St Shenouda Monastery, with the Kind permission of the translators and after a long time being out of print, has reprinted “The Hermit Fathers”. If you are interested in buying copies for your bookshop or youth group please email us. An excerpt Hermit Fathers Excerpt which is made out of, The Table of contents, and the lives of two of those great saints can be seen here.

The Hermit Fathers is an account of the virtuous asceticism and admirable ways of life of the holy and blessed wilderness fathers. They are meant to inspire and instruct those who want to imitate their heavenly lives, so that they may make progress on the way that leads to the kingdom of heaven. The holy fathers who were the initiators and masters of the blessed monastic way of life, being entirely on fire with divine and heavenly love and counting as nothing at all that men hold to be beautiful and estimable, trained themselves on earth to do nothing whatsoever out of vainglory. They hid themselves away, and by their supreme humility in keeping most of their good works hidden, they made progress on the way that leads to God. Moreover, no one has been able to describe their virtuous lives for us in detail, for those who have taken the greatest pains in this matter have only committed to writing a few fragments of their more admirable deeds and words.  In this book you will find twenty eight examples of the lives of those Holy men and women which are sweeter than honey and honeycomb.

The price of the book is

1-49 Copies AUD $ 8.00 Each + Shipping
50 and over AUD $ 6.00 Each + Shipping

Title: The Hermit Fathers
Author: Fr Samaan El Souriany
Binding: Perfect Bound
Trim Size: 215mm x 140 mm
No of Pages: 192 Pages
Weight: 250 g

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There is a lot of benefits too, such as:

• Youth get to enjoy each others company under the umbrella of the church
• A church directory can be built up easily
• Youth groups can be formed and a youth database achieved through this
• Central place for all copts
• Library of resources eg. sermons, photos, events can be shared amongst all chuches world wide

An example of this vision is seen in MyChurch.org where they are implementing a social network for all churches world wide. This article "A private social network for your church" shows there vision.

Another point I would like to mention:

• Social networking sites such as Bebo/My Space tend to have a negative impact on young adolescent youth since they are put into a social environment where there are no adults and they can do what they want. Hence swearing, sexual images, worldly music are "normal".

My Dream

Here is some brainstorming I did on an ideal Coptic Social Network Site that I would love to be implemented.

• Events
  • RSVP
  • Photos of events afterwards
• Friends
• Monasteries
• Diocese
  • Bishop
  • Churches
    • Fathers
    • Sunday School Class of XX
    • Other Groups
      • Choir
      • Deacons
    • Youth Groups
      • Servants
      • Photos
      • Events
    • Photos
    • Events
• Organisations
  • Events
• Profile
  • Avatar
  • Pictures
  • Family Tree
  • Messages
• News
• Saints
• Resources
  • Audio
    • Sermons
    • Hymns
  • Books
  • Presentations

Due to the hard nature of building something like this, I think MyChurch.org is the best one that fits this criteria so far. Ning.com has been up there too, but it serves more of a general social networking site rather than church specific.

Let me know your opinions.

God Bless

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But what's really amazing is that David has started a CTech community for all Copts to help out with technology amongst each other and share ideas.

"Ctech stands for Coptic Technology. Ctech refers to all the technology that can be implemented in both our churches and their ministry."

More information can be found here

This is such an excellent idea! I've been wanting something like this for a while now since it is a lot of effort to learn about technical stuff.. and once you do.. you can only share it with one church. It would be far more better to share it with a group of technical copts from all around the world to benefit all churches internationally.

May God Bless this new ministry and I'm sure it will be successful!!

There is also a Google Group for it.. hmmm.. I wana start the facebook group hehehe =)

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