Great Vespers This Saturday!

St. John's is growing up! This Saturday, we will hold our first Saturday-evening Great Vespers at Dunbar Lutheran Church at 7pm - the first of what will, God willing, be a regular, weekly cycle of Saturday evening Great Vespers services!

Saturday-evening Great Vespers is an important part of the Orthodox liturgical cycle, as it prepares us for the celebration of Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning. Since we don't yet have a place to meet on Sunday mornings, we will continue to meet at St. Herman's for Sunday-morning Divine Liturgy until God provides us with one.

There will be a time of food and fellowship afterwards, so bring something to share if you possibly can. Looking forward to seeing you there!

We will also be continuing our regular Thursday-evening Compline and Study at Peter and Judy's house, although if this proves to put too much of a strain on our fledgling community, we may suspend or cut back on our Thursday evening meetings. Pray for God's guidance! Please also note, in this regard, that while it is always more wonderful to have "all hands on deck", there is never any expectation that everyone will show up to all of St. John's services. God calls us to do all we can - but not more!

Love in Christ,

Fr. Justin.

Compline with His Grace Bishop Seraphim

St. John of Shanghai Orthodox Mission will be holding its weekly Compline service at 7 pm on Thursday September 14 (Exaltation of the Cross) with His Grace Bishop Seraphim. The location is changed for this specific date from the Choi's residence to Dunbar Evangelical Lutheran Church (3491 West 31st Avenue - 2 blocks east of Dunbar). After the service, we shall have a potluck supper and fellowship with His Grace. If you are planning to attend, please contact me so Judy and I can plan the meal. If you are interested in bringing food, please remember that His Grace has a modified Atkins diet (fish, eggs, and cheese; low carbohydrates). We look forward to seeing you.

Peter (posing as tech-chick)

Tonight and Next Week

This will probably arrive too late for most people (I actually tried to put this information up last week, but there was an error that prevented its publication), but for this week...

For those who did not make it out to our Little Compline and Study last Thursday [well, the Thursday before last, now...], we have plunged into the First Epistle of Clement, which makes a nice follow-up to our study of I and II Corinthians, since it is a letter written on behalf of the church in Rome to the church in Corinth. The Corinthians are in trouble again, although Clement's description of the Corinthian church in the period immediately preceding the troubles that occasioned his letter, it sounds like they had at least been doing OK for a while there... Clement's letter is very practical (though with more than a few rhetorical flourishes!) and will give us a glimpse into what the immediately post-apostolic Church was like, as well as some insight into its approach to the Scriptures.

Tonight we will say an Akathist to the Most-holy Theotokos in celebration of her nativity (otherwise known as her birthday!), and we will be meeting at our usual Thursday-evening location, Peter and Judy's house. Next week, while we will be back to Little Compline, but we will celebrate the service at Dunbar Lutheran Church with His Grace, Bishop Seraphim, after which we will have a chance to chat with our beloved bishop!