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The Lord of Spirits
Convert Surge: The Wise Welcome
Father Andrew presents on the current Orthodox convert surge. How do we understand and address it? Live Q&A with Fr. Andrew and Fr. Stephen follows. Recorded at the 2026 Parish Life Conference of the Antiochian Diocese of Miami and the Southeast, June 10-13 in Springdale, AR.
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- [01:06]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
The following was recorded live at the 2026 Parish Life Conference of the Antiochian Orthodox Diocese of Miami and The Southeast, held June 10th 13th in Springdale, Arkansas. We begin with a short presentation followed by a live Q and A with the gathered audience.
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Father Stephen DeYoung
We'll see if you clap afterwards.
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Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's right.
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Father Stephen DeYoung
That's the real test.
- [01:35]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's the question. Yeah, you know, there's one of my favorite memes that has popped up. You guys know what memes are, right? Okay, I'm just checking. Generation Check. One of my favorite memes that has popped up in recent years. Days. Recent years on the Ortho web is a Twitter exchange in which on Twitter, someone wrote, you know, there is no blank outside the Orthodox Church. And the response to that was, parking. There is no parking outside the Orthodox Church. And so the first question, the question that I have for all of you is, how many of you is that true for your parish where there's parking problems at your church? Yes. Welcome to the Orthodox convert surge. And that's what I want to talk about as my presentation. What we're going to do is these sessions are going to be mostly Q and A. And so you can see there's two microphones up here up front, which you can use to come and stand and ask questions. But the way that we're going to begin is, is with each of us giving a short presentation. Because it's kind of weird to just say, okay, ask questions. That's a little weird. So I want to talk today. I have no idea what Father Stephen's doing tomorrow.
- [03:04]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I'm going to talk about mouse habitats tomorrow.
- [03:08]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And the great thing is, it's 50 50. Whether that's actually true or not. I mean, it's true. So we're going to give a short presentation and then have a conversation. So if you have a question that occurs to you while the presentation is happening, write it down so you don't forget. If you have an angry comment that you would like to give during the presentation, write it down so that you don't forget. And if you just do, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, like in welcome Back, Kotter, it's another generation check there. Then we probably will not call on you because we have provided microphones that you can stand in front of to ask your questions. So before I begin, actually, just to kind of check the audience, how many of you. How many of you have listened to the Lord of Spirits podcast? Okay. All right. We're in a mostly safe room. It seems it's good or Disgruntled or just. That could be also the case. I listen to that one. I listed five minutes of one episode, and those guys. Yeah. So I want to talk about the convert surge. And I travel a decent amount, and wherever I go, I ask people about how their parishes are experiencing it. And so it raises a lot of interesting questions. And I think that many of our clergy, and certainly a lot of our laity have been caught a little off guard by this. You know, I mean, how many of you launched a big evangelistic program, and that's why your parking is terrible now. Right? No one did this. It was not a thing. We all got together and said, let's do that apostolic thing we've been supposed to be doing all these years. No, no. It's pretty clear that God has sent these people. And the place I want to begin is to actually ask the question, what does it mean to convert? Because I think that often it's sort of taken for granted that conversion means becoming a member. You know, I didn't used to be a member of the Orthodox Church, and now I'm a member. I did the things I had to do to become a member, and so now I'm Orthodox, and. But it's actually very hazy for a lot of people. I've seen people on X, formerly known as Twitter. Does anyone actually call it X? No. We all still say they're tweeting, Right. Even in news articles, it says X. And then in parentheses, formally known as Twitter, because no one calls it X, except for the guy who owns the Tesla company. I guess I've actually seen people saying, I'm Orthodox. And then when someone says, oh, which parish do you go to? They say, I haven't visited one yet. Which is kind of hilarious if you're the kind of person who goes to a parish life conference, because, you know, y' all have been to church at least a couple times, I hope. But there are many people for whom this is somewhere down the line, that becoming an orthodox Christian is primarily about making a kind of ideological decision. And indeed, this arises from the Protestant culture, especially the evangelical Protestant culture of the United States, where you can say, today, I became a Christian. And what you mean by that is, I decided deep within my heart to do something. Right. And I think a lot of people, that's their notion of becoming Orthodox, too, is they made a decision. And indeed, I mean, how many of you were raised in evangelical context like I was? Yeah. So y' all probably very familiar with the language of, I made a decision for Christ, and That's the thing that checks off the big box that says, oh, you're a Christian now. Which, of course, that's a very foreign way of thinking, way of being for an orthodox Christian. You know, you made a decision. Oh, great. Okay. Now there's some things to do, right? So what does it actually mean to convert? I think one of the keys to this problem is found at the beginning of the baptism service, where there is what in the fancy Greek terms is what's called the apotaxis and the syndaxis. And the first one, the apotaxis, is asking the person to deny the devil, right? That I reject the devil. And indeed, in many forms of this, there's the whole spitting thing, which is the one part that a lot of people remember. But, you know, it's, do you renounce the devil in all his works and all his service and all his pride, right? Or pomp, as it's sometimes translated is pomp. Do you renounce his pomp? I love that, you know, do you renounce him? Right? And that's the apothaxis, which means, literally means I'm no longer ordered with him and his. His bunch. Right? And then the syndaxis, which in our older books it says, you know, dost thou unite thyself to Christ? But now actually a better translation is our newer book that says, dost thou align thyself with Christ? You could also say, although it would sound a little weird, do you pledge your allegiance to Christ? Right. And that's the synodaxis, to be ordered with Christ and his saints. Actually, I still need power here because I can watch my laptop is dying slowly, slowly, not immediately. And so at that moment, you're saying, I'm leaving this bunch and I'm joining this bunch. And that's a very 3D experience, right? And you're doing it at the door of the nave. The idea being that you're about to cross over that threshold and come in. And so there is this turning away from the devil and turning to Christ. A lot of people will define conversion as also being turning away from sin and turning towards Christ. And that's, you know, especially for those of you raised evangelical, like, you're very familiar with that kind of language, and that turns out to be correct. You can keep that one. You're turning away from sin, you're turning away from the devil, from his bunch, and you're, you're, you're joining yourself to Christ. It's not just a decision, it's an actual movement from One to another. And so that's what it means in the most basic sense to convert. Converting Americans is a kind of a curious thing because in the United States we're so used to conversion being a choice, right? Like I decided to become Orthodox, I decided to become a Baptist, I decided to become a Pentecostal, I met somebody deeply weird and I decided to become a Scientologist because I was also a very big bank account for those of you who that was funny. I'm very honored that you know what that means for Americans. It's a self conscious choice. I was this, and now I've decided to become this. And this presents, I think, a kind of problem for the traditional Orthodox consciousness. And by that I don't mean tradition as in holy tradition. I mean the conventions that we've experienced for centuries upon centuries, which is that in most of what they would call Orthodox countries, which use that term advisedly, by the way, if you actually know something about a lot of those countries, in most Orthodox countries, no one decides to be Orthodox. Your parents bring you to church when you're a baby and you're Orthodox, I'm sure that, you know, that describes probably many people in this room. How many of you here were your parents decided to make you an Orthodox Christian? Yes, this is a very convert heavy room. But there are some of you, your parents decided to bring you and you're Orthodox because they brought you and then they raised you that way. And so there's this kind of question of inherited religion versus a self conscious religion. What's interesting about America is that we know from the significant loss of people raised Orthodox who are no longer in the church, that self conscious religion has come for us all. You know, for those of you whose parents brought you to the Orthodox Church as a little baby the first time, the reason that you are still here is because you have decided to stay. You had to make a choice to stay. Your neighborhood is probably not an Orthodox neighborhood. Your town is not an Orthodox town. It's not just the thing that everybody does. You had to decide. It's a self conscious choice. And this has good and bad elements to it, but I think in a lot of ways it connects us much more to the. Not to the many, many centuries of sort of inherited Orthodox identity, but rather to the first few centuries of Christianity in which to make the choice to be a Christian meant you could die. It meant that you were stepping outside of the worship of the gods of your family, or that you were stepping outside of the tradition of the scribes and The Pharisees. If you were a Judean becoming a Christian, it was a choice. I'm not saying that our time exactly mirrors that time, but in so many ways it does. And I think that's really an important thing for us to realize that a lot of the way that Orthodox Christians talk is about trying to reconstruct some kind of Christendom. Like, well, we lost it. You know, the Turks took Constantinople or the Muslims invaded the Middle east or whatever point you want to point at, you know, or, you know, all those, all those glorious monarchies became republic nation states in the 19th, 20th century. And so we lost it. We need to get back to that. You know, I mean, I don't know if there's any avowed monarchists in the room or people who want a grand Orthodox empire, but that is not going to happen in your lifetime. Just accept that now. You can pine for that. Maybe that's the ideal, I don't know. But it's not going to happen. Where we are is where we are. So that kind of brings us a little bit to the question of how it is that people show up at our doors. How many here would you say that when people show up at the doors and you ask them, how did you hear about this? That the first thing they say has something to do with the Internet? Yeah, almost everybody. Almost everybody. Gone are the days where, like when I became an Orthodox Christian almost 30 years ago now, most people said, oh, I was reading church history and I looked up in a phone book. Or I used AltaVista. Who remembers AltaVista?
