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...
We are a people strongly shaped by an inherent mistrust of all authority except our own and we hold to the notion of equality to the point of idolatry. This might be good for having a culture shaped exclusively by free market ideals and entrepreneurship, but it might not...
One of the most fundamental marks of maturity is the clear and unmistakable realization that actions have consequences. Ideas have consequences because they become actions. And avoiding consequences is always a sign of immaturity. No wonder our modern world is struggling, as it has always struggled, with the consequences of...
Thank you to all our monthly supporters at Patreon.com/FaithEncouraged. Your gifts make our continued ministry possible. From all of us at Faith Encouraged Ministries, a big THANK YOU and THANK GOD for you! If you'd like to join our over 100 monthly supporters, go to Patreon.com/FaithEncouraged and find out how for...
Through all of human history, humanity has conceived of the "perfect" society and each time we humans have endeavored to build it, it turned out to either fail or become a nightmare. In 1787, the Founding Fathers of the United States met in Independence Hall in Philadelphia to hammer...
Let's face it; we all have to deal with unpleasant realities. You know the situations I'm talking about: those moments in life when there either a difficult confrontation that has to happen or a struggle with bureaucracy or just a difficult relationship that has to end or change. It's...
I was on Broadway in New York City, and I had tickets to "The Fiddler on the Roof!" And I was as giddy as a school boy. This is one of my favorite plays, mainly because one of the deep vacuums in my life was a sense of rootlessness...
We have over 30 families going through our A Journey to Fullness class at the parish and they keep hearing me say "This is a family, not a corporation or a club." One of the key aspects of Orthodoxy that drew me to the Church was this mindset away...
We have an annual Greek Festival at our parish that we have done for the past 14 years. It is exhausting and wonderful. When I first came to the parish about 8 years ago, we had to ask our neighboring parishes to send their Greek dancers to our festival...
As someone who has spent most of my adult life either as a police officer or in the nonprofit world, I can tell you, generosity is both addictive and life giving. It really is. Studies have shown that there are real psychological changes in someone's behavior and mood when...
