The Orthodox Christian 'Welcome Home' Network
How far is Tokyo from Larissa? By kilometers the distance is undoubtedly very great. For a young woman, who had the longing to follow the path of her heart to satisfy a great desire of hers, the distance was like an excursion in a blooming spring garden. It is like the excursion the then 29 [...]
Starting from Scratch by Fr. John Whiteford Having an English language mission, without having a permanent priest was difficult, but we did regular reader services, and were able to get priests to travel to serve the liturgy on a somewhat regular basis. It was when we began St. Jonah’s that I began posting liturgical rubrics [...]
Becoming a Catechumen by Fr. John Whiteford Fr. Anthony Nelson invited my wife and me to tag along with him on a trip to Holy Trinity Monastery (the spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR)), in Jordanville, New York, and the Synod Headquarters in New York City, and so we did. [...]
The Final Break by Fr. John Whiteford Things finally reached the point where I was more than ready to convert, and my wife was also comfortable enough with the idea of attending St. Benedicts, that I was ready to make a final break with the church I had been raised in. On June 29th, 1990, [...]
Transition by Fr. John Whiteford As my doubts about Protestantism increased, I found myself in a very unpleasant situation. As an associate pastor, I had certain responsibilities, which included leading a small group on Sunday nights, and also occasionally preaching on Sunday morning. I continued to fulfill these duties, but was increasingly less convinced about [...]
by Fr. John Whiteford Around the time I began digging into Oden’s “Systematic Theology,” I received 2 books that Fr. Anthony Nelson had suggested I read if I wanted to understand more about the Orthodox Church: ”Orthodox Dogmatic Theology”, by Fr. Michael Pomazansky, and “Becoming Orthodox”, by Fr. Peter Gillquist. I was struck by many of [...]
by Fr. John Whiteford However, when I began to seriously study the writings of the Methodist theologian Thomas Oden, I realized that my new theological method wasn’t a new method at all – it was only new to me. Much of the material I was assigned to read while at SNU was a labor to [...]
Discovering Tradition by Fr. John Whiteford There were several things that I studied in depth that began to open my eyes to the fundamental flaws in Protestantism, and also to the importance of Tradition: Textual Criticism, Empiricism and its role in Protestant Biblical Scholarship, the question of the inspiration of Scripture, the works of Thomas [...]
An Associate Pastor and Pro-Life Activist by Fr. John Whiteford The new Nazarene Church, that I began attending seemed like the ideal I had been looking for. It was started by the initiative of the District Superintendent (who functions a bit like a diocesan bishop) with the intention of attracting people who were inclined to [...]
The Dead End of Non-Denominationalism by Fr. John Whiteford In the summer of 1988 my wife and I were married in the Chinese Baptist Church that she had been attending in Houston. Due to the efforts of my very frugal wife, we were able to have a nice wedding, a reception, a honeymoon, and to [...]
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