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Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. Ask Jeeves was clearly superior. Ask your.
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Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I remember when Yahoo was trying to compile a catalog of every website on the Internet. You remember that? That was really a thing back in 1996, back when fear of Bueller's Day off was only a 10 year old movie. Because today, June 11, 2026, it is a 40 year old movie. Yes. There's another generation check for you took his day off back in 1986. Yeah, most people are showing up because of the Internet in one way or another. And there's a lot of ways that they're encountering orthodoxy on the Internet that are healthy and wholesome. And then there's a lot of ways that are other and that presents a lot of pastoral challenges for our clergy and for the laity that are trying to help them come in and actually I've already had this conversation like I think five times in the last 24 hours with other clergy here. You know, I've had a Couple clergy, like, well, what do you do when someone says that they've been listening to, and I'm not going to name any names, but fill in a name here and then they, like, that's the reason that they're here. Like, what do you do about that? And I mean, my advice is to say, thank God you're here, but now it's time to do this thing in 3D. Because the orthodox life is lived in 3D. It's okay if your introduction to Orthodox Christianity was centered on some person or some argument or whatever it might be, it's okay. It's okay if you feel like the world is insane and you're looking for some kind of safe haven in the storm, and maybe your idea of a safe haven is not exactly what the Orthodox Church is. Maybe for some political reason you showed up, it's okay. However you got here, God brought you here, but now you're here, right? So if the reason you came is not really completely about Christ, it's time to make it about Christ. And if your priest sees that you're not quite there yet, it's incumbent upon him to say, okay, well, let's take some time, you know, to center you on Christ, right? And so then the question is like, well, what does catechesis actually look like? For many decades, catechesis in the Orthodox Church has largely been what I call the orthodoxy 101 approach, which could be essentially accomplished by handing them Metropolitan Callisto Swear's book, the Orthodox Church, and saying, read this. Like, those are the topics, right? I mean, we've all experienced that probably on some level. And so at the end, what you get is from that class is someone who can pass a 101 college course in Orthodoxy, which is not a bad thing to be able to do. But as I've sometimes had conversations with clergy, I'll say, you know, Father, imagine in your mind the ideal parishioner, right, that's doing all the things that you tell your people to do. Is your catechesis training people for that. And in most cases, the answer that I've gotten from clergy when I ask that question is, hmm, because they realize they've been doing the orthodoxy 101 thing, which, I mean, I know in some parishes the class is literally called Orthodoxy 101. So don't me, bro. You know, but I mean, again, I think there's nothing wrong with that. Like, there's nothing wrong with learning that information. But this sort of assumption that training Orthodox Christians means, like, sort of taking like fired up Bible believing Baptists and adding icons and stuff like that, like that's, that should not be a thing. And it's increasingly not a thing because the world's supply of, you know, fervent Bible believing Baptists is actually waning. You know, more and more people being raised without religion at all or the religion they're being raised with is not, you know, that old time religion. It's something else. And so that means that what is, what should, in my opinion, what should catechesis be? Well, think of that faithful parishioner and then train them to do that. Train them to be people who come to worship very regularly. And I'll say since I'm back in the south, not to throw shade on my previous place that I lived, but just the culture of orthodoxy in the south is different than it is in the northeast where I came from. I remember the first time I was back at All Saints in Raleigh and Orthros was about to begin and I look out and there's 100 people standing there waiting for it to begin. I was like, is this the twilight zone? Because in most of the rest of the country, no one goes to that service. You know, there might be two or three. And so the habits of some parishes are different than the habits of others. And it's very difficult to train. When a parish has bad habits, it's difficult to train. Even the new people with good habits, they're like, well, why should I do something differently than everybody else here, Father? Which is a hard question to answer. But those are the things I think that catechesis needs to focus on especially is here's how you be a faithful corporate worshiper. Here's how you be someone who faithfully prays at home. Here's how you be someone who gives alms faithfully. Here's how you be someone who volunteers faithfully in your parish. You know, here's how. That's really the big question is the word how. And I mentioned, of course, you know, that it can be difficult to get people to take on the habits of everyone else. And this was especially true in the early church because if you look at the earliest sort of catechisms, they're actually not largely what you would call about theology. They're mostly about behavior. Here's how you stop being a demon worshiping pagan. Here's how you live in such a way with all the morality of a Christian, because for a lot of them, unless they were raised as part of the Judean people, that stuff was not taken for granted. Like when St. Paul has to tell a guy in Corinth, stop sleeping with your mother in law. I think probably on some level he was probably like, well, wait, what? That's what you guys do here. You don't sleep with your mother in law or whoever else you think you should be sleeping with, you know, because that was completely normal in their world, you know. And so incorporating people into a different way of living, a different set of habits can be very difficult when most of the people there are new. And indeed, I asked. So, like, the frame of reference that I have now is in Raleigh. I asked Father David there at one point about a year ago, I said, father, of the 500 plus people showing up on Sunday morning, how many have been orthodox for less than five years? And he told me, more than half. More than half. How many of you are seeing something like that at your parish where the majority are now new? So this is awesome and cool and beautiful on the one hand, but like scary and difficult on the other because it used to be we would tell the catechumens, just look, just blend in with everybody else. And now it's like, well, I'm new here myself. And so that creates an instability. And so that's one of the things that we have to deal with now. So at this moment here in 2026, and this is where I'm going to wrap up. So begin to think of your questions. Now. We have simultaneously a convert surge. Right. And make no mistake, we all know that we didn't do anything to make this happen. God has sent these people to us. A convert surge is happening simultaneously with a clergy shortage. Right. And so what does that mean? In some cases there's dozens of catechumens, in some cases there's hundreds of catechumens, Massive groups of people. How many of your churches have more than you've ever seen before? Yeah. And when there's both a convert surge and a clergy shortage going on at the same time. And here's another tough thing, you know, I said something tough to the monarchists in the room. This is a tough thing for everybody else in the room right now. It means the rationing of pastoral care. Every time I utter that sentence, it's a little scary to me now. Like the idea that there's rationing of pastoral care, that you're not going to be able to talk to your priest as often as you want. You're going to probably have to make an appointment, it's going to probably have a time limit because there's not enough of him. And there's way more of you. So, I mean, number one, obviously, you know, if you're. If you're mature in the faith, you know, consider ordination. Guys ask how you can help. But also, I've had some people say, well, shouldn't the convert surge, you know, bring us more clergy? I really hope that it does, but not today. That would be supremely irresponsible. I went to seminary with multiple guys who were sent after being orthodox for like a year or in one case a month, they were sent to seminary and the majority of them now are deposed ex priests, and their marriages are a wreck. You know, don't do that. It doesn't just ruin a family. It really is harmful for the flock. Once in a while, it works out okay. I mean, there are cases where a guy that's ordained relatively quickly, it works out okay. But it is an absolute gamble. So we're going to have to wait on the convert search to generate more clergy. We're talking probably five, eight, ten years. Right. Because don't you want them to be orthodox for several years before they even go to seminary at all, or whatever clergy training we're giving them? And then that training should be years long as well. Right. So it's not going to happen immediately. There's. In the meantime, there's going to be rationing of pastoral care. In the meantime, it's going to be a whole lot of. You get 10 minutes for confession or whatever it is. I don't know if Father David from Raleigh is in the room, but if he is, I'm very sorry about mentioning your name over and over again, but it's your part of my frame of reference, Father. But I was asking him, I was like, father, how many confessions do you hear? And he's like, well, I think it's about 40 or 50 a week. And so I said, father, you know, in one year of your priesthood, you're hearing more confessions than I have heard in almost 20 years. Just to give you some sense of the scale. Right. So there's absolutely, you know, the rationing of pastoral care that just is a reality right now. So a slightly shorter route to some level of help is deacons. And Siyid Nasaba has called for what he says is an army of deacons. An army of deacons. He said there should be at least five or six per parish, which. Amen. Amen. This is, by the way, the apostolic model. Way more deacons than priests and bishops. Way more deacons. I think our archdiocese right now has the best. We have the best ratio of deacons per parish of any Orthodox jurisdiction in the US and that is largely thanks to the vision of Metropolitan Philip of Blessed Memory, who just pushed really hard for this starting in the 1970s and early 80s. I think our ratio is something like 0.8 or 0.9 per parish. So it's almost one per parish. So we got a little ways to go to get five or six per parish, but clearly we need that. But the biggest thing that we can do right now, and that does not require years of training, is for mature laymen to step up. To step up, to teach, to step up, to mentor, to step up to help take care of their clergy families, take some pressure off of them, right? To step up, to help integrate these people into parish life, into your life. They just started doing something in Raleigh, which is every new catechumen gets a couple in the parish assigned to them to be their sort of. This is not the official term, but this is how I'm describing it. They're catechesis buddies. You know that these are the first people they should go to, to connect, to integrate, to say, what am I supposed to do? And to begin to form relationships with them. And who knows, maybe sometimes that will become their godparents. Doesn't have to be, but it'll help to integrate. Another thing that is really super important here is that parishes really need to focus on the ministry of