ST COLUMBA ORTHODOX CHURCH

300 MILLION MEMBERS WORLDWIDESt. Columba Orthodox Church is a canonical parish of the 300M-member Orthodox Churches.

What if you could actually participate in a truly authentic Christian Tradition which dates back to Jesus Christ and His Apostles and has been unchanged for millennia?

Orthodox Christianity has stood the test of time. The truth of the reality of a new life in Christ is not simply a cliché, it has been lived by countless Christians throughout the ages.

The Western-Rite of the Orthodox Church is a response to requests to re-establish the Western Church as it existed prior to AD 1054 and is helping preserve the western liturgy with the blessing of Metropolitan Hilarion, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

In 1996 Saint Columba’s had constructed a small building and began using it as a church building; the interior includes reminders of the cloud of witnesses by which we are surrounded. In 2016 the entire parish completed a journey from protestant (Episcopal) Anglicanism to catholic Western Rite Orthodoxy.

Those who could escape from communist Russia in the 1920s did so. Most sought refuge in European countries, and, like many other refugees some came to America and became citizens here.

While the communists did as they pleased with the church buildings, and the lives and the deaths of those still in Soviet Russia (as well as the assassination of the Tsar and his entire family), the refugees in America did what they do well: They worshiped our Lord, Jesus Christ as Christians have been doing since AD 33.

It was not a matter of waiting; it was a matter of a new life, a new hope and a new nation: the United States. The ?Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia? (ROCOR) adopted the English Language for services in America and prayed.

When the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991, the Church in America waited for over a decade before re-establishing Communion with the revitalized Russian Church in Moscow, and also continued independent governance as an American Church.

The service of Divine Liturgy is continued in the United States in Church Slavonic for those who wish but mostly in English. St Columba Parish in Fernley offers worship services in English as authorized by the Russian synod several years prior to the Russian communist rebellion in the early years for the 20th Century.

There are now over 300,000,000 members of the Orthodox churches worldwide (Greece, Russia, Austria, Serbia, Romania, Georgia, and in essence churches springing up in countries after the defeat of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine) in the 15th Century.

The Orthodox parish in Fernley uses an English Liturgy (10L00 Am each sunday), developed by Pope Saint Gregory the Great after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

You won?t find anything new at Saint Columba’s No new theology… no politically correct amorality…Music is provided by the congregation a capella. You will find a group of Christians entrusting themselves to the person and teaching of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Orthodoxy, since the early centuries of Christianity. Our purpose here on earth is to work toward becoming more like Christ and helping others to do the same. We are a hospital for sinners and a parish committed to living our life for God in this world and in the next.

The church building is at 1320 Mission Way, just north of I-80 Exit 48 in Fernley, Nevada (corner of Truck inn Way and Mission way). The building is small, and there is plenty of parking.

The picture above is courtesy of the United States Postal Service.

Services are always in American English with a familiar “King James” lilt. We are Orthodox in Faith and approved Western in practice You are welcome to visit us Sunday at 10:00 AM. We are open to members of the Orthodox Communion of Churches and to those who wish to belong as members of the Church. Those wishing to become Catechumans are welcome.

Evening Prayer (Vespers) is Wednesday at 7:00 PM where you can pray like a Christian Monk (for 28 minutes). No guitars, no altar call, no “offering”…. Just the sound of men at prayer. Holy Day and weekday Services are as announced.

PICTURE: The last Tsar of Russia and family. they were shot to death by Soviet Communists.

?And they continued steadfastly in the apostles? doctrine and fellowship, and in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers? (Acts).