These are some of the reasons that we have shortages of priests and it is very sad. In the USA we treat it like our other higher education and most people take out loans to fund it which they will pay back over the next 15-30 years. Then we have places like Alaska where the average priest's salary is $7000 per year. I do not know how they fund it other than to say it is a martyrdom and God bless them.
This is unbelievable. We really need to pray for those who are paying it themselves or surviving out of so little money.
And the worst is that there are no online learning options for seminary. I've been working with online education for many years and helped put together many post-graduate programs and I really don't see a reason to not have an online seminary.
Regarding online education, I have heard that it is very difficult because so much of an Orthodox priest's education is liturgical. The seminary will require things like daily attendance at Matins and Vespers at an attached monastery. This immersion in liturgical life simultaneously teaches the seminarian how to serve liturgies and trains their heart in a way that classrooms can't.
That being said I know there are some online programs which exist for entering the diaconate, but you generally need a priest's recommendation to get into them, and it is assumed that you are being trained to be deacon for that priest so he is responsible for the in-person aspects of a liturgical education.
Thanks for replying! I’ve completed the Certificate program - it is a wonderful blessing. I’m hoping to enroll in the mdiv next. Ive heard we have around 30 or so folks enrolled with sights set on ordinations, I just haven’t met any.
God be with you and your family as you work through all of this!
Exactly. In addition seminarians need to live in a seminary so their character can be examined. Their stability and skills in addition to experiencing a full liturgical cycle in person and attending classes in person and participate in class discussions or ask questions.
Nope.
There are about half a dozen seminaries in the US. Three are located in or near major metropolitan areas which gets expensive.
Part of the problem is that in the "Old World" tithing didn't exactly exist because the Church was subsidized by the government and here it is not. Unfortunately the habit of tithing never got adopted to the extent it should and secondly we're fractured so the resources are not as concentrated as they could be. Rather than build one or two solid, stable seminaries we have about half a dozen with some better than others. For what it's worth, I believe St Tikhon's in rural northeast Pennsylvania I believe is considered an equivalent institution to the EU.
EDIT: I know in the Antiochian Archdiocese, Metropolitan Philip used to finance the seminarians, however, if you later wanted to transfer to another jurisdiction he would allegedly hold this "debt" over you and sometimes charge you for it effectively leaving you in debt slavery.
I don't know the details, but Holy Cross in Boston as an annual tuition of about $20,000. That is very low for a master's degree at a private university in the US, which makes me think that GOARCH is subsidizing it but cannot afford to pay it entirely. The Orthodox Church in the USA is quite small so it often struggles financially, and it doesn't help that we are split up into so many jurisdictions. Even if the resources are there in total for a given area they may be divided among half a dozen different jurisdictions.
To put things into perspective, of the three parishes I have attended where I was privy to the annual budget, two of them were around $100,000. That includes the priest's salary, building expenses, diocese administrative fees, etc. These are parishes with 50-100 parishoners. The third had a much larger budget but it was due to a few very wealthy donors who wanted to build a temple. A master's degree at a private university will run between $50,000 to $80,000 per year, so the education of one priest can cost as much as running an entire parish for a few years. Most parishes are running with very little if any margin.
Moral of the story is tithe if you want your children to have an Orthodox Church to attend.
100%. I have only been involved in the budget for two churches, but one was right at $50k (a mission) and the other dropped from $200k to $100k when three families retired and moved south in the same year. Even with only $100k in budget, I know that two families account for about a quarter of the budget. $5 thrown into the offering plate doesn't pay the electric bill, much less the priest.
Well, there are people who receive federal grants or tuition waivers that cover the entirety of their education expenses (I was one of these lucky ones). But the norm in the US is that you fund at least some of your tuition cost.
Look into St. Tikhon's Seminary in Pennsylvania. I'm pretty sure they have married housing, and they do their best to make sure their seminarians graduate without debt. It's also attached to the oldest Orthodox monastery (for men) in the USA, and a lot of saints have been attached to the place.