practical love. Many parishes people, they commute there, they go to church there, and then they go home. And if it's healthy, then they'll linger and hang out with each other for a while afterwards, which is such a beautiful thing. The lingering. I love that. But if there's someone with a real need in the parish, often it goes unknown, or maybe the priest only knows about it. It's time for us to really love each other in not just, hey, I love you, man kind of way. It's really time for us to do that. And not only does that help to. Not only is that what we're supposed to be doing because Christ told us to do that, but also it meets the needs of the people that we already have in the parish and helps to make it so that the parish is not largely fixed on one kind of socioeconomic range, which can be the case, in fact, in America, by the way, the highest levels of churchgoing are associated with higher levels of income, meaning that poor people are having a hard time being integrated into church. That's on us. It's absolutely on us. And if we actually met their needs, met their material needs, that might look different. But the other thing is, a lot of people that are coming to our doors these days, they are used to the world beating them up and not caring about them at all. And if they come in and their needs are being met, maybe the first thing they experience is a free meal. I actually talked to a pastor in Glasgow in Scotland, and he has this amazing ministry with students at the University of Glasgow. And he told me that he invited one of these students to a meal. And then at the end, the student asked, and how much does that cost? And he said, nothing. And the student was like, what? You know, what's the old saying? There's no such thing as a free lunch except in the church. It should be in the church. So, like, if you have to pay for coffee hour, please stop that. That's such a terrible thing. Cause you're sifting out people who. They didn't come. They can't do that. They can't do that when you make them pay for coffee hour or whatever it might be. So, yeah, that emphasis on practical love. So with the kind of pressure that we're experiencing with just the press of people, and then also right now, the shortage of clergy, I mean, we're working on this. This problem is being worked on on multiple levels. But we can't just say, well, that's up to the bishops, but guys, better solve it. You know, no matter how hard the bishops work, and even if they put in place perfect plans today, which we're still figuring out what the perfect plans are, by the way, if they put all those in place today, it's going to be years before the shortage will actually be overcome. Years. So right now, what the rest of us can do is to step up and to really minister to each other and not see ourselves as religious consumers. Now, I know that those of you, the kind of people come to Parish Life Conference, you are the people who are stepping up. I know that you wouldn't come to a Parish Life Conference if you didn't care about that kind of thing. It's not the ideal vacation. Right? You spent a lot of money to be here, and you came here because you care about your parish and you want your parish to do well. You want to minister to your parish. So spread this spirit to other people. You know, every parish has what they call the 8020 rule, which is, you know, 20% of the people do 80% of the work you need to work on. We all need to work on that ratio a little bit. And here's the kicker, here's the last Thing I'm gonna say about all that, a stronger emphasis on the ministry of lay people. And there's a lot of things I didn't mention, like, you know, visiting the sick, for instance. You do not have to have a cassock to visit a person in a hospital or to visit someone at home who can't come to church. You do not. Right. All these kinds of things. Lay ministry, the increase of lay ministry is how we should have been doing church all along. Clericalism that we're all experiencing, where it's the idea of like, well, Father, you know, he's the full time employee, right? That was always a distortion. And now we have a big opportunity to push back against that distortion. And here's the thing, if we don't do that, then what will happen is the intensity of people who are barely catechized in huge numbers in our parishes because we are not getting a handle on them, will create, you know, your peaceful parish might well go to something being other than peaceful, because people will not be formed in Christ, they'll just have become members. Right. Parishes might split. A lot of people who have been going to your church for a long time and are like, wow, there's suddenly six times as many people here as there were just five years ago may feel like they're no longer welcome and don't want to be there anymore. Right. And so the time has come for us to engage in this kind of lay ministry on a level that I'm not saying no one's been doing anything. You know, that's obviously not the case. But we have a big opportunity, and if we don't take the opportunity, then I fear that there's going to be some level of collapse that's going to go on in a lot of communities. You know, we're rejoicing in the numbers. And that's awesome. It's amazing. It's wow. I mean, no one sitting here has seen this kind of thing in their lifetime. It's never happened in the history of orthodoxy in America, ever. I've studied it very closely.
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Father Stephen DeYoung
Right.
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Father Andrew Stephen Damick
But if we don't meet it well, it could actually destroy the church in America. Right. We could have schisms, we could have parish collapses, we could have all kinds of stuff like this, you know, clergy quitting because they just can't take it anymore, which is absolutely a thing. Absolutely a thing. So that's what I have to say as kind of an introductory set of comments. I'm sorry, I don't have anything to say about. What was it? Mouse habitats Mouse habitats.
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Father Stephen DeYoung
Get that tomorrow. The reason we had Father Andrew go first today is, is since I was a kid when I'd get my dinner plate, I'd always eat the vegetables first to get that over with and then whatever was best, I'd save that for last to sort of keep it.
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Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's right.
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Father Stephen DeYoung
Keep that taste in my mouth as I.
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Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Exactly. So yeah, so I'm the vegetables, I'm the broccoli, as it were. Although I do kind of like broccoli.
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Father Stephen DeYoung
He's good for you. Right? Just not as pleasant. Right.
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Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I mean, fried okra is very good. Yeah. Yes. Back in the land of fried okra. So happy to be here. The land of sweet tea. So happy to be here. Below the sweet tea line. So, but yeah, I, I, I want to hear, so please, you know, come. I want to hear about how your parishes are experiencing the convert surge ideas that you have if, if your parish has implemented something new to respond to the just press of people that you're experiencing. Here's two microphones. Line up, let's hear from you. Poised between east and west, between Orthodox and Catholic, Lithuania, the last of Europe's pagan nations did not forget its ancient
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Father Stephen DeYoung
tales such as that of the giantess
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Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Neringa Eglay, Queen of Serpents and the Iron Wolf.
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Father Stephen DeYoung
Rather, they fulfilled and enriched them with legends like the hill of crosses and
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Father Andrew Stephen Damick
the miracle working icon of Our lady of the gate of the Dawn. In the Wolf and the Cross, Father
- [34:10]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Andrew Stephen Damek and Deacon Seraphim Richard Rowland take a very personal pilgrimage into a land where history and legend have made, met and fused, where Orthodox Christians have lived as a minority for nearly seven centuries.
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Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Their faith founded upon the blood of martyrs and the witness of dozens of saints. To find this book and others like
- [34:32]
Father Stephen DeYoung
it, you can go to store.ancientfaith.com again
- [34:37]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
that is store.ancient faith.com. Thank you Fathers for being here. I know you're both well aware of all these, this influx of converts, inquirers, catechumens. It seems the vast majority tend to be men. And I'm just wondering, is there something we can do better to attract more women? Is it even a problem in your mind? Do you think that there's something that we're not doing right or do you think women may just be coming later on? Okay, this is a great question. And the reason, part of why it's a good question is not just because in itself it's a good question, but it's actually a question and I hope I can help a Little bit of ignorance that exists right now. So there are people actually statistically studying the convert search. This is actually a thing. Right. And unfortunately, the people who write articles in mainstream newspapers are not talking to those people as much as they should when they write their articles, because the impression that they've given is. And correct. You know, I'm sure you've all heard this, that the convert surge is largely a bunch of, you know, extreme right wing young men. How many of you heard that before? Yes. Read it in newspaper articles, whatever. How many of you? Does that describe your parish? I saw one hand. Yeah, Right. So those who are tracking the convert surge, which basically begins in the wake of the pandemic, that's essentially the beginning point. The point where we start seeing spikes is about 20, 21, when we start coming back to church, you know, in significant numbers in the initial bump, because the convert surge actually has had two peaks, which is a lot of people don't know this. The initial peak, there was a plurality of young men. It's true, there was a plurality of young men, meaning not the majority, not more than half. But the largest group, the second peak now the dominant group is young families. How many of you are seeing that at your parishes? Yes. So welcome to the reality. This is the truth. Okay. Which is part of the reason that I say to people, even if the search stops tomorrow, which probably not. Even if the search stops tomorrow, a demographic change has occurred within the Orthodox Church that's going to reverberate now for decades because all these young families are gonna be having kids. And it turns out, by the way, here's another good statistic for you. The fertility rate of Orthodox Christians in America. Do you know what it is? 4. Replacement rate is 2.1. The country in general is below replacement rate. Orthodox people have more kids. Yes, yes, yes. It could be a bright future as long as we're not dumb. So like I said, even if it stops tomorrow, the demographic change that has occurred in Orthodoxy in America, like for instance, I'll give you an example, the OCA Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania, which no one is looking at in terms of studying the convert surge, except certain friends of mine, because there's parishes closing there. It's just largely, not especially northeastern Pennsylvania, multiple parishes, one priest not per parish. One priest with multiple parishes.
