Welcome
to the Website of the Orthodox Church of St. John
the Russian, located in Ipswich,
MA. The
Rector of the parish is Fr. Spyridon Schneider.

The Orthodox Church was
established by our Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit on the great day
of Pentecost. The Church,
as the holy Apostle says, is "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1
Tim. 1:15) within which our great God and Savior Jesus Christ "hath
given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through
the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue: whereby
are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these [we] might be partakers of the
divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world
through lust." (2 Peter 1:3-4)
Filled with the Holy Spirit, the Holy
Apostles established local
Churches throughout the known world, ordaining and establishing
Bishops and Priests in
each local Church. This continues to this day as the Bishops,
the
successors to the Holy Apostles, in accordance
with the command of our Lord to "teach all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching
them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Mt
28:19), continue
to establish Churches in
lands which have not heard the True Gospel of Christ.
We
are a parish of the
Orthodox Church of Russia. In the late 10th century the Great Prince Vladimir of Kiev sent emissaries searching throughout the known world
for the True Faith. After visting many places and scrutinizing many
different faiths these emissaries came to the Imperial City of
Constantinople. When they witnessed the Divine Services of the
Church they said that they "knew not whether they were in heaven or on
earth". After becoming convinced of the truth of the Orthodox Faith,
St. Vladimir, along with his subjects, was baptized in the river
Dneiper in 988, firmly establishing the
Faith of Christ in the Russian land.
Since
then, Orthodoxy has
come
to the American land through missionary work of the Orthodox Church of Russia that began in Alaska in
the 18th century, and later spread throughout the continent through
missionary work and the immigration of Orthodox Christians from the historically
Orthodox nations of the "Old World"
.
At the parish
of St.
John the Russian, we
struggle
each day to live according to the Faith of the One, Holy, Catholic, and
Apostolic Church - which embodies the Life and teachings of our Lord,
God and Savior
Jesus Christ as they were
handed down
to His Holy Apostles, and were continuously transmitted through the
holy
Fathers of the Church from the
earliest days down to our own.