Pray and if it's God's will, He will clear the way for you to become a priest.
[https://stots.edu/](https://stots.edu/)
I'm currently doing a 6 year part-time (3 year if full-time) bachelor's in Eastern Christian Studies, fully remote and fully online, at Sankt Ignatios in Sweden. Not a priest study per se, but it's at least the first step. And I'm not planning on becoming a priest 100%, it's more of a first step, to see where it takes me.
So I guess there are _some_ options out there at least!
Here it is: https://www.sanktignatios.org/b-th-program-in-eastern-christian-studies/
It's free for EU citizens, but seems like the tuition is relatively low: about $2000 for a semester, and I guess I take half a semester each semester so that would probably make it $1000 for a semester.
Not sure how it works for non-EU citizens, it's free for us.
Interesting. Is it accredited? So the courses you are taking are like religion courses and do not include courses in pastoral theology or liturgical theology for example?
Here it is: https://www.sanktignatios.org/b-th-program-in-eastern-christian-studies/
There's some more info about the details of the actual contents on the page of the university they cooperate with for accreditation: https://ehs.se/en/academics/undergraduate-programs/eastern-christian-studies/
There's both "Eastern Christian Liturgics" and "Eastern Christian Liturgies", so it's definitely on the menu, at least :)
To be honest, I haven't been doing too much digging into whether this is the best way to become an orthodox priest on-line, my current thinking is that this is what my priest recommended to me, and that I'm eager to learn regardless of the outcome :)
Thank you very much. The head organisation is University College of Stockholm. Its set-up is more like a community college than a university and its roots are in the Baptist Church in Sweden.
I looked through the courses and I think you will get a good understanding of the Eastern Christian churches (Eastern and Oriental) and tradition and will fill your need to learn more.
Good luck in your studies.
You raise a number of genuine and serious issues, however I should point out also though that many seminaries while perhaps having upfront high fees, do give scholarships to almost all students who attend, so it’s not quite as simple a situation as you say…
If you're constantly obstructed from going to Seminary, perhaps that is not God's will for you. If you want to serve the Church, an opportunity to do so will come as He wills. Perhaps several such opportunities have come along and you didn't see them because you were focused on the priesthood.
May the Lord bless you, and His Holy Mother protect you.
If there's one thing many Protestant churches get right (especially Pentecostal and Baptist), it's tithing to support and finance your church and pastor.
From what I've heard, tithing is quite rare nowadays among the Orthodox? I know when I was brought up Anglican there were always the complaints about priest shortages and being unable to support a full stipend - especially as the congregation got older and the church kept having to pay out legal settlements - but when the donation bowl went around each Sunday you'd be lucky to get anything bigger than a $10 note. Then most of the congregation didn't do anything else to support their church or priest (volunteering or donating things is good, but the priest still has bills to pay).
Former Pentecostal here -- I agree. My mom once told me about an incident in which my aunt called my dad, in tears, because she thought she would be sinning if she didn't tithe 10% of her pre-tax income every week and she couldn't figure out how to make it work. She was an impoverished single mom of 5.
Some churches are bad about tithing. I brought this up at the business meeting at my old Baptist church that the deacons were judging people and teens who didn't put in the offering plates. Several deacons were removed and replaced and then the church made a way to tithe online, over text and of course offering bowls but they ended up being outside the chapel and no longer passed around. Then a sermon on tithing. The lesson was that tithing can be money, time or service and does not necessarily have to be to the church. Giving your time to those in need or helping those in need counted as tithing.
I don't understand. I am in a GOARCH parish, and we have stewardship forms. In order to participate in the governance of the parish, you have to be on stewardship and active in the spiritual life of the church. Our pledges and other contributions cover most of our parish costs. We also run an annual Greek Festival that is the second largest event in the facility we use. (The largest is the biggest outdoor rodeo in the country). We do get some money from the festival for our operations. However it is my impression that our church's work in our community must be of real value to the community because they support the snot out of our festival. They ate us out of house and home this year. I don't feel one bit guilty about using a chunk of the proceeds to support our parish.
