Alumnus Father John Parker is rector of Holy Ascension Orthodox Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Father John earned his Master of Divinity degree at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. After serving for a brief period as curate at Holy Cross Episcopal Church on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, he and his wife, Matushka Jeanette, along with their two sons, embraced the Orthodox faith in 2002. Father John went on to earn his Master of Theology degree at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in 2004. In October 2011, he was appointed Chair of the Department of Evangelization of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA).
Father John is a regular contributor to the“Lord Send Me” podcast serieson Ancient Faith Ministries. In his latest podcast,“Remembering Fr. Thomas Hopko,”he recalls “Father Tom’s” enormous influence on him and his family during his days as a seminarian at St. Vladimir’s.
Alumnus Archpriest Dimitrie Vincent will interview seminary President Archpriest Chad Hatfield onDetroit's Own Orthodox Radio, commonly known asDOOR, on Sunday afternoon, 4 p.m., March 26, 2017. During the interview, Fr. Chad will touch upon aspects of the liturgical services celebrated during the Saturdays of Great Lent, including Memorial Saturdays, Lazarus Saturday, and Holy Saturday. Father Chad has written two booklets related to the points he made on the radio broadcast:Holy Saturday: Baptism and the Great CommissionandLazarus Saturday: Resurrection and the Faith of Children.
As a mission priest for the last three years, Priest Andre Paez, Rector of Saint John the Evangelist Mission here, states that his greatest joy has been helping people “come into Christ’s Church and participate in the mystery of His divine resurrected life.
“As a ‘fisher of men,’ I am always looking for ways to accomplish this and help our mission grow,” said Father Andre, who enthusiastically shared some of the latest and most effective digital tools he employs in reaching out into the wider community.
“One of the first administrative tasks I accomplished at Saint John’s was to get set up Google Apps,” said Father Andre. “Google Apps offers users access to Google’s robust suite of cloud based tools, like Gmail, Google calendar, Google docs, YouTube, and more. It is very important for the priest’s church e-mail address to match the church web site domain, which helps to ‘brand’ the church and build awareness in the local community.”
Father Andre adds that maintaining an up-to-date parish web site is also important.
“In 2015, we updated ourmission’s web siteby purchasing the #1 WordPress template called ‘X Theme’ from Themco,” Father Andre continued. “The template was very easy to customize and included a one-time $64.00 charge. Saint John’s new WordPress site is hosted by Go daddy, which is also the company we used to purchase our domain name. For those who are less tech-savvy, professional freelancers to help with web site and other projects can be found on Fiverr.com and Upwork.com.”
Father Andre explained that Saint John’s uses a cloud based Church Management System from ACS Technologies called “Realm.”
“Realm is a very effective tool for monitoring church attendance and other metrics, creating a private on-line community and collecting tithe contributions on-line,” Father Andre noted. “Most of our parishioners give to our church in this way and set up automatic giving on a schedule of their choosing. Of all the church management systems I’ve researched, Realm offers the greatest features at the most cost effective price.”
To help manage Saint John’s plethora of projects, Father Andre usesAsana.com, which is free for up to 15 people.
.“Asana enables effective communication for project team members in monitoring the accomplishment of project tasks and goals,” Father Andre said. “For mass communication, we use MailChimp as the primary tool for our digital newsletter and mission-wide communications. One can send 12,000 e-mails each month to a list of up to 2,000 subscribers at no cost with MailChimp’s ‘Forever Free’ plan. This has served us well as we send a weekly newsletter, which highlights the upcoming liturgical schedule, showcases ministries, and promotes upcoming events, and a newsletter on our Facebook page. People always enjoy seeing pictures of our church feasts, men’s and women’s group activities, our Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Church School program, and more.”
Another very powerful tool Father Andre uses is “Facebook live.”
“Using an app called ‘Facebook Page Manager,’ one can easily stream an event live from a mobile phone,” said Father Andre. “We currently stream the Sunday Epistle and Gospel readings and sermon live, which is helpful for parishioners who may be sick or who live in distant areas.”
