Can anyone recommend some good speakers to come to a parish and do a talk (conference/class/workshop)? Any topic is fair game as long as the speaker is engaging.
I suspect Fr. Thomas Hopko is probably solidly booked up. Don't foget he is older now, but still has an extensive speaking schedule. I am sure when available one needs to book him months in advance.
Not sure if you are asking me or not. But I heard him on one of his visits to Canada years ago and I thought his speach was too light-weight, and especially for Lent. I found his writings better than an in-person presentation.
Also I spoke to him afterwards and after answering my question he asked me which parish I went to. When I told him I was Ukrainian Orthodox, he got all huffy and said that he had made the choice to trade in his Ruthenian ethnicity for Orthodoxy. I was a student and young at the time; being a Canadian I knew nothing about Ruthenian settlement in the USA and all the issues involved. I remember being so shocked at his rudeness and his implication that somehow I wasn't a real Orthodox believer like him because I was not in the OCA. And in Canada, my church is the largest Orthodox Church followed by the Greeks, Serbs, Romanians, Antiochians and so forth. I had never even heard of the OCA until attending this meeting. Another older man from my church was with me and he told Hopko that the Holy Spirit at Pentecost blessed all languages and all cultures. I continue to read Hopko's writings but would not go out of way to hear him in person.
I was listening to the "Faith of our Fathers" colloqium on Ancient Faith Radio and after listening to Fr. Pat Reardon, I would say this:- He sounds kinda dry so it takes some getting used to. But why I'd recommend him is because he keeps you in stitches.
A priest from the MFVAs (Missionary Franciscans of the Eternal Word) was the retreat master at a retreat I attended in 2006. He was dynamic, engaging and thoroughly orthodox. And not ignorant of the East. Just my 2 cents.
I've been told Archimandrite Meletios Weber has a good talk on the 12-Step Program and how is correlates with Orthodox theology.
Fr. Daniel Byantoro has a moving discussion of his missionary efforts, literally creating the Orthodox Church of Indonesia (and also Malaysia and elsewhere in the region). He's in Malaysia now but speaks extensively in the United States.
My personal paraphrased synopsis only as a convenience: One bishop per metropolitan area embracing all the varying local parish communities. These ethnic parishes form relevant chalices filled with our Eucharistic witness. This witness of these collective personalities must mission to all, transfiguring all into the unity of the body of Christ. Our various cultural values including social justice derives form these tangible parish vessel for us to drink from, a good savant to the one true unity in Christ. Our back up is the monasteries. Fanaticism nor chauvinism are virtuous. Ethnicity is a normal expression which organically evolve into welcoming inclusive communities, not exclusively shunning others with criticism and blame. This is the concern of all of us, plurality works when mutual respect of the canonical ormophoria of Constantinople together with all our various mother churches are respected. They can not create a US church but we must, they can only recognize this church. Unity means cooperation as it did in the first millennium with its checks and balances on both sides. All the baptized are responsible as the defenders of the faith, it is not the exclusivity of the clergy. We can only be one when we all respect each other. We must all feel welcomed and personally needed and wanted. Unity is not a gift but a task. We need to work at a humble, gentle and generous church as did our forerunners Saints John Chrysostom of Constantinople, Boras and Hlib of Kyiv, Herman of Alaska...
My paraphrased synopsis only as a convenience: Unity and primacy as in the first millennium cannot expect to require more than what was accepted then, nor can we offer less then was expected then. We need to restudy history not in difference but in agreement of perspective�
Bishop Nicholas (Samra), Auxiliary-Emeritus of Newton of the Melkites, is an excellent speaker.
"One day all our ethnic traits ... will have disappeared. Time itself is seeing to this. And so we can not think of our communities as ethnic parishes, ... unless we wish to assure the death of our community."
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