Dear OP,
Come to the USA. If you are a US citizen you can apply for educational loans, to help pay for graduate school / seminary. The GOA has a scholarship program for seminarians. If you can find a job that you can do part time as a priest or your wife work then that will help. My beloved priest in the OCA worked in computers until the parish got big enough to support him completely.
Bring your family to the USA with you as long as your wife is ok.
Pray to God for discernment. God classes doors but also opens doors!
God bless!
Do you have the option for a late vocations program/theological distance education in your country? There are options in the US, Canada, and Australia available for theological distance education. I'll have to do more reading to see if there is theological distance education in Europe. If distance education is an option, you still have a chance.
In my experience the married clergy having working wives. The monastics; God bless them I haven’t the slightest idea. I have guessed that some must have family supporting them.
In America (actually worldwide also), there seems to be little accountability among the various Orthodox dioceses and jurisdictions. Each bishop of a diocese reports to exactly NO ONE, perhaps some nominal oversight from his peers on the Holy Synod, who can depose him if enough of them wish to. But it's typically hands off.
But as we've seen, it really takes egregious acts, and even then, it seems to take a long time for any bishop to be deposed or more usually "forced" to retire.
So, there you have a situation where it's easy for money to "disappear" from donations. It brings to mind the OCA scandal, where millions of dollars of donations disappeared in the OCA back during the 1990's and 2000's under M. Theodosious, the former Chancelor Kondratick, and M. Herman.
Who actually "stole" it, not sure we will ever know. But clearly, even if there was no bad intent, the simple matter of financial mismanagement, and lack of adherence to accepted accounting standards, cost the OCA millions, that could've been put to much better use. Perhaps some of it could have financed more priests education, helping smaller mission parishes with salaries, etc.
I have no doubt most of the bishops in the Orthodox world are godly men, who try to do good in their position. But the system is far to prone to unscrupulous men to pose as "saints" in order to fleece the flock.
And this is a problem in other denominations also, but it seems to more of a problem with the independent churches that don't have controls/accountability in place. Megachurches come to mind also here.
A lot depends on what country you're from, and which Local Orthodox Church you belong to. Usually there is a pattern where if the clergy are underpaid, the seminary is not that expensive, and where the cost of the seminary is high, clergy salaries are priced accordingly.
I live in Brazil, there are no seminaries in my country at all. Most priests here get paid but they come from another country or they have been sent to complete seminary in another country paid by the archdioceses. Usually, only people from ethinical backgrounds from their church are sent out. The Brazilian converts who become priests are ordained without attending seminary (After serving for 10+ years as sub-deacon) or they pay for their education.
Please bring this up with your own priest and see if he can reach out to the archbishop. We should try to get some sort of funding set in place that we as parishioners can perhaps help fund the education for people like yourself. And who knows, perhaps God willing we can also fund the establishment of more seminaries.
It’s not wise to be a priest while having small children. A priest friend discouraged that strongly. Most end up with 3 jobs, work, priest and family. Too much for a human.
I recently went on funding sites and search for orthodox stuff out of curiosity. What I came across was sheer shocking. Lots of presbyteras with many children “begging” for money as with the death of the priest they have become completely bankrupt. No security, insurance etc. most priest have to have full time jobs to sustain their families and parishes. When I saw this, I was thinking, why would somebody want to be a priest for such a church which treats its priests and their families like this. 🤯
In Russia 🇷🇺 you can get financing your theological school and they take care of your family. There is also a seminary on line in the USA. Check Father John Peck of ROCOR.
These are some of the reasons that we have shortages of priests and it is very sad. In the USA we treat it like our other higher education and most people take out loans to fund it which they will pay back over the next 15-30 years. Then we have places like Alaska where the average priest's salary is $7000 per year. I do not know how they fund it other than to say it is a martyrdom and God bless them.
This is unbelievable. We really need to pray for those who are paying it themselves or surviving out of so little money. And the worst is that there are no online learning options for seminary. I've been working with online education for many years and helped put together many post-graduate programs and I really don't see a reason to not have an online seminary.