Father Andre, whose mission is one of five which currently receive Church Planting Grants from the Orthodox Church in America, emphasizes that “having organized local church communities will empower the priest and the faithful to help newcomers get connected and acclimated to church life.
“An active web site and a Facebook presence with videos and images of church life helps people experience the community before they make their initial visit,” Father Andre stated. “Ultimately we pray that what they see will encourage them to discover Jesus Christ in the life of His Orthodox Church.”
Follow the growth of Saint John the Evangelist Mission atwww.stjohnaz.org.
[Text and photos used with permission fromoca.org]
When I was a child, I enjoyed playing in the basement. There were nooks and crannies to hide in, and decades of accumulated stuff to explore. It was a little spooky down there, and I was convinced that witches lived down there. But as long as the lights were on, I was unafraid. When I had to go back upstairs, I had a problem. The switch for the lights was at the bottom of the stairs, so I had to turn off the lights before I was safely upstairs. When I flipped that switch and the light went off, I was sure that the witches would come grab me if I didn’t get up the stairs in about five seconds. Every time I came up from the basement, I turned off the lights and sprinted up the stairs as fast as I could, just to be safe from the witches. I must have been fast enough, because I’m still alive today!
Like the witches in the basement, sins and temptations can’t grab me if the light of Christ is shining in the basement of my soul. When we confess our sins openly to Christ in the presence of a witness (the priest) the light comes on, and our sins can’t get a hold of us. Our problem comes when we hide our sins out of shame or pride. This is why David prayed, “Cleanse me from my hidden faults.” (Psalm 19/18) When we look honestly at ourselves and confess our shortcomings, we begin to get freedom from the sins and temptations we try to hide from others. As St John Cassian wrote, “The devil, subtle as he is, cannot ruin or destroy [someone] unless he has enticed him either through pride or through shame to conceal his thoughts.”
Confession is not meant to produce guilty feelings. It is a safe place to be open about the secrets that bother us and cause sinful behavior. Honest confession cleanses us from hidden faults.
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The son of a Church of the Brethren pastor, Fr. David Chandler Poling (SVOTS ’12) grew up in rural Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Emilita, married in 2000, and moved to New York City in 2002. A few years later they joined the OCA at the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection. They have three children: Elias, Mariam, and John. Fr. David is the acting rector of St. Innocent Mission in Oneonta, New York. You can read more of his writing, where this reflection originally appeared, on his blog: Fruits of the Spirit.
Alumnus Father John Edward (M.A. ’15) was recently featured in this article, which appeared innewsitem.com,a local media outlet in Shamokin, PA. Father John, pastor ofSt. Michael’s Orthodox Church, Mount Carmel, PA, and his wife, Suja, have three children.[photo and story by Julie Hagenbuch; used with permission fromnewsitem.com]
MOUNT CARMEL — A passion for church history can lead a Christian to wade knee-deep in the River Jordan, stand beneath Juan Diego’s cloak at the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City or take communion at the Vatican in Rome. For Father John Edward, a lifelong commitment to Christian history led him right here, to St. Michael’s Orthodox Church in Mount Carmel.
Born in Malaysia to Indian parents, Edward was exposed to an array of religious traditions and expressions from an early age. The most common faith in his home country, Islam, is practiced peacefully alongside Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, as well as ancestral Chinese religions.
“Malaysia was a very, very friendly country,” he said during an interview at his home last week.
With such a broad view of the forms faith can take, Edward traveled to India when he came of age to study theological education, completing his studies in 1990. He then moved back to his home country, where he served as an Anglican minister for a decade. It was during these first years of his vocation that he married his wife, Suja, and the two started a family.
Back to ‘cradle of Christianity’
But Edward’s thirst for knowledge and faith exploration continued to grow and change. In 2001, he was accepted into a post-graduate program at Princeton Seminary focusing on the history of the early church, for which he moved to the United States to become a Master of Theology, then serving the Episcopal Church throughout New Jersey and New York for 10 years.
