Philip Saliba's Leadership and Vision for the Orthodox Church

The Shepherd Metaphor and Pastoral Responsibility

Throughout his career, Philip Saliba has attempted to lead by example. He has taken to heart the metaphor of shepherd and sheep. By writing, by speaking, and by making appeals to logic and Christian charity, Saliba has taught his flock the ways to be proper Christians in a violent and unruly period. The central challenge for the Church is making the teachings of Christianity valid and important to people in a reluctant or self-indulgent society. All those within the ministry — whether a new recruit or one who has achieved the level of reverence Saliba has — are tasked with being leaders. Just as the shepherd must lead his sheep to and from the fields in order for them to survive and flourish, so too must members of the clergy show their parishioners the way to salvation and the way to be allowed into Heaven upon the occasion of their ultimate demise.

A person's soul is not limited to the here and now; it is eternal. Each action that a person performs in their lifetime has a direct effect on whether that soul will be allowed into Heaven or whether it will be damned to Hell. The priest's responsibility is to show the living person how their choices impact their immortal soul and, by doing so, to instill in them a firm purpose to live as a Christian and according to the tenets of the Christian religion. In times of war, famine, or social upheaval, it can be extremely difficult for a priest to make his flock see beyond the immediacy of their current situation. However, regardless of the difficulty, this is exactly what the priest must do: make people see beyond the moment and anticipate what will become of them in the afterlife. The Good Shepherd image, long central to Christian pastoral theology, captures precisely this duty of spiritual guidance and self-sacrifice on behalf of the congregation (Allen 88–97).

Proposals for Church Reform and Expansion

Philip Saliba was not content to allow the Church to continue as it had for centuries. He understood that change was required because the world was changing. Christians now live in countries all over the world, and in many of those countries they are persecuted for their religious beliefs. To combat this, Saliba made recommendations for ways in which the Church could be improved and better serve the needs of its growing and diverse constituency. Some of the changes he suggested included expansion of the bishopric to regions throughout the Archdiocese, expansion of the Department of Missions and Evangelism, the creation of a department focused on planning and development, and efforts to unify American Orthodox parishioners. If it was not possible to unify the people of one denomination within the United States, it would be unlikely to achieve unification among the members of the religion throughout the rest of the world. By the same argument, a successful unification would serve as a beacon of hope globally.

All these suggestions are logical but difficult to accomplish. Beyond these specific tasks, what they demand of the ministry is the understanding that it is not enough to worship or teach in the old manners and still expect large-scale success in expanding the religion. Particularly in pockets of Christianity in the developing world, the faith needs to be taught with sensitivity to regional culture. The approach used to sermonize to a group of Americans, for instance, may differ considerably from the approach appropriate in a culture that is predominantly Muslim. The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, which Saliba led, represents precisely this kind of diverse, geographically dispersed community that requires adaptive pastoral strategies (Allen 300–312).