Jacob's Well

26/09/2025

Robert Cady Saler:
"Some of the trends we see in punk and metal cultures—young people searching for authenticity, rebelling against unjust systems, and expanding their imagination for transcendence, against the metaphysically flattening structures of modernity—can have a galvanizing effect on the Church, when these newcomers are properly catechized."

Death to the WorldWhat the Punk-to-Monk Pipeline Can Teach Us About Convert CultureROBERT CADY SALER Cover of issue no. 3 of Death to the World, published 1994 In the early-1990s, no one anticipated that a member of Sleep, the band from San Jose that invented the genre of stoner metal, would become....

26/09/2025

Jacob's Well would like to thank the Orthodox Christian Studies Center for sponosoring this current issue of the magazine. Their generous financial support helps make this diocesan ministry possible.

Jacob's Well is a ministry of the Diocese of New York and New Jersey (OCA) and under the omophorion of His Eminence Archbishop Michael.

24/09/2025

“But on the ground is where it really counts—are my liturgical settings being sung in parishes? Certainly, but I don’t know to what extent … But bit by bit, these little compositions take wing and occasionally someone will tell me that they’re singing something at their parish. My dream is always this: that somewhere an African American family will visit an Orthodox parish for the first time and hear one of these pieces sung. And they’ll recognize that the Orthodox Church indeed has its tent flaps open to them.”

Mother Katherine Weston on Music

19/09/2025

In his piece from the latest issue, Steve Robinson writes about the ups and downs he's experienced over 32 years in the Orthodox Church. He writes:
"I eventually came to accept that the Church has both an unbroken apostolic succession and an unbroken succession of broken sinners. Both within the clergy and laity. The presence of Christ Himself in the flesh, His twelve first-hand witnesses, and the 70 disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit all leave us with a pretty ragged picture of the Church in the New Testament, and 2,000 years of tradition have not changed that. Church history only affirms and puts an exclamation point on the picture of the Church we see in the Epistles."

Are newcomers ready for the ugly realities of church life?

18/09/2025

"Instead of operating within the established hierarchy of the Church, our influencer economy is a weird system where a person’s 'Orthodoxy' is demonstrated by attracting attention rather than cultivating a spirit of peace. This might be hard to accept as we look at parishes that are full of new people. Even if online Orthodoxy is terrible, we might ask, isn’t it good that it’s getting people in the door?
My experience in youth and young adult ministry makes me dubious."
- Steven Christoforou

The internet is driving church growth. Is that a good thing?

18/09/2025

As parishes in the US are receiving new converts by the dozens, many longtime members are wary of the ways this might bring to the Orthodox world, our editor Nick Tabor writes in the introduction to this issue. “However, we have to remember that the Church is not an exclusive club that exists only for the benefit of its current members.” To participate in a living tradition means being open to change.

What do we make of all this growth in the Church?

10/09/2025

The lastest issue of Jacob's Well is out. This issue focus on the theme of growth and the recent influx of coverts into the Orthodox Church in the US.

This link is to the digital magazine format of the issue. For individual articles from the issue in a blog format that is more easily shareable on social media go to www.jacobsmag.org

https://issuu.com/jacobswell/docs/jacob_s_well_-_fall_winter_2025_-_growth

19/10/2023

Benedict Sheehan and Talia-Maria Sheehan, in a beautiful essay in our newest issue:
"Many Orthodox believers today seem to have constructed an image of tradition as, essentially, a perfect harmony without dissonance. Thus, when they encounter dissonance of some kind within the church—whether in the form of opposing perspectives, beliefs, or modes of behavior, or simply in the form of doubt, questioning, or criticism—they tend to assume that the dissonance needs to be eliminated, that the opposition must be silenced, and that alignment needs to be reasserted at all costs, lest the harmony of the tradition be damaged. However, anyone who has undertaken even a cursory study of church history will probably suspect that such a picture of a changeless, unbroken harmony doesn’t quite match up with the facts on the ground."

In Praise of Dissonance: Reflections on Stability, Harmony, and Tradition BENEDICT AND TALIA SHEEHAN On November 7, 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge failed spectacularly. That morning, only four months after it had opened, the structure started shaking in the hard wind.  Drivers felt their cars slid...

17/10/2023

During his time in Russia, Fr. Michael Meerson (of Christ the Savior Orthodox Church in NYC) worked with Alexander Men to publish samizdat. He had to flee the country to avoid imprisonment, and when he came to New York he stayed with Alexander Schmemann and found his way to St Vlad's. In the newest issue of Jacob's Well he looks back on his two mentors.
"In the decades since they reposed, as I’ve reflected on my experiences with them, and have pored over their writings, I’ve realized there was a remarkable overlap in their apostolic work."

Fr. Men and Fr. Schmemann, each in his own way, became a living embodiment of the same theme: “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today and forever."

17/10/2023

We were honored to publish this beautiful new poem by Scott Cairns, which will be in his forthcoming collection _Lacunae_ (https://bookshop.org/p/books/lacunae-new-poems-scott-cairns/19835655?ean=9781640608818), in our newest issue.

A poem by Scott Cairns

09/10/2023

Here are our diocesan graduates!

Read 2023 Diocesan Graduates by Jacob's Well on Issuu and browse thousands of other publications on our platform. Start here!

09/10/2023

https://www.jacobsmag.org/war-chapnin-brown-7

Christian Harmony and Discord in Time of War