“My interest has always been church history,” said Edward, “That led me to actually want to go back to the early church — the church that Jesus formed, the church that the apostles were a part of.”
But protestant faiths like Anglicanism that emerged from the reformation came around much later, beginning in the 1500s.
“I just wanted to go back to the roots — the cradle of Christianity,” said Edward.
It took him a few years “to discern, to look, to search” — a time during which he explored a variety of church traditions and Christian denominations. At the end of his search, he found an answer.
“Ultimately my search led me to the Orthodox Church because (it) has come down for the past 2000 years without changing anything,” he said. “The faith has been intact. As one of our saints, Saint Nikolai of Japan, says, ‘We don’t add anything and we don’t remove anything.’”
Big city to small town
And so Edward began the next step in his faith formation: he attended seminary at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in Yonkers, New York, and was ordained in June 2015 to the priesthood. The archbishop of Eastern Pennsylvania suggested he would be a good fit at St. Michael’s in Mount Carmel, and within a week the Edward family — now numbering five — packed up and moved to Pennsylvania.
“Initially moving from such a big city to a small town needed some adjustment,” he said, “but we have adjusted well. We kind of like the peace and quiet, the calmness of this place. We don’t have to worry about traffic jams or getting to places on time. It’s really nice.”
And the Edward family, which includes Samuel, 20, Sneha, 19, and Sophia, 15, has been welcomed “with open arms” by a congregation that spent two years without a full-time priest.
“They are just wonderful people,” said Edward. “Very loving, very caring people. Their faith is deeply rooted. Most of my congregation — the elderly ones — their fathers were involved in building this church, so they have so much love for (it.)”
Edward says he is grateful to be serving a congregation that, though small in number, is diverse in age; it includes young families, children and teenagers, as well as senior citizens who have been lifelong members.
‘Here to serve you’
And the congregation is grateful to be giving back to the community again, according to church member Sandy Tosca. At a parish picnic last month, St. Michael’s invited representatives from the Lower Anthracite United Way backpack program, God’s Chuckwagon and Manna for the Many, all of which were presented with a donation from the congregation.
“It is a miracle we went from barely getting by as a parish to finally being able to help our community,” said Tosca.
St. Michael’s has services on Sunday mornings, Vespers services on Saturday evenings and feast day celebrations throughout the year. But what Edward most wants people to know is that the church is open and welcoming to the the entire community.
“St. Michael’s is here to serve you,” he said, offering his church up as one small piece of a Christian faith that continues to weave its way through history.
St. Vladimir's Seminary alumnus, His Grace Bishop Alexander (Golitzin), was enthroned as the second ruling Bishop of Dallas and the South during the weekend of June 10-11, 2016, at Saint Seraphim Cathedral in Dallas, TX. The full story is available on Oca.org.
With the blessing of His Eminence Archbishop Nicolae, the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese in the Americas partnered with the Center for Orthodox Christian Studies at Fordham University and the Sophia Institute to host theninth edition of the Annual Symposium of Orthodox Spirituality.The Symposium was held on April 16, 2016 on the campus of Fordham School of Law in New York City, and featured the theme, “Youth Religious Education: Wisdom from Christian Tradition for the Contemporary Society.”
Two St. Vladimir's Seminary alumni—Dr. Ann Bezzerides ('00), adjunct assistant professor of Religious Studies at Hellenic College in Brookline, MA, and the Very Reverend Dr. Joseph Purpura ('79), chair of the Department of Youth and Parish Ministries for the Antiochian Archdiocese—were guest speakers, as was the Very Reverend Dr. Chad Hatfield, SVOTS Chancellor/CEO.
Panel discussions were opened by His Eminence Archbishop Nicolae, who emphasized the importance of the Symposium's topic. He noted that youth religious education must be a permanent concern of the Orthodox Church, because our youth represent not only the present, but also the future of the Church. His Eminence also gave thanks to all those who were involved in organizing the meeting.
