“Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them,

and they that are great exercise authority upon them.

But it shall not be so among you:

but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;

And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto,

but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:25-28, KJV)


The word the Athenians used for their Assembly was Ekklesia, the same word used in the New Testament for Church
(and it is the greatest philological irony in all of Western history that this word,
which connoted equal participation in all deliberation by all members,
came to designate a kind of self-perpetuating, self-protective Spartan gerousia -
which would have seemed patent nonsense to Greek-speaking Christians of New Testament times,
who believed themselves to be equal members of their Assembly.)

- Thomas Cahill, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter




ΦΙΛΟΤΙΜΟ: THE GREEK SECRET


Thursday, April 17, 2008

Tax Day in Denver

The above Protocol was issued on April 15, 2008 and is available on the Metropolis of Denver website http://www.denver.goarch.org/. The following questions are for all to ponder:
  • When we express interest in running our church community on sound business practices, we're told we "worship the 'almighty dollar'.
  • Doesn't this statement from our Metropolitan reflect thinking more like a business than a church?
  • Isn't it a good thing that the request isn't for the current and thus far non-existent year-to-date financials?
  • Weren't we the ones accused of "worshiping the almighty dollar"? Who NOW seems not to have the "Orthodox faith on a higher level of priority than the concept of the "almighty dollar"? (Letter from the Metropolitan of May 31, 2007)

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