Jacob's Well

16/10/2025

It’s clear that many Orthodox parishes in the US are experiencing serious growth--but there’s been less clarity about where the growth is happening, and still less consensus about what’s driving all this interest. As co-chairs of the OCA's Parish Development Forum, Joe Kormos and Rev. Stephen Frase conducted a major survey in hopes of getting some empirical answers.

Findings From a Parish Growth Survey

16/10/2025

Rev. Paul Abernathy:
That old spiritual that our ancestors sang, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?,” takes on new meaning when we experience the mystery of anamnesis in the liturgical life of the Holy Orthodox Church—whereby we remember through mystical participation in the Life of Christ. The Orthodox Christian who has encountered the Lord in the divine services of the Orthodox Church is able to answer the poignant old Black voice, “Yes, I was there.” More important, however, it is the Orthodox Christian who can perhaps more profoundly respond, “Were you there when my Lord rose from the dead?”

On Historic Black Christianity and the Orthodox Church

15/10/2025

Michelle Webster-Hein:
"Last year, I received some bad news that was, frankly, harder to bear than losing lambs. My literary agent told me the novel I had spent the past five years writing had little (read: no) hope of selling, at least not right now.
As you might imagine, this news hit hard. I cried many tears, I consumed many carbs, and I prayed many prayers. And then, two nights later, after pray-crying myself to sleep, I woke from a dream, which I realized, upon waking, had given me the premise of a new novel."

Or: How I Carried On After a Crushing Defeat

15/10/2025

Dn. Justin Jackson:
"If the messianic promise is a universal harmony (howsoever imagined), then it makes sense that the marginalized become central to that narrative—that outsiders are brought to the messianic meal, as it were. The margins will help to build the center (taking our cue from the stone which has been rejected). Every American Orthodox Christian ought to understand this basic, evident principle."

If the messianic promise is a universal harmony (howsoever imagined), then it makes sense that the marginalized become central to that narrative—that outsiders are brought to the messianic meal, as it were. The margins will help to build the center (taking our cue from the stone which has been rej...

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?