The World's Premier Online Orthodox Christian Homiletics Resource
In writing a blog post, often we see, even in our favorite blogs, that the author has reposted, linked to, reported on and/or commented on something they have seen on the Internet, television, heard on the radio, or read in a book, magazine or newspaper. A news story, an opinion piece, an excellent essay, a pensive reflection, a timely article: all these make excellent blog entries. It is a snap to rewrite the title, provide a link to the … [Read more...]
The Orthodox Church suffers from an abysmal lack of cogent apologetic material. Interestingly, thanks to blogging, I believe this will change soon. Someone like you or me will get so tired of not having the kind of printed material we need, that we'll just make it ourselves, and in the day of print-on-demand publishers (see here for examples of my own books, published at Lulu.com), well - it won't be long. In the meantime, we stand at a wonderful … [Read more...]
Here at the Preachers Institute, we wish to offer our congratulations to our brother in the Lord, Barnabas Powell, who today received the laying on of hands to the Holy Diaconate! Fr. Dcn. Barnabas is not only a friend, he is one of us - a member of the Preachers Institute, and student at Holy Cross Theological School in Brookline, MA. At the recent Art of Speaking Workshop (you can see the Review here), he was one of the four presenters. Fr. … [Read more...]
Every week in my parish bulletin, I include a short life of one of the saints commemorated in the coming week. (You can find my weekly bulletins here, if you care to see - Weekly Bulletins from Prescott) I try to include a wide variety of saints - well known, obscure, men, women, children, families, soldiers, martyrs, confessors - you get the picture. I've done this for many years now, and I've often had people tell me how much they like these … [Read more...]
by Fr. Jonathan Cholcher Sermons can always be better, that is, more effective. Improvement does not happen by accident, but by the deliberate process of understanding key elements of sermon effectiveness and constantly evaluating one’s performance based on these criteria. Three key elements, or criteria, are suggested by the ancient writer Plutarch’s likening of public speaking to the successful exercise of playing catch (On Listening, 3). … [Read more...]
Yesterday, I wrote about setting a simple blog schedule and using the Calendar to 'fill in' some basic, but personally significant dates. I also mentioned how easy it was to prepare these in advance, write them up and then schedule them for publication on the desired date - that way, the 'work' of the writing can be done anytime prior. Voila! Just like that, almost a third of your blog is filled. I recommend you seriously consider it to get … [Read more...]
By Peter Chopelas I (Fr. John) came across this excellent article recently, and used it to craft an important sermon on heaven and hell in the afterlife according to the Scriptures and the teaching of the Orthodox Church, and found it to be an excellent and thorough resource for this important homiletic topic. Since then, I've come to discover just how quickly this essay has spread throughout the English speaking Orthodox world. An early draft … [Read more...]
Now that we are less than two weeks away from beginning our 30 (40) Days of Blogging, and as a part of this endeavor, the Preachers Institute will offer some help, suggestions, ideas, guidelines, and hopefully a few basic, default ideas for starting your blog. First, begin planning your 30-40 day blogging schedule. It need not be anything too formal, but it is an easy matter to take a few days off the Calendar which have some significance, and … [Read more...]
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