Welcome to our Sunday School website!

Our Lord commanded His Disciples, “Let the little children come to Me..., for to such belongs the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 19.14), and we strive to obey this command.  The goal of our Sunday school program is to instill the teachings of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the hearts, minds and souls of our children.  The children are full members of His Church, with full participation in the Divine Liturgy and other sacraments of the Church.  We believe that one cannot simply attend Sunday school without participating in the worship services; the Divine Liturgy is essential for the well being and nourishment of our children as Orthodox Christian believers.  We often refer to Orthodox Christianity as the way of life in Christ, and this way involves a call to holiness because God is Holy.  Our children need to know that living holiness is a daily activity for life and not on only Sundays.  We know no other true form of salvation outside of our communion.  It is the reason why we must work out our salvation in the fear, faith and love of God.

Our Sunday school ministry would not be complete without the eighteen teachers who volunteer their time and efforts in glorifying God.  We have approximately 130 students in Sunday school classes from Preschool to high school.  All the children, along with their teachers, report to class each Sunday after having partaken of the Holy Eucharist.  Our curriculum is that of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese (www.antiochian.org), published by the Orthodox Christian Education Commission (www.orthodoxed.org). 

We also encourage our teachers to work in close synergy with our students’ families.  We realize that educating our kids one hour a week, however essential that is to their spiritual and moral development, cannot do the job alone.  Parents cannot assume that all they have to do is bring their children to Sunday school and all is well.  Christian discipleship is learned primarily in the home and supplemented by Sunday school attendance.  Children indeed learn and imitate parents more than anyone.  If children are improperly fed we all will witness suffering in one way or another.  Children will often seek alternative forms of outlets to imitate that do not reflect Orthodoxy when they are neglected.  Our Lord Jesus said, “whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).  It is essential that parents take their Orthodoxy with the utmost seriousness and practical devotion.  It is no surprise for us when we are approached by parents that are experiencing difficulties with their children’s misbehaviors.  The family home is the “little church”.  This tends to be the place where beliefs & behaviors are shaped and molded.  The reality is that we must struggle to overcome obstacles that keep us and our children distant from Christ.  The church offers us prayers, fasting and almsgiving as spiritual armaments to fend off the devil and his army of demons and to unite us to Christ.  When we pursue the Kingdom of Heaven then and only then we have found the true faith in Christ.

Our Expectations of All Sunday School Children

• Being on time to church and to Sunday school
• Participation in classroom activities
• Participation in the Creative Arts Projects
• Involvement in the Christmas Pageants, Godparents Sunday, etc.
• Respect and obedience to all teachers
• Practice of the Orthodox Faith

Your Expectations of Our Teachers

• Being on time to church
• Prepared to teach Sunday school lessons
• Teach materials approved by our archdioceses
• Test each child grasp of  the taught lessons
• Encourage the children to practice the Orthodox Faith
• Attend Religious Education workshops
• Practice of the Orthodox Faith

        Robert J. Sweiss is the Sunday School Director of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church.  Robert was appointed by Father Nicholas Dahdal in 2000.  Prior to his appointment he taught Sunday school as a teacher since 1997.  He takes continuing religious education and workshops on an annual basis.  More recently, he was awarded by the Archdiocese a certification of completion for Sunday school teachers.  Robert has been on the parish council since 1998 and helped established the Jerusalem Bookstore in 2002 in which he serves as the Bookstore Director.  He is involved in the church choir and loves Byzantine chanting.  He is often proud to say that he graduated three of his Sunday school teachers to the St. Vladimir Seminary and into the priesthood.  Well, one of them will soon be a priest.

Robert was baptized into the Orthodox faith in Fuheis, Jordan on April 21, 1974 at age four under the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.  One of the two priests, Fr. Boulos Sweiss, was his relative who aided in his baptism along with Robert’s four other siblings:  Steve, Cathy, John and Joseph.  Robert was born as the eldest to Jamal & Jeanette Sweiss in the city of Yonkers , New York on May 20, 1969 .  Unfortunately, Robert was not raised Orthodox and barely knew anything of Orthodoxy until his encounter with Fr. Nicholas Dahdal in the late eighties.  Robert encountered Orthodoxy in his college studies of Islamic Studies and readings.  He graduated with a bachelor of art degree in history and a certificate in Middle East Studies that required two years of classical Arabic language.  In 1994, Robert had the privilege of meeting Fr. Peter Gillquist and other former evangelical converts to Orthodoxy in Washington D.C. at the symposium entitled, “The Celebration of Middle Eastern Christianity.”  Their involvement and speeches at the symposium were strong motivating factors in his search for Eastern Orthodoxy.  In 1995, Robert began to regularly attend St. George and eventually never regretted it since then.   He attends most pan-Orthodox events and gatherings.  Also, he involves himself with Fr. Nicholas with the non-Orthodox Antiochian churches known as the Antiochian Apostolic Christian Churches of Chicagoland and The Council of Arab Religious Leaders of Chicagoland (ARC) that periodically meets and discusses issues of commonalities between Arab Christians & Arab Muslims.  He currently serves as the secretary of the Fuheis American Association whose members have roots to the only predominated Arab Christian city of Fuheis in Jordan .  On November 11, 2006, Robert helped coordinate the first filmed and DVD-recorded Arab Christian symposium in Chicago entitled, “Arab Christianity before the Rise of Islam,” by one of the world’s oldest & leading authorities on Islamic and Arab Christian Studies:  Oman Professor Irfan Shahid of Georgetown University (an Antiochian Orthodox Christian). 

On February 19, 2000 , Robert married his wife Ann Kelly at St. George.  They have a beautiful daughter, Courtney Ann, who was born on February 14, 2003 on Valentine’s Day at 2:14PM and baptized by Fr. Nicholas on May 3, 2003 .  Robert is a financial advisor and president of Asset Protection for Life LLC.  He can be reached at rjs@robertsweiss.net