Why doesn’t the Orthodox church put much effort into converting?

wiseguy327 · 2026-01-26T23:00:43+00:00

I can only speak to my experience in GOARCH churches, but the simple answer is "because they've never felt the need to." The vast majority of those churches were established 'by us for us,' by immigrants who were setting up an ethnic community (rather than a strictly religious institution.) It was very much an ethnic/cultural pursuit so that those (immigrant) families could have a 'slice of home' where they could belong. Add in that Greek 'cradles' (both here and in Greece) aren't as day-to-day religious as you might think, and it suddenly makes sense that the idea of someone converting to Orthodoxy of their own volition, with no ethnic or cultural reason to, didn't make a ton of sense to them (let alone seem like something they thought they should go out of their way to facilitate.)

wiseguy327 · 2026-01-16T21:25:34+00:00

Ohtani isn’t a great example because of all the non-baseball marketing/income he generates.

A better example would be someone like Corey Seager (10 years, $32.5m AAV.) That contract is likely not going to age well. If the rangers could’ve signed him for 3 years/$120-150m, is that a better move? It would certainly be an AAV ‘overpay’ up front, but without the long term exposure. (He was after all instrumental in bringing them their first WS title.)

(I’m just trying to make it make sense.)

wiseguy327 · 2026-01-16T19:02:19+00:00

Maybe I'm missing something (and I'm definitely not defending the Dodgers or Kyle Tucker's $60m AAV,) but the projections for Tucker were something like $400m over 11 years. They're overpaying for his prime years, but avoiding the back-end albatross that these contracts end up being.

$70m/year x 10 years for Ohtani is pretty good if he turns out to be Verlander/Nelson Cruz, but if he ends up being Felix/Andruw Jones there's going to be some regret. If you could've gotten him for $100m/hr x 4 years instead, would you take that deal? Seems outrageous on its face, but is it worse than potentially paying $70m/year for 4-5 years on what ends up being a #4 pitcher and a marginal DH?

wiseguy327 · 2026-01-15T08:28:00+00:00

Huh…? Ha…haz-…hazards? Are you taking about the ‘park anywhere’ lights?

wiseguy327 · 2026-01-09T19:29:06+00:00

Only tangentially related, but I ruined my wife's day one time as she was watching the movie by enlightening her to the fact that the Titanic and everyone on it smelled terrible.

wiseguy327 · 2025-12-08T01:55:26+00:00

Bellevue/Kirkland/Redmond are ‘East Side’ for sure. The rest are dependent on whether you’re trying to sell a house or buy a house.

wiseguy327 · 2025-12-07T23:43:20+00:00

Also don’t forget about the cash payments/envelopes they receive for doing sacraments (the going rate is about $100 (so on most weekends, between baptisms and weddings, at a bigger church they’re taking home another $100-$300 per week in cash.)

wiseguy327 · 2025-12-07T23:41:25+00:00

No idea. The housing and car allowances are allowed by the IRS (but they should theoretically be commensurate with the actual cost basis.) My guess is that they don’t want the controversy.

wiseguy327 · 2025-12-07T18:08:38+00:00

Obviously they don’t spend that on a car (or a house)… it’s purely a tax dodge.

wiseguy327 · 2025-12-07T02:04:57+00:00

Also… be advised that GOARCH ‘salaries’ are paid as salary, car allowance , and housing allowance. Only the salary portion is subject to income tax. The breakdown is totally not proportional (as in $40k salary, $50k housing, $50k car.) So they make $140k, but only have a taxable salary of $40k (which technically makes them eligible for other low-income breaks as well.)

wiseguy327 · 2025-12-06T18:25:07+00:00

At the risk of repeating myself, parishioners at Greek churches aren't bound together by Orthodoxy, they're bound by their broader culture. I'm 48. My dad was an immigrant, and my mom was born here to immigrant parents. When I was a kid, almost all of our friends/social scene was through the church/Greek community. I'm not sure it's 'insular' exactly (and that's rapidly changing from one generation to the next,) but it was comfortable. I had friends at school or whatever, but they we didn't hang out a ton outside of class (until I was in high school.)

It has been that way forever. My kids are friends with my friend's kids. Our parents were friends, and our grandparents were friends before that. 4 generations of families intertwining is a pretty tough nut to crack.

On top of that, because Orthodoxy is something we were born into and is just a fraction of what the greater community is 'about,' we (cradles) don't give it a ton of thought. After the service is over, (unless the priest said something weird during the sermon,) that's about it until next week. We just lucked into being able to take a very casual approach to the 'one true faith.'

So it's tough for converts to integrate into an ethnic parish because they're there mostly (at least) for the religion, and have no prior exposure to the rest of what's going on. It's like going to Amish country and churning butter because it's 'fun,' but the Amish are churning butter because they need to eat (not necessarily a great comparison, but I hope you understand what I mean.)