- [38:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right.
- [38:20]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
What's going on there is their total population has been going down for years and years and years. Right. They've been losing people. But if you look more closely at the actual demographics of that diocese in the last five years, while the number has still gone down. The population has been getting younger, which means that probably within a few years, it's going to flip and it's going to actually begin to grow. Not as fast as y' all are seeing in the South. Definitely not as fast, but it's still affecting that area as well. So. But to answer the question of, you know, what about young women, there is a whole world of articles out there being written about how orthodoxy is unattractive or harmful to women, to young women, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, which would be an interesting thesis if we had, within the last, say, five years, you know, when this all begins, had adopted some new thing where we're like, suddenly we're not attractive to women where we were before. Because before the surge, by the way, there were more women than men in church. I think that might still be the case, actually, a little bit. We suddenly adopted some new thing. But as we have firmly established, we did not do anything new. There was not some new program. Certainly all the jurisdictions in America did not get together and say, let's do this one. Let's do anything together. It's not happening. Right? No, what has happened is, and this is what's really important to understand, orthodoxy in America right now in many ways is unique, but in many ways is not unique. And the most significant way in which we're not unique is that the demographic that's lagging behind in terms of religious participation is young women. This is, across the board, every religious group in America. It's not just the orthodox. Right. There's something about female zoomers and the experience that they've had in life that is disconnecting them from religious experience, whether it's, you know, church or some other kind of religion. So we're looking at a societal thing. We're looking at a society level thing. And we're not. We're not exempt from it, you know, but I think that I've heard people say, you know, the young men are coming now. The young women will follow. I hope that's true. But I also know that the marriage rate is going down in America. So not necessarily. Right. Just the marriage rate is going down because young people are spending less time with each other. They have more and more relationships with people they've never met in 3D. Right. And those don't tend to turn into marriage. Right. So I hope that they will follow. But I think that the key thing that we need, I think the best thing that we need is for mature women to mentor younger women, men need men, women need women. Men cannot provide to women what women can provide and vice versa. So we'll see. As societal, the shearing forces are destructive to young women as much as they are. We'll see what happens. But, yeah, there's nothing special about orthodoxy that's making it unattractive to young women. A lot of people are saying that, but there's literally no good evidence for that. Right. And again, it's not continued to be just a bunch of young guys coming in. I know that some parishes, that is definitely the case, but it's largely families now. And so I think it's incumbent upon families especially to find the people in their life, the single zoomer or millennial or, you know, maybe some leftover Generation Xers like ourselves, who just never connected and never whatever, and just to take them in and make them part of the family in some way, because the loneliness is literally killing many of us. So, yeah, it's a great question that was asked. I don't know. Do you have anything to say about that, Father?
- [42:29]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I do.
- [42:30]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Okay. Yeah.
- [42:33]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Because I think the place where the rubber meets the road with this is that when you have young men and not young women, it's the marriage thing,
- [42:43]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [42:43]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Because. Especially because we're telling young men, where should you go to find a spouse? To the church. And then they go there and like the youngest unmarried woman is 63. Right. And they're like, I don't know.
- [42:59]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I remember a year ago, a year ago we moved my 18 year old daughter at that time to North Carolina before my family came back. And I told her, I said, evangelia, you're gonna have a line. You don't have to accept the first person in line. You can take applications, we'll review them together. And a month later, she found the guy. So she's getting married in October. Sorry, she's off the market, guys. Yes. You may not have my daughter.
- [43:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So sorry.
- [43:30]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Anyway, sorry.
- [43:31]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, no, so. And yeah. Don't think that just because Father Josiah went on Girls Gone Bible, that that solved the whole problem. I'm glad he did that. I am glad he did that. And he may be the only priest who could have done that. Kind of gotten away with it with his bonus.
- [43:50]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Only Nixon could go to China.
- [43:51]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, exactly. Old Klingon proverb, the so. Yeah. So it's the marriage issue, Right. And my explanation for why younger women are less interested in church and religion in general is precisely related to marriage. You look at the average age of a woman getting married and it is much higher. Than it's ever been. And that used to be. So back in the day, you would have kids, they grow up, they'd be in the teen group at church, they'd go off to college, you wouldn't see them, you know, and then they'd get married. And especially once they had a kid, then the whole family would come back to the church. Right. That's when they would start thinking that way. Right. If they drifted off.
- [44:49]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. But statistically that doesn't happen anymore.
- [44:51]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right. But especially if young women are not even getting married, then the potential for that happening is pushed out sort of way into the future.
- [45:02]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [45:04]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So I'm not going to say I recommend missionary dating where you go out and deliberately start dating a girl in order to convert her. But. But I will say this. I will say this. I've got. I've already done one. I've got three more weddings coming up this year. That means I've got four weddings this year. We're a small parish. I have only done four weddings total in the last eight years I was there. And all four of these weddings are people in their early 20s. And in every case, at the beginning of the relationship, the young woman was not orthodox, and they started coming to church with the young man who they were dating and made their own decision to come into the church. Right. As part of that process. Right. So not missionary dating. Don't go out there with ulterior motives. Right. But in a healthy relationship between a man and see, I'm old school, this will offend people. But ask anyone on Twitter, I'm a misogynist, so I'll just go ahead and play into it. And I'm sorry, this is how I and my sisters were raised was the idea that when comes to spiritual matters, the husband is the leader and that in a healthy relationship, the wife is going to follow that lead. And I see that play out, and it works well when it plays out. And I think it's just kind of true that if you have a young man who has really been integrated into the life of the church, and orthodoxy is really important to him, an important part of his life, and he has an active spiritual life where he's praying, right. Where he's coming to church, he's fully involved, then someone who they get involved with, if they're attracted to him, that's gonna be part of why they're attracted to him, and that's gonna make them very open. Right. To coming in and being. Becoming part of the church.
- [47:23]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah.
- [47:24]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Now it helps. I'm in a 70% Roman Catholic town. So there's a lot of lapsed Catholic girls out there who have stopped going to church. Right. And this can now bring them in. But I think that's part of the answer with younger women. Because anecdotally, in my parish, I've had women joining single women, but they are literally in their, like, 50s and 60s. And then I have a bunch of guys in their 20s that doesn't dovetail, so well.
- [47:53]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
More questions. Come on, line up. Father Steven, I studied mice in Baton Rouge for 10 years, so I'm looking forward to your talk.
- [48:00]
Father Stephen DeYoung
You're probably gonna know all about what I'm gonna talk about.
- [48:04]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And Father Andrew, I guess because the Internet has been so instrumental, we have Al Gore to thank for the convert search. Al Gore, once again, we might be. I might be dating myself with that. I really appreciated what you had to say about Orthodoxy being a three dimensional experience. And really even four dimensional.
- [48:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Right.
