Fr. Vasileios Thermos, MD, PhD
Fr. Stephen Muse, PhD

Contemporary post-modern society in America is placing new challenges before Orthodox Clergy in addition to those which priests have faced throughout history. This seminar (of 90 minutes each class) will offer brief didactic portions, discussion and case studies exploring three main areas:

• Vocation and the person of the priest: unconscious motivation to priesthood and their consequences; clergy self-care, balancing church and family life, handling boundaries; recognizing vulnerabilities that can lead to burn-out and finding spiritual renewal through the community. These will be addressed in 4 sessions in an on-site retreat at the beginning of the course.
• Challenges of parish ministry in contemporary life: includes 9 zoom modules exploring topics of pastoral leadership; pastoral care in post-modern identity politics [gender identity and sexual orientation]; impact of artificial Intelligence and digital media, addictions; psychodynamics of conversion; non-spiritual modes of healing Christians resort to; types of violence and the dynamics of forgiveness; discernment and ministry to persons with psychological problems and spiritual pain.
• Navigating difficulties of congregational members: includes 5 zoom modules: identifying personality disorders and their impact on faith and religious practice; psychopathology in adults and children/adolescents; adaptive survival patterns of complex post traumatic trauma that affect repentance, confession, and spiritual formation; as well as unrecognized counter-transferential issues in the priest which can challenge boundaries in various ways through intense reactivity and persistent neediness.

1. Emergence, development, and evolution of the priestly vocation.
VT - SM
2. Hazards of VIPS: Boundaries and vulnerabilities relating to vocation, intimacy, power, and spirituality
SM
3. Clergy Burnout & Well-being, PT 1
VT
4. Clergy Burnout & Well-being, Pt II
SM
Online weekly classes
5. Pastoral Leadership in contemporary society.
SM
6. Postmodern Identity: challenges and opportunities
VT
7. Addiction, AI, and the shaping of behavior in contemporary society.
SM
8. Psychodynamics of Conversion: reflections on the who, the what and the why.
VT
9. Suffering hell for the sake of heaven: pastoral care for spiritual pain, grief, and trauma
SM
10. Sexual orientation and its pastoral parameters
VT
11. “What if I don’t feel like I am?”: Gender Identity landscape today.
VT

Psychiatric helps for ministry with difficult personalities

12. Parish as family system: navigating the ties that bind and loose
VT & SM
13. Dysfunctional characterological styles and the spiritual life.
VT & SM
14. Re-membering ourselves in Christ: understanding the challenges of fragmentation from sin and adaptive survival patterns from trauma in the pastoral setting.
SM
15. Psychopathology with which our children and adolescents thrive: what should a pastor know?
VT
16. Violence, repentance, forgiveness, and the path of salvation
VT & SM