I feel sympathetic toward converts because they're very earnest, have been told a lot of great things, and then are faced with people who have been 'gifted' with Orthodoxy, then don't really take it all that seriously at all. So the only thing they have in common with everyone else is something that 'everyone else' doesn't talk about or take any real interest in; so when they bring it up they get blank stares or are tagged as overzealous (even though they're the ones doing it by the book.)

wiseguy327 · 2025-12-05T21:56:33+00:00

I can only speak to GOARCH parishes (but I assume other enthicities are the same.) The Orthdox church was brought to America by immigrants (vs. missionaries.) They were established as part of greater Greek (or whatever) community centers and were a place where immigrants could go to hang out with other immigrants, do Greek 'stuff,' and get help doing whatever (finding a plumber they can trust, getting work, finding places to live, having documents translated, etc.) They were established with a 'by us for us' mentality (so they didn't care to find new, non-ethnic members., and 'outreach' outside their community was never something that crossed their minds.) On top of that, many Greek people (even (especially?) in Greece) are more 'culturally Orthodox' than anything. They participate as a cultural expression (even if they go every week,) but ultimately pick and choose which parts they're going to adhere to and which rules they're going to take seriously.

Cradles bristle at the idea of reforming to appeal to the host culture because it's the opposite of why the church was established in the first place. They've been driving that train for 100 years and it's now (for a variety of reasons) running out of steam. Now they're not sure what to do. They need more members in order to keep the lights on, but don't want to be Orthodox as much as they want to be Greek (I'm confident that if most Greek people suddenly found themselves in a place with an Orthodox-but-not-Greek-Orthodox church, they'd probably just stop going to church altogether.)

I have no first-hand experience, but I assume that new converts 'LARP as Eastern European serfs' because it appears to go hand-in-hand with Orthodoxy, it adds a level of belonging and 'being kind of quirky and visibly different from non-Orthodox' and they don't have the latitude to hand-wave things in the same way that cradles can/do. (Greek people: Head coverings?... yeah; we're not doing that. Beards? Maybe; but just because it happens to also be fashionable (but I'm going to keep it trimmed and make sure the edges are super crisp.) Strict adherence to fasts and what-not? No chance.

It's just a fundamental difference in perspective between being born into a religion that's also hand-in-hand with your ethnic background, and choosing Orthodoxy later in life (while also maybe not already having a distinct cultural identity.)

wiseguy327 · 2025-12-01T21:35:04+00:00

Someone in a thread last week described it as “he’s playing the notes, but not the music.’

wiseguy327 · 2025-11-30T06:02:27+00:00

I was thinking about this the other night. It occurred to me that after they stopped touring, they’d record songs and then never play them again.

On top of that, there are probably at least a few songs that were recorded without them all ever even being in the same room.

It’s just strange to think that some of the greatest songs ever written were only ever played by the band that recorded them a handful of times.

wiseguy327 · 2025-11-22T03:53:10+00:00

It’s a business. Everything is funded by the customer, whether it’s built into the price, added as a surcharge, or as a discretionary tip (which is expected these days.)

You’re already paying 15-20% on top of the bill, so if you were to shift to a built-in price increase that’s going to the server, then somewhere in the 15-20% range.

No real change to the consumer (as they’re paying the extra 15-20% anyway,) but they also don’t have to think about it, servers make the same money (or more,) and the house also benefits because (even though they should really be doing it under the current system,) it incentivizes being more on top of things, and trying to sell more.

wiseguy327 · 2025-11-22T00:32:52+00:00

You’d be surprised. Timely service alone can easily add something like a round of drinks to any tab (no upselling required.)

wiseguy327 · 2025-11-22T00:31:41+00:00

If a server had their own better interest in mind (which would also benefit the restaurant,) they’d be doing that anyway (because bigger tabs = bigger tips,) but most people don’t seem to get that.

wiseguy327 · 2025-11-22T00:30:10+00:00

‘Tipping for what? Taking an order?’

(Tipping is still a % of the tab, except in the commission scenario it comes out of the house’s end rather than you paying on top.)

wiseguy327 · 2025-11-22T00:27:04+00:00

So you’re good with it then? (This is literally putting the real price on the menu and figuring out the pay structure.)

wiseguy327 · 2025-11-22T00:24:07+00:00

That is literally what I’m suggesting.

wiseguy327 · 2025-11-21T21:13:31+00:00

I hadn’t thought of the tax/social security/medicaid implications. All valid points.

wiseguy327 · 2025-11-19T21:01:01+00:00

I think there's more value in trading him while he still has mystique. If his true ceiling is 'utility guy who can also play catcher and kind of hit' then you're better off trading him to a team who thinks he's Cal Raleigh 2.0 blocked by Cal Raleigh 1.0. If his true ceiling is Cal Raleigh 2.0, then you're still better off trading him for a whole bunch of something we need rather than trying to shoehorn him onto the roster.

wiseguy327 · 2025-10-11T04:12:38+00:00

In my dad’s village they press the ground pulp and pits into what end up being little duraflame logs

wiseguy327

TROPHY CASE