- [48:22]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Because it expands over the course of time as well. And that's kind of the case for us. I mean, we've been Orthodox for about 20 years. We spent 16 years in a Greek parish. And so my question is more about the Antiochian Archdiocese specifically. We didn't see as much of that surge in a parish that was traditionally Greek. What do you think the differences might be there? Okay, another good question, which I will try to tread appropriately. So it's as I, as I've traveled and asked people. So basically I don't. I have some actual data and then massive amounts of anecdotal, you know, conversations with people about these things. And some images have kind of emerged out of that, which I keep testing them to see if they're true. And they mostly seem to be as to how the surge is affecting different parishes. So if you are in an area where there's only, you know, two or three Orthodox churches in a significant metro area, all of those parishes are seeing people come, right? All of them. If you're in a metro area where there are dozens and dozens and dozens of Orthodox churches, like, let's say, Chicago, So Cook County, Ohio, still has the largest number of Orthodox Christians of any county in the United States. And if you go to. If you just randomly pick an Orthodox church in Chicago, there is a strong chance when you walk in the door that you will hear a language that you do not understand. Very strong chance. And that's because there was, you know, high concentrations of immigrant communities there. Completely understandable. Like, earlier this year, I did a retreat at a Greek parish in the north part of Chicago. And it was made very clear to me that North Chicago Greeks are a different village than South Chicago Greeks. If anybody's, you know, from Greek, you know, Chicago Greeks, which is kind of its own country, you know what I'm talking about. They say, oh, the north parishes, the south parishes, like they have almost a sense, they have the same bishop. They are within like five miles of each other, but they still have a sense of where, you know, but it's that strength of identity, right? And I was at this North Chicago Greek parish and they said, father, you know, you're talking about all these conversions happening. And it's true what you're saying. We have five catechumens. We have never seen this many. So even there they're being affected. But one of the things that's really interesting that's happening is I actually, I was contacted by a priest in a Rust Belt town. I won't say which one, but a Rust Belt town kind of somewhere in the Midwest. Ish. And he said to me, you know, you're talking about this, Father, but we just haven't seen it at our parish. We just haven't seen it. And what was interesting to me was that I knew I was friends with a priest, another priest in that same town at a different parish, which was filling up with new people. So within a couple miles of each other, you have two parishes. One that's seeing a lot of people and then another one that's seeing no new people. So what's the difference? One is. I mean, you could imagine what it might be. But let's boil it down. One is ready to receive people and one is not for whatever reason. There's a lot of different reasons. That might be a big reason is language. That's probably the biggest one. But another one might be unfriendliness. There was a parish that I visited in northeastern Pennsylvania where occasionally when it snowed really heavily, the seminarians at St. Tikon's would go. And suddenly this parish had a big pile of kids in it that they normally did not. And there was a passive aggressive sign on the door to the nave saying, control your children. Do you think that's a kid friendly parish? I hope they took that sign down. This was years ago. I hope they took it down. But there's all kinds of ways. And that was a fully English speaking parish. You know, there's all kinds of ways to not be ready to receive people. So in areas where you've got lots and lots of churches to choose from, you know, the surge is Gonna go the path of least resistance. Go to the place that's going to be in the United States, English speaking, friendly people. And actually, these days, that's kind of almost all you need. Right. If you're not receiving people, you really should ask yourself what is going on with your community at this moment. Now, in decades past, that was not always the case, but now the spigot is turned on full, you know, but, you know, that's just to get people in the door, receiving them well and planting them well, that's another question. That's some of what I was talking about earlier. But. So there are places where there's many, many churches and some are growing and some are withering at the same time. Okay. In some places where there's only maybe one or two Orthodox churches, and then for 30 or 45 minutes there's not another. And let's say one or both of those parishes is focused on an immigrant community, and maybe always has been. What's happening in those cases is the parish culture is rapidly shifting in a very short time. I was talking to a woman who was at a relatively isolated parish in Florida, which had been traditionally associated with a particular immigrant community, and she said, now we have all these people at Orthros. It used to be no one came to Orthros, now we have all these people at Orthros, dozens of them, and none of them speak the language that is being used in that service. All these people have shown up. And so what's happening is the character of the parish is flipping because there's nowhere else for them to go, which is a really interesting thing that's occurring and is very destabilizing for a community. Just imagine that, again, people who've been there for decades suddenly feeling like they're not welcome in their own church, which we can say, well, tough. You need to be more welcoming. No, we need to figure out how to integrate people together, if at all possible. Because in that scenario, what's going to happen is either the converts will kind of overwhelm the parish. That's maybe the sort of the best case scenario in that case. Or what will happen is they will not integrate and there'll be some kind of split, you know, like we're going to go off here and start our own thing, you know, because there's always another bishop to shop for in Orthodoxy in America, you know, which is terrible. This is terrible. So what's really been happening, the conclusion, is all of the processes and movements that we've been seeing in Orthodoxy in America that have been going on at a particular speed for decades upon decades now. They have all accelerated because of the sheer number of people that are coming, which is, on the one hand, you know, we're very happy to see all of them, but is also a little. It can be very destabilizing for a parish. So, yeah, it really depends. But I predict. You can write this down if you like. I predict in 20 years that parishes that are using some language other than English are largely going to be small, isolated and in major urban areas and everything else is going to be all English. That's my prediction. I mean, there could be changes, but that's what I think is going to happen. And by the way, I should emphasize in no way am I an English only ideologue. I think if you have people in your parish, whatever language they speak, you need to minister to them in that language. And in many cases, it's going to be a mix, you know, because. Not just because there are people here who. That's the case, but we have immigrants coming and an immigrant should not show up and not be able to find a priest that they can't hear their confession. So we have ministry to do to immigrants as well. And that's really an important thing. And we shouldn't be afraid of that. We should not be afraid of that. It's okay. Because remember the move, even if you are like, we need more English, more English, more English, which is cool. That's the way it's going. So you can take some time to minister to immigrants as well. Like, it's okay. It's all right. Because the truth is, those immigrants, their grandchildren will be English speakers. That's just the way it's gonna be. That's how immigration works. Yeah.
- [56:16]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. I don't buy that whole ugly American bit at the end there, but monolingualism, your five different ancient forms of English don't count as other languages. Father Andrew, I do read the gospel,
- [56:29]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
the Agape vespers gospel in Old English. If anyone would like to have that at your parish.
- [56:35]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Are you offering to come and do it?
- [56:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Absolutely.
- [56:41]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So my vision of the future is a little more cosmopolitan, shall we say, in America. That may be because I live in a French speaking region of the country.
- [56:51]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So y' all should do more French. In Louisiana.
- [56:53]
Father Stephen DeYoung
We do.
- [56:54]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And parts of Canada there should be
- [56:55]
Father Stephen DeYoung
more French I want to do. But more than that, I want to do a little bit of an apologia for the bad Greeks.
- [57:02]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Wow.
- [57:03]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah. Who get stereotyped a lot.
- [57:06]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
They do.
- [57:07]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So. And I'LL say first.
- [57:09]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Like, I mean, there are some Greek parishes that are exploding with converts.
- [57:12]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Exactly, exactly.
- [57:13]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I should have said that. So there are some Greek parishes exploding with converts.
- [57:16]
Father Stephen DeYoung
My own. My own wife, who is pretty much my favorite person.
- [57:20]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Does she feel the same about you?
- [57:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Most days.
- [57:22]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Most days.
- [57:24]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Came into the church through a Greek church, through St. Paul's in Irvine, California, who welcomed her and loved her from the second she walked in the door, handed her a stack of catechesis books for free. Right.
- [57:38]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Just.
- [57:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I mean, they're doing amazing things there. And that's a Greek church. Okay? So this is not. But there's this, there's other Greek folks who get pegged as they're the bad, they're the unwelcoming ones. They're just there because they're Greek. It's an ethnic club. Right. And you get some of that rhetoric sometimes on some of the websites of, you know, we're here to serve the spirit of Hellenism and, you know, this kind of thing. Okay, So I came out of. I grew up in the Dutch Reformed Church, which I know is weird now for Protestantism to have an ethnic Protestant church, but it was one and so, right? First Christian Reformed Church was on Church street in the town I grew up in. The Christian school was next door. I went to school and church with the same kids. They were all blond haired, blue eyed. They all had names that started with Van and Vander or ended in Strawberry. Right? Like, it was just all Dutch people all the time. When I asked my dad, you know what's a Lutheran? He said, that's where German people go to church. Right. What's a Roman Catholic? That's where Mexicans and Irish people and Italians go to church. Right. That was his, why do we go to our church? Because we're Dutch. This was so ingrained in me that when I was going to go to Protestant seminary, I had to get a recommendation from one of the church elders. And the church elder asked me, do you think when you're done with seminary you're gonna try to get ordained in this church? And I couldn't fathom the question. I literally stared at him for like 10 seconds. Like, what?
- [59:21]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
There are other churches?
- [59:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes. Ordained? Yes, I'm Dutch. Right? Like, this is it. So in the 1990s, two things happened simultaneously. They decided they needed to grow. They started setting these ambitious growth plans. One of them was called 2000. By 2000, they wanted 2000 parishes by the year 2000. Right. They wanted to grow their population numbers. We need to reach out we need to evangelize and grow all of our churches. And they said, what's the biggest obstacle? Well, we got all these old Dutch
- [60:00]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
people,
- [60:03]
Father Stephen DeYoung
and they're just here because they're Dutch. All they care about is being Dutch. They want to sing Dutch hymns at Christmas. They want to, you know, all of this stuff, all these Dutch traditions. And so when people come, they don't feel welcomed because they're not part of one of these Dutch families. We need to downplay, get rid of all this Dutch Dutchness stuff. We need to be more American, which meant being more evangelical.
- [60:29]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [60:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Today they have under 900 parishes. They have the opposite problem we have with growth. They're closing churches everywhere because what happened was all those Dutch people were now unwelcome and they left. And so these Greek people, who sometimes we want to stereotype and blame, are honestly scared about this happening to their church. And it can happen to their church if they try to Americanize in the wrong ways. So this is a fear that they have, and it's a fair fear. Right. And we need to, as Father Andrew was saying, we need to integrate new people with the old people.
- [61:18]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [61:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And this could happen in our parishes, too. This isn't just a Greek thing. We need to integrate the new people and the old people. But part of that integration has to be that we don't value the new people more than the old people. Right. I don't care if they're only there because they're Lebanese, they're in the church, they're receiving the sacraments. Right. I don't care why you think they're there. I don't care if they cause problems with the program you're proposing. Right. I don't care if they want to slam on the brakes all the time for things. You need somebody there to slam on the brakes sometimes.
