costs. First, society's misconceptions about prison violence, and the complex, varied ways prisoners experience violence. Second, the false sense of security the current practices of institutionalization create, and the consequences they have on the inmates. Third, the risk factors that can predispose children to ending up in prison, and the lack of care and attention those children often receive. And fourth, the way in which the criminalization of drug abuse has exacerbated many problems with the current prison system. The author concludes his article with some suggestions for reforming the prison system.     

Orthodox Christian Healthcare Ministry amidst the Tensions of Ecumenism

The paradoxes of globalization and the efforts toward the establishmentof a consolidated healthcare ministry have caused tensions whileaffording the possibility for true ecumenical dialogue. As today'ssocieties become more pluralistic, Orthodox Christian healthcareministry finds itself amongst these paradoxes and tensions.The content of Orthodox healthcare chaplaincy, which is centeredin its Eucharistic expression, maintains a sense of catholicityand unity. This though differs from a "psychological" understandingof pastoral care, which has developed. Therefore, there is aquestion of the chaplain's identity, a crisis of theology andecclesiology, which must be faced so that true unity can beattained. This article explains the content of Orthodox healthcarechaplaincy and addresses the issues of pastoral identity, theologyand psychology, together with the crisis of ecclesiology. Itis written with a true agony for unity.