St. John’s, as a rural Appalachian mission with ties to a university community, engages extensively in both in-person and online outreach and apologetics, such as our weekly Bible Study on Sundays at 2:30 in the Bucknell University Bookstore, represented in links below.
Rector Rev. Paul Siewers is Orthodox Christian Chaplain and a professor of Literary Studies at Bucknell University, specializing in early Christian literature and teaching a Bible as Literature course. A graduate of the St. John of Kronstadt Pastoral School in ROCOR, he has co-edited and contributed to books published by Holy Trinity Publications and St. Vladimir Seminary Press, among other scholarly books and articles, and is editor of the Paideia Review, a journal on Orthodoxy and culture. St. John’s maintains an extensive library of Bible Study resources from Orthodox perspectives on his blog.
These resources include:
Articles by traditional Orthodox Christian Bible commentators such as Fr. Michael Pomazansky, and articles by Priest Paul on various biblical topics drawing on Church Fathers, see full menu.
Daily Gospel Reading videos with commentary by the Church Fathers
Regular video summaries of the St. John’s-Bucknell OCF Bible Study. See first link above for the list of all the Books of the Bible included, but here is the link on the current Bible Study on Daniel and the 12 “minor” prophets.
Texts of homilies from worship services are posted weekly on the main page at ecosemiotics.com; these are usually in the second position on the home page, beneath the pinned article on the Orthodox mission to Northern Appalachia.
In addition, the weekly online “Intro to Orthodoxy” class currently is reading the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by St. John Damascene. There are no recordings currently of the class, but for a link to join it on most Saturdays 10 to 11 a.m., please contact Fr Paul at priestpauls@pm.me.
Also, St. John’s Reader Luke Soboleski has been doing work on apologetics at the St. John of Kronstadt Pastoral School of the ROCOR Diocese of Chicago. Here is an example of his work a highly rated paper supervised by Archpriest John Whiteford, a well-known American Orthodox Bible scholar.