Father Theodor Damian moderated the panel of notable guest speakers, which in addition to the St. Vladimir's contingent, included: the Very Reverend Dr. John Anthony McGuckin, professor of Byzantine Christian Studies at Columbia University in New York City; Dr. Aristotle Papanikolaou, professor of Theology at Fordham University; Dr. Harold Horell, assistant professor of Religion at Fordham University; Dr. Fevronia Soumakis, a fellow at the Sophia Institute, Columbia University; Dr. Lucian Turcescu, professor of Historical Theology at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec; and Dr. Anton Vrame, adjunct associate professor of Religious Education at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. At the end of the scheduled program, attendees gathered for Vespers.
Recently I ran across an article mulling over the reasons young adults leave the Church. It’s no secret that as a group we Orthodox haven’t done a very good job of keeping our children connected to our Faith. Indeed, attrition estimates among college aged adults range as high as 60%. The article offered a few sensible explanations as to why young people walk out the door of the Church when they walk through the gates of the university, but as I was reading another question, almost the opposite question, formed itself in my mind: why should they stay? What justification can we offer for asking someone to forego sleeping in on Sunday, giving up meat and dairy for about 6 months of the year, abstaining from the premarital sex their friends are enjoying, and all the other “no’s” that seem to crop up when you’re talking about being a Christian? Our young friends aren’t likely to find the answer, “to stay out of hell” or, “to go to heaven” very persuasive for the simple reason that heaven and hell seem very abstract, very far away, and the pleasures of life seem intensely close, tangible. If we are honest many of us would admit that those answers don’t motivate us either. So why should we ask them to stay? Perhaps we should ask ourselves the same question. Why do we bother with the trouble of being Orthodox Christians, accepting the effort and sacrifice that it requires, rather than just enjoying whatever makes us happy?
In his work, On The Apostolic Preaching, St. Irenaeus of Lyon, reflecting on the fall of man, describes Adam and Eve as little children, biological and spiritual babies, in Paradise. As Irenaeus sees it, Adam and Eve were created immature but with the dynamic capacity to grow and become more and more like God, sharing increasingly in the brilliance of His holiness. St. Symeon the New Theologian says that the human spirit was created to be filled with God and that grace was meant to overflow into our very bodies, filling our whole being with the power and glory of God. But Adam and Eve were young and this capacity was not yet developed when they were tricked by the serpent and cast out of the garden. As a result their growth was stunted. Adam and Eve grew up biologically but their spirit withered outside of Paradise and they never became what mature humans are, the meeting point of the created world and the uncreated God, all full of glory. This was the fate of every person before Christ but through His death and resurrection Christ overturned our sad, unfulfilled lot and made it possible once again for us to come alive and share in the boundlessness of the Father’s eternal life. By washing away our sins in baptism, sealing us with the Holy Spirit in chrismation, and filling us with Himself in communion, Christ draws us up again into the life we are made to experience. This provides what I think is the most powerful answer to the question, “why bother with the trouble of being Orthodox?” We bother with fasting, confession, long services, and all the rest because we want to know what it’s like to be fully human. We want to experience the communion with our Creator that fills us with life. We want to enjoy the awake-ness, the intensity of being, that belongs to a creature wholly itself, shot through with the glory of God.
Young people, perhaps all people, need a purpose in life that is worthy of their effort, worthy of their sacrifice and this is it. If you want to know what it’s like to be fully awake and alive in this life, be a Christian. If you want to experience the fullness of the glory of God that humans are made to experience, put God first in your life and pursue him hard. Don’t settle for a merely biological life that will not last. Reach out for a share of God’s divine life that will not end. Through the disciplines of the Church, we can be, if we are willing, transfigured by the grace of the Holy Spirit into fully human persons capable of experiencing God’s brightness and sharing it with a darkened world. When we reach for that grace, we become more and more alive, more our true selves, more capable of bringing healing to the world around us. Fasting, confession, communion, and all the rest are the road to awe; they make us fully alive and restore us to our calling as stewards of all creation. That is a goal worthy of our sacrifice, and it is what makes all of the trouble worth it.
