How to Search for Christmas Sermons in my Library?

Yasmin Stephen
Yasmin Stephen Member Posts: 1,476 ✭✭✭
edited November 21 in English Forum

I ran the search below to find Christmas-themed sermons in my library, and I'm suspecting the results include sermons where the word "Christmas" is merely mentioned. Is there any way to narrow the search to get only actual Christmas sermons? Or a different type of search to get the results I want? Thanks in advance!

Tagged:

Comments

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton Member, MVP Posts: 35,673 ✭✭✭

    I typed "Christmas" in Search box and got topic:"Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ" from the suggestions. But I used topic:"Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ"  NOT INTERSECTS  christmas with Broad Reference matching and Books restricted to type:(sermon,outline).

    Selecting preachingTheme:"Jesus' Birth" was not useful!

    sermon:References:bible:"Matthew 1:18–21" is more restrictive, but you should get some results (try it with other passages for the Virgin birth).

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith Member, MVP Posts: 53,074 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Whereas I enter incarnation thinking of Athansius' On the Incarnation, and find that gets me nowhere. So, I enter Nativity or Feast of the Nativity which gets many results but leaves out some expected results. So, then I use a find in the Lexham Survey of Theology and discover that Virgin birth is the magic phrase ... I remember I went through this routine last year, and the year before that, and the year before that ... but still can't change my thinking to bypass my two top terms into Logos-speak.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Yasmin Stephen
    Yasmin Stephen Member Posts: 1,476 ✭✭✭

    sermon:References:bible:"Matthew 1:18–21" is more restrictive, but you should get some results (try it with other passages for the Virgin birth).

    Whereas I enter incarnation thinking of Athansius' On the Incarnation, and find that gets me nowhere. So, I enter Nativity or Feast of the Nativity which gets many results but leaves out some expected results. So, then I use a find in the Lexham Survey of Theology and discover that Virgin birth is the magic phrase ...

    Thanks very much, Dave and MJ., for the pointers. Going the route of both the key passages and the term "Virgin Birth" (different searches) helped to filter my options down to a manageable count. I now have enough to choose from without being overwhelmed by unrelated sermons.

  • Kiyah
    Kiyah Member Posts: 2,803 ✭✭✭✭

    Why not try it another way? Try searching your library itself for books with Christmas sermons and then open them and look at the Table of Contents to find the ones on Christmas. Here's my library search for Sermons and Outlines with 'Christmas', 'nativity', or 'incarnation' somewhere in the metadata. I only got 17 results, you may get even fewer since you look like you have a smaller library than mine. So there shouldn't be too many books for you to go through.

  • Yasmin Stephen
    Yasmin Stephen Member Posts: 1,476 ✭✭✭

    Why not try it another way?

    Why not, indeed?! Thanks much. I never thought of searching my library in that manner. I got 7 results, and none of them overlap with the results of my other searches (which is little strange to me 🤔).