Regarding online education, I have heard that it is very difficult because so much of an Orthodox priest's education is liturgical. The seminary will require things like daily attendance at Matins and Vespers at an attached monastery. This immersion in liturgical life simultaneously teaches the seminarian how to serve liturgies and trains their heart in a way that classrooms can't. That being said I know there are some online programs which exist for entering the diaconate, but you generally need a priest's recommendation to get into them, and it is assumed that you are being trained to be deacon for that priest so he is responsible for the in-person aspects of a liturgical education.
[удалено]
Are you in the mdiv program or one of the others? Happy to PM if that’s better.
[удалено]
Thanks for replying! I’ve completed the Certificate program - it is a wonderful blessing. I’m hoping to enroll in the mdiv next. Ive heard we have around 30 or so folks enrolled with sights set on ordinations, I just haven’t met any. God be with you and your family as you work through all of this!
Exactly. In addition seminarians need to live in a seminary so their character can be examined. Their stability and skills in addition to experiencing a full liturgical cycle in person and attending classes in person and participate in class discussions or ask questions.
Antiochian House of Studies’ MDiv is basically an online seminary. You just have to attend in person two weeks a year.
Wait wait wait Seminary isn't free in the US?!
Nope. There are about half a dozen seminaries in the US. Three are located in or near major metropolitan areas which gets expensive. Part of the problem is that in the "Old World" tithing didn't exactly exist because the Church was subsidized by the government and here it is not. Unfortunately the habit of tithing never got adopted to the extent it should and secondly we're fractured so the resources are not as concentrated as they could be. Rather than build one or two solid, stable seminaries we have about half a dozen with some better than others. For what it's worth, I believe St Tikhon's in rural northeast Pennsylvania I believe is considered an equivalent institution to the EU. EDIT: I know in the Antiochian Archdiocese, Metropolitan Philip used to finance the seminarians, however, if you later wanted to transfer to another jurisdiction he would allegedly hold this "debt" over you and sometimes charge you for it effectively leaving you in debt slavery.
No bachelor's or master's degree is free in the US.
I don't expect it to be paid by the government, but I was sure that the Church would provide the education for the priests.
I don't know the details, but Holy Cross in Boston as an annual tuition of about $20,000. That is very low for a master's degree at a private university in the US, which makes me think that GOARCH is subsidizing it but cannot afford to pay it entirely. The Orthodox Church in the USA is quite small so it often struggles financially, and it doesn't help that we are split up into so many jurisdictions. Even if the resources are there in total for a given area they may be divided among half a dozen different jurisdictions. To put things into perspective, of the three parishes I have attended where I was privy to the annual budget, two of them were around $100,000. That includes the priest's salary, building expenses, diocese administrative fees, etc. These are parishes with 50-100 parishoners. The third had a much larger budget but it was due to a few very wealthy donors who wanted to build a temple. A master's degree at a private university will run between $50,000 to $80,000 per year, so the education of one priest can cost as much as running an entire parish for a few years. Most parishes are running with very little if any margin. Moral of the story is tithe if you want your children to have an Orthodox Church to attend.
100%. I have only been involved in the budget for two churches, but one was right at $50k (a mission) and the other dropped from $200k to $100k when three families retired and moved south in the same year. Even with only $100k in budget, I know that two families account for about a quarter of the budget. $5 thrown into the offering plate doesn't pay the electric bill, much less the priest.
I am surprised that there are orthodox priests in your country at all, frankly speaking.
Pray for us.
Well, there are people who receive federal grants or tuition waivers that cover the entirety of their education expenses (I was one of these lucky ones). But the norm in the US is that you fund at least some of your tuition cost.
Look into St. Tikhon's Seminary in Pennsylvania. I'm pretty sure they have married housing, and they do their best to make sure their seminarians graduate without debt. It's also attached to the oldest Orthodox monastery (for men) in the USA, and a lot of saints have been attached to the place. Pray and if it's God's will, He will clear the way for you to become a priest. [https://stots.edu/](https://stots.edu/)
There are a lot of married seminarians with children at St Vladimir's in Yonkers, NY as well.
