Reprinted from "The Watchful Gate Website"

By Kevin Allen

The playgrounds and streets of my hometown outside of New York City taught me to play hard ball. Life was for “getting”. Life was for “taking” if it wasn’t given. There was no purpose to life, so “having”, “getting”, “taking” and “keeping” was all there was. Everyone seemed to believe this and live this way, so I never questioned it. The problem was that my inner world was one of intense anxiety, insecurity, depression and despair. I had already begun smoking, drinking and using marijuana at 14. At 15 I was using LSD. By 16 the “popular” recreation was snorting heroin. Many of my friends became heroin addicts before they were 18.

When I was sixteen I was arrested for possession and sale of marijuana. My parents took a “tough love” approach and kicked me out of the house. I lived in abandoned cars, and apartment houses of other vagabond-kids I knew. There were actually quite a few of us who had become untethered from family and school. When I was arraigned in court my parents were out of the country on vacation and the judge released me on my own recognizance. I had to come back to court in four months or so. The next four months were a nightmare and a spiral down a black hole of despair.

Eventually I was reunited with my parents. Upon my return I found things had changed. My Mother had entered Alcoholics Anonymous and had a deep, life-changing spiritual awakening. She was reading Alan Watts and DT Suzuki and books like The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Her countenance and attitude changed. She was calmer and softer. I began reading the books when she finished them. I was immediately drawn to Zen Buddhism and to Hinduism, especially Dvaita Vedanta. What appealed to me about Zen was the “Satori” experience, where – in a flash, but preceded by much spiritual work – one “sees”, one is “illumined”, one knows “the inner essence of things”. But I was ultimately drawn to Hinduism because while it offered a similar “enlightenment” experience (“Samadhi”) it also offered in some of its myraiad forms, a personal “deity” (or more to the point, many deities!). Zen Buddhism was a spiritual path that was like working on oneself in an orderly, clean, clinical laboratory. Hinduism was more chaotic, but with warmth and color and – most important to me – a personal god whom one could worship. I wasn’t sure why that mattered to me, but it did. I wanted to be “illumined”, but I needed to know and worship a Divine Person and Hinduism offered both. I have come to learn that we are made to worship the Personal God, Jesus Christ and our heart is not satisfied until we do Bl. Augustine)!

Reprinted from the May 2007 issue of "The Word Magazine"

By Kevin Allen

Church growth has become a buzzword in the Protestant and Evangelical Christian world. Being “evangelical” has tended to become a numbers game and a virtual cottage industry has emerged to figure out how to grow churches. Books, seminars, research companies, seminary classes and church growth “experts” have developed strategies and marketing plans to reach demographic sub-groups like “seekers” and “post-moderns”. Churches often change or modify their approaches to accommodate these demographic groups and their perceived “needs”. I recently received an attractive, glossy postcard from a local community church, for example, promising Sunday services would be “fun for the whole family”! It is now quite common, as another example of this trend towards “user friendliness”, to see “coffee bars and kiosks” inside churches, serving free latte and crumb cake! The philosophy seems to be, “If you want to hear the sermon, fine! If not, come and have cake!” Church services often include elaborate, high-tech musical presentations to connect with the MTV generation! You hear of skits and short performances being offered – instead of sermons (let alone liturgy or communion!) – in the attempt to create “seeker friendly” church environments. In the frenzy to grow the numbers, many churches are even leaving their traditional denominations, dropping (even) the words “Christian” and “Church” from their names, for “cooler” ones like “The Rock” or “The Flow”.

Obviously these contemporary marketing-oriented strategies are not the approach the Holy Orthodox Church should take to draw people to the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church”. Becoming an Orthodox Christian is a serious commitment to live in community with the faithful according to the apostolic tradition, which is not subject to change in order to accommodate the needs of our fallen culture. Choosing to become Orthodox is not a decision that should be encouraged to be made lightly. Our tradition, our liturgy, our rubrics, our theology, our faith must be understood and internalized. It takes time and effort to adopt the “mind of the Church”. As our Bishop JOSEPH has reminded us time and again, “Our goal must be on quality, not quantity”.

But is Christ’s call to “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you ”(Matthew 28:18-20), a command only to the Protestants? Are we Orthodox Christians not especially called to present to our culture “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”(Jude 1:3)? I think the answer is clearly yes. As our visionary Metropolitan PHILIP wrote in The Word in 1985, “North America is searching for the New Testament Church. North America is searching for the Church which was born on Pentecost Day. North America is ready and waiting for us, but are we ready for North America?”

Reprinted from Spring 2008 issue AGAIN Magazine

Kevin Allen

I recently had a conversation with an Eastern Orthodox priest, whose twenty-six year old son recently left home for an indefinite stay at a Buddhist monastery. The priest was heart broken. His son was not a stranger to Eastern Orthodoxy or to its monastic tradition either, having spent time at several Orthodox monasteries, and even two months on the holy mountain of Mt. Athos. His son’s journey to a non-Christian Eastern religious tradition is not an isolated event. Eastern religions in North America are a growing and competing force in religious life with Christianity. If you count all confessions of Christianity as one, Buddhism is now the third-largest religious group in the United States, with 2.1 – 2.5 million adherents (based on the 2008 “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey”, The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life), approximately 800,000 of whom are American western “converts”. There are more Buddhists in America today than Eastern Orthodox Christians! The Dalai Lama (the leader of one of the Tibetan Buddhist sects) is one of the most recognized and admired people in the world and far better known than any Eastern Orthodox hierarch, including the Ecumenical Patriarch.. Look in the magazine section of Borders or Barnes and Noble. You will find more publications with names like “Shambala Sun”, “Buddhadharma”, and “What is enlightenment?” than Christian magazines!

In addition to losing seekers (many of them youth) to non-Christian eastern spiritual traditions, eastern metaphysics have also seeped into our western culture without much notice. For example, think of how often one hears the phrase “that’s good (or bad) karma”. Karma is a Hindu word that has to do with the consequences of deeds done in a previous life (reincarnation)! They are doing a better job (sadly) “evangelizing” our culture than we Eastern Orthodox Christians are!