Rector’s Report from St. John’s Russian Mission Orthodox Church Annual Meeting, on the Sunday of the After-feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, 7535/2026, by Priest Paul Siewers. (The Annual Meeting came shortly after the 11th anniversary of the Mission Parish and covers the second year of his rectorship.) Above, a Russian painting of a priest blessing soil for farming.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
As we enter the new Church year of 7535 we ask God’s grace for continued strength, growth, and wisdom in our mission work. We thank God for all His help, and we ask His forgiveness for our sins and omissions. And as your sinful Rector I thank all of you for your sacrifices and work and especially prayers on behalf of our Lord’s mission.
As illustrated in this month’s newsletter, https://ecosemiotics.com/2026/09/14/st-johns-september-newsletter/, two images stand out in representing our mission as we pass from the old year to the new. One is the hawk perched on the Cross above our Dome, which finally was installed this past summer. This is a nice image of our aspiring faith and taking up the Cross for our mission work. The recent installation of that dome, together with the work done on our siding, marked a beautiful completion this year of the exterior work on our Temple, glory to God!
The second photo was of the marquee of the Campus Theatre featuring our outreach movie event. It was a reminder of all our outreach events this past year, for we remain a mission parish whose prime goal is missionary work in our region.
During the past year we have had eight baptisms, and we have eight catechumens. We also had an additional Reader, and his wife, a choir musician, take on helpful roles in the Church as new members, together with other new members, some starting as servers and chanters, one of whom is nominated to be Auditor this coming year, and another who has become our chief groundskeeper. Glory to God!
Our mission’s growth has also been distinguished this past year by a growing and young clergy team of converts. This past year we had our second Reader join our first in studies at the Pastoral School, my alma mater, which this year merged with Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville. Our outgoing Warden also joined the Pastoral School, and is scheduled to become a Reader when the Bishop visits next week. A community our small size having three seminary students (and soon to be three Readers) is unusual and a blessing, glory to God! It is my hope that we will continue to develop our clergy team in the next few years, if blessed by our Bishops, to include a full range of clergy ranks for our services and missionary work, glory to God! Given that we are a small mission lacking resources to provide clergy salaries and benefits, developing a homegrown local clergy team over time is very important. Please pray for our clergy!
In relation to the liturgical life of our Church, we also have seen the choir develop with help from the compiling of music binders for services. These follow the ROCOR framework of services more closely than we as a mission did in earlier years. Thanks especially in the past year to Elisabeth and Reader Nicholas for their work on this, as well as of course Sophia, and others for their continued work for the choir and chanting.
We had one wedding recently that drew many non-Orthodox to our Church, and in the process we added a new married household including a new member to our parish. Many years to the newlyweds Nik and Sofia!
And during the past year we had our first funeral that involved the first burial in our Orthodox cemetery next to us here. Memory eternal to our brother in Christ John Sam!
In our campus ministry, we have had a student at Bucknell and another at Susquehanna step forward to help with renewing campus Orthodox activity, which I am advising. We developed with students the film series as outreach, and will have our fourth film coming up at Bucknell on Tues. evening Oct. 20, the classic movie Andrei Rublev about the iconographer saint, followed by discussion. Please come and invite friends!
Matthew 25 raises the question of what we have done for the prisoners and the sick. In our ministry to those unable to attend Church due to health reasons, we make regular visits, often weekly, and have traveled in that ministry as far as Harrisburg in the south and up to Williamsport in the north. Justin has helped with rides to Church for one member at a nursing home who otherwise could not make it. The Sisterhood has gathered at the home of one of our shut-ins. We also have started a prison ministry at the Muncy Women’s State Correctional Institution, where I am volunteer Orthodox Chaplain. This work has included bringing confession and communion to some inmates who have not had that opportunity for many years. We have had a baptism and also made a catechumen there. Glory to God! We hope in future also to do more for the poor also mentioned in the Gospel.
We had two families depart this past year who had joined up with us for a few years after an unfortunate dispute at another parish in the region in a different jurisdiction. They live a distance away, and decided to rejoin their former parish closer to them, with a healing of sorts, thank God. They all left on good terms and we wish them well. One of those families experienced a very sad loss, and I beseech your continued prayers for them.