- [61:54]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Right.
- [61:57]
Father Stephen DeYoung
We have to value both equally.
- [62:00]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [62:00]
Father Stephen DeYoung
We need to not be off putting to the new people because of them, nor off putting to them because of the new people. We need to integrate them into one community.
- [62:10]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Amen. Next. I think I was first. Okay. Hello.
- [62:16]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I am.
- [62:18]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I go by Mary fox. I'm at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Jackson, Tennessee. I do church school. And I recall a couple years back, we were doing the Roman school curriculum the archdiocese rolled out. And I recall that in the Romans curriculum, we learned that there was that the historical background for the book of Romans was that while the. While there was a Jewish exile that took place, that the. A lot of gentiles started filling in the churches and this destabilized the community when the Jews returned to their churches and found out that the Gentiles had now taken on a lot of the leadership roles and whatever in the Roman church community. So I was wondering if you guys can answer this question. How can the Book of Romans provide us with some guidance for integrating newcomers into our church communities in a way that doesn't destabilize the community? I mean, this is literally like several episodes of the whole Council of God podcast.
- [63:33]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I was literally the consultant on that curriculum.
- [63:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I know, I was like, oh, that's right, you helped write that curriculum, didn't you? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're the expert. Abuna, come on. Yellow.
- [63:48]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, so it does. And in fact, that was one of the things we talked about when we were putting the curriculum together, because I talked about that and I said, I think there are some things here that can help with those kind of issues in the parish. We were a little careful. And the curriculum writers. So when I say I consult, I go and I do a presentation and try to break down Romans and give like, ideas for here's the lessons. But there are really talented and skilled curriculum writers who go and they write the actual. Right on the ground thing. Because I can't necessarily prepare the lesson for 5 year olds and 8 year olds and 12 year olds. And, you know, I have more influence on the adult lessons, maybe, but. And so as they were preparing, that was a concern. We don't want to. We didn't want to push that element into parishes where that wasn't an issue and make it an issue. Right. Even though I think there are things addressed. That's why we didn't go into that as far as we might have in the curriculum. So, yeah, so what happens for people who aren't familiar with that part of the curriculum is that the Emperor Claudius at a certain point expelled all of the Jews from the city of Rome. And it's mentioned in the Book of acts, that's why St. Paul meets saints Priscilla and Aquila in Corinth is because they had lived in Rome and they had been thrown out and had gone to Corinth. And so in the wake of that, the non Jewish Christians, the Gentile Christians, were still there. And so the church was functioning with them, doing everything. They took over the leadership roles. They were making everything happen. And then after a couple of years, Claudius rescinded his edict. And the Jews, including the Jewish Christians, because the Romans didn't discriminate. Right. The Jewish came back. And so now the Jewish Christians come Back and whatever they used to do in the community is now being done by some non Jewish person, right? And so a big part of what St. Paul is doing in his Epistle to the Romans and why he goes back and forth, he'll talk to Gentiles and then he'll talk to Jewish people, and then he'll talk to Gentiles and then he'll talk to Jewish Christians, right? Back and forth is that he's trying to help them then reintegrate, right? And come and come back together, right? And it's amazing how. Well now in our current day, a lot of the things that he says to the Jewish Christians apply to a lot of our cradle Orthodox people, right? And St. Paul sort of expresses it as thankfulness, right? You know, you've had the scriptures, you've had the services of the church, you've grown up singing and learning the hymns, right? You've had this incredible gift. And that gift that you've had has shaped you, right? In ways that the newcomer should be envious of, right? At the same time, you haven't gotten everything perfect, right? You're sinners too, just like the newcomers, right? But you have this rich heritage and this rich gift. And the newcomers have this zeal. They have talents and skills. They have things they bring with them as they come to the church that they have to contribute to the church. And so I think a big starting point in terms of a lesson we can learn to help us is having both groups respect those gifts of the other, right? So the newcomers respect the people who have been, maybe, you know, the person who's been Orthodox their whole life and is now in their 50s or 60s, maybe. They can't tell you the dates of all the ecumenical councils, right? That doesn't mean they don't know anything about the Orthodox faith, right? They know the Orthodox faith, right? It's in their bones. They really know it, right? And teaching the newcomer to respect that, right? Right away, when you do that, you've already changed how that newcomer thinks about the faith. You're helping teach them that it's not about the intellectual ideas and you memorizing facts from books you read and what preposition to use in this theological statement. But it's about how you live your life and who you are, right? And what you do, they can learn that lesson. And then helping the people who have been there and who have that gift, helping them learn to appreciate the different gifts that the new people coming in bring, right? Which first of all may just be zeal and desire to Tell other people about the Orthodox faith.
- [68:39]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [68:40]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And a desire to learn more about the Orthodox faith. And not to mention all the little contributions. Right. Of the things they've gotten good at. Right. They may show up less so now, unfortunately, but older generations, you know, you have some kid who grew up Baptist going to Awana, they're going to be able to quote the Bible, and they have a familiarity and a knowledge of the Bible that very few people in any church do. Right. And so there are going to be things they see in the liturgy and recognize from different parts, obscure parts of the Bible they've memorized that the priest may be clueless about, may have never noticed, because he's not as familiar with Second Chronicles as this guy is, who's from a Baptist.
- [69:30]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [69:30]
Father Stephen DeYoung
There are all kinds of gifts that people bring in with them ready to be employed. And I think if we can help teach both groups to appreciate the gifts of the other, it'll be to the benefit of everybody.
- [69:42]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah. Amen. You're next. So basically recently I visited a bunch of monasteries, and they all had, like, icons of the Last Judgment. And I saw, like, people burning in hell and, like, in hell. And I was wondering if you could explain, like, a little bit of, like, what. What it means, like, you know, like, since just, like, what it means, like, figuratively and, like, I just don't really, like, understand, like, why it's, like. I don't know. I just, like. Gotcha. I wonder if you could just, like, explain. Yeah, yeah. So the question is, you know, what is going on with those people burning in hell on Last Judgment icons? Why is that there? Yeah, Well, one thing I think everyone should often, you know, take note of is that usually it's not just a big fire on the bottom where these people are burning. There's a big mouth of, like, a dragon or a serpent that's swallowing them, which is called a hell mouth, which is one of my favorite words ever, right next to the word psychopomp, which I was discussing with some people earlier today. And so the hell mouth actually goes all the way back to Genesis chapter three, where God says to the serpent when he's cursing, when he's pronouncing curses over the serpent and over Adam and Eve, you know, he says, the serpents, you're going to eat dust. Well, you know, if you recall, in Genesis, we've seen dust before. Adam is made from dust, and God is just now telling them that they're about to go back to dust. Dust is what humans are made from and what we're going to go back to. And so the reason we go back to it is that's one image of what death is, right? And so then what God is saying is that the serpent swallowing dust is an image of eating dead humans. Right? And so you see in the Last Judgment icon, literally a gigantic serpent eating dead humans. Okay. And you know, I know some people say, well, you know, that serpent may not be the devil, blah, blah, blah, but I mean, it says in Hebrews that the one who has the power of death is the devil. That's exactly what St. Paul says. The one who has the power of death, that is the devil. Like he explicitly says that. So all these things are connected together. And so in a sense what happens to the serpent there in Genesis 3 is he's essentially becoming kind of the death God, like he's the one who controls the dead. So what happens at the heroine of Hades, which in some cases there are some depictions of the harrowing of Hades where Christ is rescuing Adam and Eve and all the righteous prophets, that he's dragging them out of the mouth of this serpent, bringing them out of the hell mouth. Right. And there's actually, there's one version that talks of the heroing of Hades from the church fathers. And I'm trying to remember if it was from Chrysostom or somebody else which talks about Christ entering into the mouth of the serpent and slashing it around from the inside. Basically he cuts the thing up from the inside, which is kind of a gory image. But you know, I'm super into that, you know, sort of mythic language, you
- [73:14]
Father Stephen DeYoung
know, your inner 13 year old boy.