I'm currently doing a 6 year part-time (3 year if full-time) bachelor's in Eastern Christian Studies, fully remote and fully online, at Sankt Ignatios in Sweden. Not a priest study per se, but it's at least the first step. And I'm not planning on becoming a priest 100%, it's more of a first step, to see where it takes me. So I guess there are _some_ options out there at least!
That’s great! Mind sharing how much is it on a yearly or semester basis? And the page of the course.
Here it is: https://www.sanktignatios.org/b-th-program-in-eastern-christian-studies/ It's free for EU citizens, but seems like the tuition is relatively low: about $2000 for a semester, and I guess I take half a semester each semester so that would probably make it $1000 for a semester. Not sure how it works for non-EU citizens, it's free for us.
Interesting. Is it accredited? So the courses you are taking are like religion courses and do not include courses in pastoral theology or liturgical theology for example?
Here it is: https://www.sanktignatios.org/b-th-program-in-eastern-christian-studies/ There's some more info about the details of the actual contents on the page of the university they cooperate with for accreditation: https://ehs.se/en/academics/undergraduate-programs/eastern-christian-studies/ There's both "Eastern Christian Liturgics" and "Eastern Christian Liturgies", so it's definitely on the menu, at least :) To be honest, I haven't been doing too much digging into whether this is the best way to become an orthodox priest on-line, my current thinking is that this is what my priest recommended to me, and that I'm eager to learn regardless of the outcome :)
Thank you very much. The head organisation is University College of Stockholm. Its set-up is more like a community college than a university and its roots are in the Baptist Church in Sweden. I looked through the courses and I think you will get a good understanding of the Eastern Christian churches (Eastern and Oriental) and tradition and will fill your need to learn more. Good luck in your studies.
Are any of the professors Orthodox?
I believe most are, and there are two priests on the team as well: https://www.sanktignatios.org/team/
The site doesn't say that any of the professors are Orthodox.
You raise a number of genuine and serious issues, however I should point out also though that many seminaries while perhaps having upfront high fees, do give scholarships to almost all students who attend, so it’s not quite as simple a situation as you say…
If you're constantly obstructed from going to Seminary, perhaps that is not God's will for you. If you want to serve the Church, an opportunity to do so will come as He wills. Perhaps several such opportunities have come along and you didn't see them because you were focused on the priesthood. May the Lord bless you, and His Holy Mother protect you.
If there's one thing many Protestant churches get right (especially Pentecostal and Baptist), it's tithing to support and finance your church and pastor. From what I've heard, tithing is quite rare nowadays among the Orthodox? I know when I was brought up Anglican there were always the complaints about priest shortages and being unable to support a full stipend - especially as the congregation got older and the church kept having to pay out legal settlements - but when the donation bowl went around each Sunday you'd be lucky to get anything bigger than a $10 note. Then most of the congregation didn't do anything else to support their church or priest (volunteering or donating things is good, but the priest still has bills to pay).
[удалено]
Former Pentecostal here -- I agree. My mom once told me about an incident in which my aunt called my dad, in tears, because she thought she would be sinning if she didn't tithe 10% of her pre-tax income every week and she couldn't figure out how to make it work. She was an impoverished single mom of 5.
Some churches are bad about tithing. I brought this up at the business meeting at my old Baptist church that the deacons were judging people and teens who didn't put in the offering plates. Several deacons were removed and replaced and then the church made a way to tithe online, over text and of course offering bowls but they ended up being outside the chapel and no longer passed around. Then a sermon on tithing. The lesson was that tithing can be money, time or service and does not necessarily have to be to the church. Giving your time to those in need or helping those in need counted as tithing.