"Sensationalism, headlines, and an obsession with the end of times, with the apocalypse—these are the topics that captivate the heart of man today," says Priest Andre Paez (M.Div. 2013) ofSt. John the Evangelist Missionin Tempe, Arizona. "We live in a time of fear, in which people suffer from stress, depression, and anxiety, due to the fear of an unknown future, volatile economic markets, political turmoil, global wars, terrorism, and more. We are faced and surrounded with a seemingly ever increasing darkness. Yet, in the midst of this darkness and shadow of death, there is hope, as Jesus Christ has been victoriously shining forth since the day of His glorious resurrection."
Saint John’s was planted in February 2005 to bring Orthodox Christianity to Tempe, home to one of the largest state universities in the United States. Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, the community today has grown to embrace some 80 faithful and a steady stream of enquirers from a variety of backgrounds, religious and ethnic. About half of the faithful are converts to the faith. The parish strives to maintain a multi-generational, “kid-friendly,” and welcoming atmosphere that fosters fellowship, while it promotes discipleship by encouraging the faithful to recognize—and use—their spiritual gifts for “the building up of the Body of Christ," says Fr. Andre.
“Above all, we strive to manifest the love of God in ourselves, first to our family members, then to our friends, co-workers, and neighbors, to transform lives by being a holy place where people can experience the forgiveness and love of God through the services and sacraments, educational classes, and community outreach ministries,” Fr. Andre adds. “Saint John uses the Greek termapokalypsisin his book of Revelation not to refer to the destruction of the world, but rather to the manifestation of Christ Himself. Theapokalypsistruly is now, as our Lord reveals in John 16:33 when He says, 'These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’”
On Saturday, February 20, 2016, seminary alumnus Deacon Joseph (Tristan) Gall was ordained to the Holy Priesthood by the hand ofHis Eminence the Most Reverend Nikon(Liolin), archbishop of Boston, New England, and the Albanian Archdiocese. The ordination took place during a hierarchical Divine Liturgy at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, Pittsfield, MA, where Father Joseph is now assigned to serve as priest of the parish.
Father Joseph (Master of Divinity, ’15) hails from Erie, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Ss. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Crossingville. He earned a Bachelor of Arts, a teaching credential, and a Masters in Education, all from Edinboro University. Before attending seminary, he worked as a first-grade teacher. His wife, Mary, is a doctoral student of Ancient Christianity at Yale University.
Concelebrating at the Divine Liturgy were several St. Vladimir’s Seminary alumni who serve as rectors in parishes within the New England Diocese, including: Archpriests John Kreta, David Koles, Michael Westerberg, Steven Belonick, Vladimir Aleandro, and Dennis Rhodes, and Priest Michael Korolev. In attendance from St. Vladimir’s Seminary were Priest David Mezynski, associate dean for Student Affairs, and Hierodeacon Father Herman (Majkrzak), lecturer in Liturgical Music.
Also in attendance to offer prayers and encouragement were Archpriest Athanasius Farag, father of Matushka Mary and a St. Vladimir’s Seminary alumnus, and Priest Bishoy Lamie Mikhail, brother-in-law of Matushka Mary. Both Fathers Athanasius and Bishoy are priests within the Coptic Orthodox Church, and serve at St. Antonious and St. Mina Church, East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Of special significance was the participation in the service by another seminary alumnus, Archpriest Dennis Hendershot, who was Father Joseph’s parish priest in PA, as he was growing up. At a special reception following the Divine Liturgy, Father Joseph acknowledged that his desire to become a priest had been sparked and influenced by his observation of Father Dennis, as a model to emulate. Further, Father Joseph emphasized his overwhelming gratitude for the encouragement and love of family and friends, and his new parish family, as he begins his new ministry.