- [73:16]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's right. Way down deep down inside. So then the question ultimately is like, well, why is this image on the Last Judgment icon? Right. So this is, I mean it can be a very scary image depending on especially how the iconographer paints it. Well, think about where you're encountering that. You're encountering that in a church. I think you said you saw it in a monastery, right? So you do see it in monastery churches. Not all of them, but some. And you see it in parish churches as well. Right. And often it's the back of the church. Right? So as you're leaving church, suddenly you're confronted. Like in many churches you'll see the Dormition of the Theotokos, but in other ones you'll see the Last Judgment, Christ in his glory, judging the whole world. And down at the bottom this that you're talking about. So that means that most people who are seeing that image are Christians, right? So why would you put that image in front of them? As Father Stephen has liked to say in some of our Lord of Spirits podcasts, hell is for Christians. And what is meant by that is the image of hell is presented in the Scriptures. If you look in the Scriptures, wherever hell is described, wherever damnation is described, actually, to be more precise, wherever damnation is described, burning forever, whatever it's described to believers. And so, like, especially for those of you who grew up Baptist, where you were taught everybody is conceived on their way to be burning in hell unless they make a decision for Christ and then you get out. I was raised with that idea. Probably some of you were as well. The Bible never says that damnation is never threatened against unbelievers. It's described and presented to believers. And the reason it's presented to believers is so that we would repent, so that we would be committed in our struggle to be like Christ. And so when you see that as a possibility, then that can help to motivate you. But now, the great thing about the Last Judgment icon is that's not the only thing going on in it, although it might be the most, for us, maybe the most interesting thing in the picture, I don't know. Especially when you sometimes see, like, there's demonic figures that are sort of like feeding people to the dragon kind of thing, which is super fun and scary at the same time. The whole icon, you see Christ in glory, and then, you know, at his right hand is his mother, and at his left hand is John the forerunner and Baptist, right? And then surrounding are the ranks of the angels, and then surrounding them and often below them are the many, many ranks of scenes, right? And so what you're being presented with is the life of the age to come, all at once, the good and the bad. But what's beautiful about it is typically the good is way bigger part of the icon than the bad. And all of it's being presented to you like, okay, down here is the possibility of what could happen if we decide not to repent, if we turn our back on Christ and say, I don't want you, I don't need you. I'm going to live life my way. I'm going to live life making me happy and forget everybody else, right? If you dedicate yourself to that, then, yes, that could be your future. But if you dedicate yourself to faithfulness, to the life in Christ, then we can be standing alongside all of those saints. We just celebrated the feast of All Saints and the icon of All Saints is basically the top part, isn't it? The top part of the Last Judgment icon, The damnation stuff is not down there. It's Christ enthroned in glory, surrounded by his angels in all of the scenes. And so that image is given to us in all of its parts together. It's given to us so that we would repent. On the one hand, I'm repenting because I don't want this part, but I'm repenting because I want this part. Right? And so that's what's going on. And remember that when you see something in church, when you hear something in church, when you experience something in church, you always apply it to yourself. Why is this here for me? Not, oh, look, I see bad people and I can tell bad people that they're going to hell. No, no, no. It's like this is a possibility for me, so I need to recommit myself to repentance. Does that make sense? I cribbed half of that from you anyway. I don't know what else you got to add.
- [77:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I'll pick on that Baptist view briefly a little more.
- [77:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Okay, that's good.
- [77:49]
Father Stephen DeYoung
No, because this is something I have to tell people a lot who are coming into the church from a Protestant background. And it still amazes me that I have to say this. Okay, God loves you and he wants you to find salvation. He's not trying to weed you out, right? He's not looking for an excuse. He's not looking for some sin you forgot to confess to use as an excuse to send you to hell. Both Christ in St. Matthew's Gospel and St. John in the Book of Revelation talk about the lake of fire that you see in the icon. They say that was prepared for the devil and his angels. That's why that exists, not for people. The scriptures tell us God wills that no one should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth. That's what God wants. He's not trying to send you to hell. What we need to do is cooperate with that, accept and return his love. And we do that through our actions. Christ says, right, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Those go together. So that's how we return his love. And if we're pursuing that, and we're faithfully pursuing that, and we're repenting of our sins, you don't have to sit around being scared that you missed something and God's going to send you to hell because he doesn't want to. God's looking for an excuse not to send you to hell.
- [79:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right.
- [79:25]
Father Stephen DeYoung
There are lots of stories. I won't take the time to tell them, but there are lots of stories in the Orthodox world, monastic stories about God saving someone through one decent thing they did right once in their life, even though this was a miserable person, otherwise, they did one good thing and God saves them through that. That's who our God is.
- [79:50]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right?
- [79:51]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And so when you look at that image, when you look at the image of Christ being crucified, you should not be terrified of God and how much he hates sin, including yours. You should see images of love, of the love of the God who has saved us from all that.
- [80:12]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Amen. Amen. We're going to go for about 15 more minutes so that we don't run up against vespers, but. Yeah, yeah, come on, come on, come on down.
- [80:21]
Father Stephen DeYoung
The next contestant on the prices, Right,
- [80:25]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
that dates us as well, a little bit there, Father.
- [80:27]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Get my rod, Roddy on over here.
- [80:30]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Hey, Fathers. So I come from a parish that has dozens of catechumen, myself being one of them in that group. There are a lot of YouTube videos, Instagram Reels, always being passed around. Oh, boy.
- [80:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Sorry.
- [80:47]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
So my question is, what's your advice for discerning online information orthodoxy, pseudo orthodoxy, as well as just navigating, just the barrage of everything the Internet throws at you on a daily basis? That's a great question, and I have a quick answer here for you because I just. But I want to make sure I get this right. Okay, hold on.
- [81:11]
Father Stephen DeYoung
There's about 12 hours a week of me.
- [81:14]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I know. So it used to be it was just me, but then just watch that.
- [81:18]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And you don't need to spend more than 12 hours a week on the Internet.
- [81:21]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
All right, so, okay. So, yeah, I mean, I basically work on the Internet. This is essentially what I do. And I'm super aware of all of the dangers of that. And I get asked essentially this question a lot. And I've thought about the best way to answer this, and I concluded that St. Paul gave the answer in Galatians, chapter five. So here's what he says, and this is starting with verse 16. But I say, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now, the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warned you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Now, there are a lot of arguments and all kinds of stuff that goes on. Unorthodoxy and the Internet, but I think if we sat down and read Galatians, chapter five, it actually, it all becomes so super clear what you should pay attention to and what you should not. Makes sense. I'm not saying that those who are participating in kind of the dark side of orthodoxy on the Internet have nothing good to say, say, or that I probably don't agree with 90% of the things that they say. I probably agree with most of it. But the spirit with which that side delivers those things is also being communicated. And so the truth is, you don't need any of it. I work on the Internet, I produce stuff on the Internet. You don't need anything that I make my stuff. You do. You don't need anything that Father Stephen makes. See, now we're having a dissension and strife.
- [84:14]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes, look what you've caused.
- [84:16]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I know, I know. You don't need any of it. You don't. If it helps you do the 3D thing in your parish, thank God. If it helps your priest take care of you, thank God. If when you watch it or listen to it or read it, you want to repent of your sins, thank God. If it's leading you somewhere else, go read a book, do something, take a walk, take care of somebody, make something for someone, pray for somebody. You know, when the judgment comes, we're. I mean, you've read Matthew chapter 25. I'm sure it doesn't say, you know, and then, you know, he sit on his glorious throne and judge people by their correct opinions that they posted on Twitter. We'll be judged on what we have done. And so if the content you consume assists you in that, good, you still don't need it. You don't need it. So, yeah, I mean, doom scrolling is a pastoral issue of our time and there's all kinds of. I mean, there's worse things that you could be watching than even this kind of stuff we've just been talking about. There's way worse things, you know? But, yeah, I think, like I said, I feel like it's really straightforward and clear. Once you actually, like, let's get back to what the Scriptures say and what Christ says and what is a. Apostles say, and then you don't need a list. I've had people say, can you give me a list? I'm like, nope, no lists. But I'm going to give you those verses to read. And I think you don't need a theological degree to understand what those verses say. You don't. St. Paul is just so crystal clear at that moment. So. Yeah. Thank you.
- [86:11]
Father Stephen DeYoung
See, now he cribbed that from St. Paul.
- [86:13]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I know.
- [86:14]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So like Pablo Picasso said, good artists plagiarize, great artists steal.
- [86:19]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
That's right.
- [86:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So that's.
- [86:21]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Thank God. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Hi. I have a couple questions I may have misheard, but I thought I heard that there was going to be a. Like a standardized catechesis curriculum kind of in the works. I was just wondering if that was. I have also heard that.
- [86:41]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Okay, okay. I hear tings. Yeah. I don't know, Sandra, are you allowed to say anything about that or.
- [86:49]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I think a sample has been sent to select priests. Yeah, a sample has been sent to select priests. I also had another question. I was not selected.
- [87:00]
Father Stephen DeYoung
You're not one of the elect
- [87:03]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
by the archdiocese. Yeah. Okay. You were talking about the apotaxis. Apotaxis, yeah. Apotaxis.
- [87:12]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yes.
- [87:13]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And there's a line where it says, now breathe and spit. Is that like a breathe where you're inhaling or are you exhaling the devil and his demons out of you? How many people have wondered what that whole breathe thing is? And you see it breathe and spit upon him. That's what the priest says, which is a little weird. Right. So one thing I want to say that's going to be very disappointing for people is the spitting is a relatively late development. That's everybody's favorite part.