As Rector I have traveled to the Clergy conference at Jordanville last spring, as well as representing the mission at the feast day of our cathedral in Mayfield. I plan to travel with one of our parish to the triennial Diocesan Congress in a couple weeks. Other travels have included going with a few members to the conference on Orthodox mission in the South and by extension our region Appalachia, and earlier Warden Nik and I attended a ROCOR conference on Church music in West Virginia. I have regular visits, often weekly, to members unable to attend Church due to medical reasons, which this past year have involved going as far as Harrisburg in the south and up to Jersey Shorein the north. I also have traveled this past year for house blessings and hospital visits, from Frackville to Mifflinburg, Jersey Shore to Elizabethville, sometimes during the night. I let you know of these travels only so that you will keep praying for this work. Glory to God!
Our Diocesan Bishops have issued a statement this summer in which they stated as a rule for us to follow that confession and the counseling of a spiritual father needs to be received from the parish priest, not from a priest elsewhere (with an exception for monastic situations). In the past I’ve been flexible about this, but this is a firm rule from our Bishops. As part of that I remind everyone that the minimum is to have confession at each of the four great fasts each year, but confessing regularly is spiritual self-care; the prayers are healing. Some do it more and that is good, and the blessing of this spiritual “reboot” needs to be sought of course whenever a sin or passion would be an obstacle to communing.
Speaking of spiritual self-care, when I traveled to Jordanville to see Bishop Luke and talked with him about his upcoming visit here, he gave me an obedience as your Rector: To guard time for prayer and contemplation and keeping whole for service. As your sinful and unworthy priest I’m glad to give and this is not meant to complain or brag; it is a great blessing to serve. But as we are planning for new clergy ranks, we have to plan for how to sustain them, recognizing that such work and expenses also are a sacrifice for clergy family members as well. While we are unable to pay clergy salaries and cover expenses as we did for my predecessors, Fr Claude when I saw him recently on his own suggested starting with a gas allowance. This would be helpful also for clergy families in our service team who travel far.
To return to the basic reason for our community, it is like a marriage, to support one another’s salvation, and to help save our neighbors and family members also, as a mission parish and Church family. Our Bishop’s upcoming visit illustrates this. Even with our small community, Bishop Luke is eager to emphasize a teaching element in his visit, so that our lunch will be with his blessing an experiment in not featuring visiting clergy, as much as we love to have them, but God willing a kind of round table where he will teach us on pastoral and doctrinal matters necessary for our salvation and evangelism. This means hopefully by the way that we need turn out and bring friends! Secondly, his visit will feature an Archdeacon who is a very accomplished beekeeper, to help us with plans to get long-planned beekeeping started, God willing. Since we acquired our land, some eight years ago, we have had interest by members in shaping a community landscape potentially including beekeeping, a small orchard, and gardening, to build our community and invite in others. We had have called this idea “the Garden of the Theotokos.”
Foremost of course comes the joy of celebrating the Eucharist with our Bishop, our living link to Apostolic times. To circle back at the end to Church activities, in addition to hosting services for all 12 major feast days, services across Holy Week, and weekly Vigils, we continue to host the weekly Online Orthodoxy class and Bible Study, and hope to engage more of us and more of the neighborhood so to speak next year in these ongoing activities. We have started coffee-hour education programs, which so far have included Cuthbert’s account of his pilgrimage to Georgia, discussion of a model of the Old Testament Tabernacle and its prefiguring of our Orthodox Christian Church worship, and currently Reader Luke’s iconography classes, with future topics to include such issues as Orthodox time-keeping and approaches to Bible study. Also, we’ll hear later at today’s meeting about fundraising to build out the iconostasis design by nationally prominent Orthodox architect Andrew Gould as part of our Temple beautification. This will hopefully help with outreach as well in the beauty of our services.
Finally, we hope to keep growing our community presence. Just yesterday we were out at the Mifflinburg Oktobertfest passing out brochures about our Church and about Orthodox Christianity. This past year we were at the Pineknotters Festival in Norrie with a table, and also did mini-processions at the Christkindl festival and in downtown Lewisburg and Sunbury. More visitors and inquirers than ever find us online. We hope this year to renew our online outreach further, too. May the Lord prosper our efforts.
In conclusion, as your Rector and spiritual father I ask your prayers as you are always in mine along with St. John Mission Parish. I give a metanoia in prostration before you all, with thanks for your sacrifices, prayers, and work for our Lord’s Church, and to ask your forgiveness for my sins and offenses. Let us thank God for our mission, and hold each other up in love and unity in the Orthodox Gospel of Jesus Christ. Glory to God for all things!