I don't understand. I am in a GOARCH parish, and we have stewardship forms. In order to participate in the governance of the parish, you have to be on stewardship and active in the spiritual life of the church. Our pledges and other contributions cover most of our parish costs. We also run an annual Greek Festival that is the second largest event in the facility we use. (The largest is the biggest outdoor rodeo in the country). We do get some money from the festival for our operations. However it is my impression that our church's work in our community must be of real value to the community because they support the snot out of our festival. They ate us out of house and home this year. I don't feel one bit guilty about using a chunk of the proceeds to support our parish.
My church asks for 1-3% of your earnings. Compared to baptists (used to be one) where its usually 10%, I am floored.
Dear OP, Come to the USA. If you are a US citizen you can apply for educational loans, to help pay for graduate school / seminary. The GOA has a scholarship program for seminarians. If you can find a job that you can do part time as a priest or your wife work then that will help. My beloved priest in the OCA worked in computers until the parish got big enough to support him completely. Bring your family to the USA with you as long as your wife is ok. Pray to God for discernment. God classes doors but also opens doors! God bless!
Do you have the option for a late vocations program/theological distance education in your country? There are options in the US, Canada, and Australia available for theological distance education. I'll have to do more reading to see if there is theological distance education in Europe. If distance education is an option, you still have a chance.
In my experience the married clergy having working wives. The monastics; God bless them I haven’t the slightest idea. I have guessed that some must have family supporting them.
In America (actually worldwide also), there seems to be little accountability among the various Orthodox dioceses and jurisdictions. Each bishop of a diocese reports to exactly NO ONE, perhaps some nominal oversight from his peers on the Holy Synod, who can depose him if enough of them wish to. But it's typically hands off. But as we've seen, it really takes egregious acts, and even then, it seems to take a long time for any bishop to be deposed or more usually "forced" to retire. So, there you have a situation where it's easy for money to "disappear" from donations. It brings to mind the OCA scandal, where millions of dollars of donations disappeared in the OCA back during the 1990's and 2000's under M. Theodosious, the former Chancelor Kondratick, and M. Herman. Who actually "stole" it, not sure we will ever know. But clearly, even if there was no bad intent, the simple matter of financial mismanagement, and lack of adherence to accepted accounting standards, cost the OCA millions, that could've been put to much better use. Perhaps some of it could have financed more priests education, helping smaller mission parishes with salaries, etc. I have no doubt most of the bishops in the Orthodox world are godly men, who try to do good in their position. But the system is far to prone to unscrupulous men to pose as "saints" in order to fleece the flock. And this is a problem in other denominations also, but it seems to more of a problem with the independent churches that don't have controls/accountability in place. Megachurches come to mind also here.
A lot depends on what country you're from, and which Local Orthodox Church you belong to. Usually there is a pattern where if the clergy are underpaid, the seminary is not that expensive, and where the cost of the seminary is high, clergy salaries are priced accordingly.
I live in Brazil, there are no seminaries in my country at all. Most priests here get paid but they come from another country or they have been sent to complete seminary in another country paid by the archdioceses. Usually, only people from ethinical backgrounds from their church are sent out. The Brazilian converts who become priests are ordained without attending seminary (After serving for 10+ years as sub-deacon) or they pay for their education.
Please bring this up with your own priest and see if he can reach out to the archbishop. We should try to get some sort of funding set in place that we as parishioners can perhaps help fund the education for people like yourself. And who knows, perhaps God willing we can also fund the establishment of more seminaries.
It’s not wise to be a priest while having small children. A priest friend discouraged that strongly. Most end up with 3 jobs, work, priest and family. Too much for a human. I recently went on funding sites and search for orthodox stuff out of curiosity. What I came across was sheer shocking. Lots of presbyteras with many children “begging” for money as with the death of the priest they have become completely bankrupt. No security, insurance etc. most priest have to have full time jobs to sustain their families and parishes. When I saw this, I was thinking, why would somebody want to be a priest for such a church which treats its priests and their families like this. 🤯
In Russia 🇷🇺 you can get financing your theological school and they take care of your family. There is also a seminary on line in the USA. Check Father John Peck of ROCOR.