- [87:45]
Father Stephen DeYoung
It's an accretion.
- [87:46]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
An accretion. Wow. That's a deep cut of Buddha. But the breathing. Okay, so there's not. That's not the only breathing that happens. Of course. The priest breathes on the person who is being received. Moment as well. The whole breathing thing is about exorcism and also about giving the Holy Spirit. Right. So you notice, for instance, when Christ gives the Holy Spirit to His disciples after the resurrection, it says. And he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. So that's what's going on there. The. The exhalation that is going. It's really hard to translate, but it's more like blow him out, you know, like breathe out the demons, cool as it were. And then the priest breathes on them, you know. So, yeah, there's a lot of blowing that goes on, and it has to do with exorcism and also giving of the Holy Spirit at the same time. It's a much kind of under discussed detail in the baptism, but I think super interesting, actually. Very worth it. Yeah, yeah. And there's breathing that goes on, like when the. When the water is blessed for the baptism. Again, the priest, you know, Right. In the form of a cross, like all that's going on, you know, people blinking when you breathe. The priest breathes in their face. I've seen a lot of blinks. You know, babies will hold their breath.
- [89:22]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I always eat a big raw onion
- [89:24]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
right before they could feel the exorcism happening.
- [89:29]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Yeah, no, that, that goes. The, the breathing as part of exorcism rituals goes back even pre Christian into like Second Temple Judaism and even into the Old Testament.
- [89:41]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Because breath, spirit, these are the same word, the same kind of concept. And wind. Yeah, thank you, Father. Yeah, great question. That's a very los kind of question right there. That's good. All right, we still have about 10 minutes. Come on, come on, come on. Hello, my name is Jordan. Earlier you were saying, like, if you're in your parish, take care of it, and you said that that's like the responsibility of the parish. How do you tread the line, though, if in balance, if you're new to the faith, so you don't want to teach someone necessarily because you're not properly catechized or like, know everything. How do you balance that line from like taking care of your parish but not overstepping boundaries to where you're. You're now getting into the role of somewhere like clergy. Yeah. How do you not do too much too quickly or whatever? Well, one thing we have to realize is that the clergy's role is not like the top. Like it's. We're not all aspiring to be clergy. Please don't. Not for everybody, but. But for the people that, that God chooses and that the bishop recognizes and so forth. But I think that there's some things that can be done that by no means are kind of putting yourself above other people. And it's the practical things. Within the church, right? Like, no church should have to hire a cleaning service. Many of our parishes do. Maybe once in a while you need to hire somebody who can, like, buff the floor or something like that, because you don't have that skill or that equipment. Okay, I understand that, but like. Or, like, landscaping, you know, cleaning the bathrooms or. I mean, there's a million other practical things to do in church life, and it's still usually the 20% who are doing all of it. Right. Those are things that no matter how new you are, you can jump into. And the key is you find someone. You see someone doing one of those things, say, hey, can I give you a hand? What needs to be done that hasn't been done? You know? And I mean, if all else fails, you ask the priest, say, hey, I'm here to help. Send me to somebody. Which, hey, I'm here to help, is like the most musical thing that a priest can hear. You know, he may not immediately know where to send you, but he'll be just so overjoyed that you said that sentence to him. It's true. Right, Fathers? Yeah, absolutely. I'm here to help. What? So, yeah, there's all kinds of things that can be done without. Like, there's certain kinds of jobs that you do need to be catechized, like being a teacher, for instance, or being, you know, someone who's administering the parish in some way, like to serve on the parish council. There needs to be some more formation there. Right? But there's all kinds of things that can. Or, you know, like joining the choir. You should at least be able to sing. Someone else should say that you are able to sing it.
- [92:46]
Father Stephen DeYoung
I wanted to be in the choir.
- [92:49]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Not everybody has every gift, Father. It's okay, you know. But, yeah, there's all kinds of things that can be done. So without, like I said, without, you know, so just ask you see someone doing something, especially if you think to yourself, I could do that, that isn't a matter of, like, telling other people, you know, ask, how can I help? You know? And sometimes the people who have been doing a job a long time, it may be difficult for them to actually have help offered to them, you know, so their first response might be, oh, I got this. You know, Which, I mean, and it might also be like, I've been in some parishes where people have been doing one thing for so long that that's their identity at church. And so when someone else says, hey, I want to help, they're kind of like, don't take away my thing. You know, but the truth is, with so many people showing up at our doors now, there is plenty of work for everyone. You know, there's plenty of work for everybody. So, yeah, just find some practical thing and, you know, like if you find yourself in the parish bathroom, right, and there's toilet paper on the floor. I have watched the same piece of toilet paper sit on the floor of a bathroom in a church for weeks.
- [94:03]
Father Stephen DeYoung
There's the airing of grievances.
- [94:04]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Yeah, exactly. You know, and then I realized, why did you not pick that up, Father Andrew? More people need to have that same thought, you know, like, there's obvious. And my wife often says this to me, why did you walk past that? You know, so. Which is a good question. So, yeah, yeah. There's all kinds of things that are. That obviously need to be done that no one's going to object to. You know, it sounds like you're saying, focus on the little things because they're very important, especially the practical things.
- [94:36]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Let me add to that. There's a tendency that we need to stop, which is to think of the church building as the community, Indeed, the community is the community of people. And the church building is the building that the community owns, where they gather to worship, right? But you can serve the community outside of the church building, right? Outside of church hours. There are people, There are elderly people in your parish, I guarantee you, who need their lawn mowed. Not just the church's lawn, right. Who need some help around the house, who need some help doing everyday things. And if you can't find someone like that. One of the many things I learned from my father, my father in his later years was distressed by the fact that every time one of the elders in our community passes away, the stories of their life, the things they learned, all those experiences, they don't vanish completely, but they vanish from our world and our lives. And so my dad started just visiting people in the community. He would just go and sit for an hour or two with an elderly person who's sitting at home all day by themselves.
- [95:56]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
And your dad was not clergy, right?
- [95:58]
Father Stephen DeYoung
My dad was not clergy, Right. He didn't even have to say anything. He would just listen. And because of that, I know all these stories about the Dutch resistance in World War II, right. But these stories that otherwise would have vanished. And some of them are funny, and some of them are heartbreaking, and some of them are wonderful, and some of them, there's all kinds, and you can learn from every one of them, right? And that's something anyone can do if you can hear, right? You can go and sit for an hour with someone and just listen to them and learn from them and pick up that wisdom and pass it on and make sure it doesn't vanish.
- [96:36]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Right? Yeah.
- [96:37]
Father Stephen DeYoung
So there are things like, I mean, anybody can do.
- [96:41]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
I'm aware of parishes where there are groups, particularly of men, but, I mean, you could just, you know, mutatis mutandis. A justice. If it's a group of women or a mixed group or whatever, particularly a group of men. And what they do is they ask the priest or whoever who in the parish needs some help, and then a group of them show up to the house, which is usually much like. If it's just one person, that could be. It could potentially be a little weird or threatening, you know, if it's not a relationship that already exists. But if a group like this is the such and such ministry, and we're here today to landscape your house, but we're here today to clean the whole thing. We're here today to fix all the stuff around your house that you haven't gotten to, you know, or whatever it might be. And that is such a powerful expression of love. And when you're doing it with other group of people, then what it does is, number one, it says to the person who's receiving that this community loves you and cares for you. But also the people who are doing that together, some of them might be brand new to the church. Hey, man, we're going to this person's house. We're going to do their lawn. Come with us. It's integrating them into serving together with other people and creating friendships and relationships as well. So, I mean, it has multiple beautiful benefits, actually. Yeah, thanks for bringing that. That's a really good point. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Well, God bless. All right. Well, it's quarter till.
- [98:04]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Dana, do you have anything you want to correct or add or.
- [98:10]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Nothing to correct. Thank you, Fathers. I promised them at the beginning that if they make a mistake, I will correct them loudly and rudely. That was a joke, of course, but that was wonderful. And thank you very much for being here and taking the time to have this panel discussion. And tomorrow, today we've had the broccoli. He said, yeah, it's the broccoli.
- [98:40]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Tomorrow's the meat.
- [98:41]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Tomorrow is the meat. So come back tomorrow and listen again. God willing, we have 15 minutes to get used to. Get used to. To get ready for vespers. And it is the next door to your right. God bless you. We'll see you at vespers. Thank you, Steven. Thank you, everybody.
- [99:14]
Father Stephen DeYoung
You've been listening to the Lord of
- [99:16]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
Spirits with Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew
- [99:19]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. A listener supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the
- [99:29]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
throne and the beasts and the elders.
- [99:31]
Father Stephen DeYoung
And the number of them was 10,000
- [99:33]
Father Andrew Stephen Damick
times 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the
- [99:39]
Father Stephen DeYoung
Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and Blessing. Revelation, chapter 5, verses 11 through 12.