Death & Daylight, OCF at PSU, and Bondfire Rescheduled

Hey folks!

Hope everyone is doing well and has had a good week so far!

Last week I sent out a flyer for a bonfire that Christina Mcdonough is hosting — that’s been rescheduled and will now be happening next Friday:

Judah of Holy Resurrection Parish in Salem has started up an OCF chapter at PSU along with Makarios of Holy Trinity. He’s written more to tell y’all about it — if you have any questions, please reach out to him!

Young adults and Orthodoxy combined produce an interesting dichotomy: on the one hand many young people who grow up in the church grow away in their college years. On the other hand, many young adults who never grew up in the Church (or in some cases, any religious tradition), are discovering Orthodoxy for the first time and are just beginning their service in the Lord’s army. An organization that works with both sides of the dichotomy is Orthodox Christian Fellowship (or OCF).

OCF is the official campus ministry arm of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops, with chapters operating as student-run clubs all across the country. Typically these clubs meet at least once a month, joining together in fellowship, service, and prayer. The largest OCF chapter in the States, located at Texas A&M University, grew from 15 to over 100 members after hiring a full-time campus missionary, and held an on campus baptism of over a dozen students on the Feast of Theophany in 2026.

Portland State University is a unique campus, situated right in the heart of downtown Portland. More than half the students are non-religious, and the campus as a whole has a large percentage of LGBTQ-identifying people. While Portland, and the Northwest as a whole has a large share of non-religious people, the Orthodox Churches in the area are seeing a growth in Church members, like many other areas in the country, and the PSU campus needs a presence both sacramental and providing authentic connection in Christ.

An OCF Chapter at PSU has been in development since 2024 by myself, Judah Dale, with the goal of both connecting Orthodox students from various parishes and spreading the Gospel on campus. We are currently registered as a forming group and hope to start fully operating by the 2026-2027 school year. We have encountered many hiccups, however, especially as I take more and more credits with launch taking slower than expected. Hope is not lost, however, but we need your help!

The easiest way you can help is, once they start, showing up to our events on campus, especially if you’re a student. We want to create an Orthodox presence that is visible, much like the Mercy Missionaries attached to the Catholic Church, St. Michael’s on the PSU campus, who serve meals for the homeless every week. We hope to have dinners together, host speakers for talks, and gather in prayer, as well as collaborate with the aforementioned missionaries in service. You can keep track of our events through the @portlandstateocf Instagram, and, if you’re a PSU student, find us on Connect/Campus Groups! We’d love to have you join us!

In Christ,
-Judah Dale

One of the things I want this newsletter to be is a place for us to share our creative projects with each other. As a musical artist myself, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to be an Orthodox Christian artist that isn’t simply making “hallmark” Christian propaganda.

One of the saddest things about Christian Art in the past 50 years is that so much of it has come to embody some of the worst that the west has to offer. And I say this with all the love that I can — but Hank Hill put it best when he said that Christian Rock isn’t making Christianity better, it’s just making Rock worse. This could be said of just about all mediums that have had the prefix “Christian” attached to them. There’s no good reason for it, seeing as Christianity gave the world most of its crowning artistic achievements.

Arella is a Portland based multimedia artist that is bucking that trend and carving out a path as a contemporary Christian Artist who is not simply making Christian propaganda. It’s inspiring and it’s captured my imagination.

Death & Daylight is both a film and an album that shines a light on the complexities of the paths that guide us to the Church and toward a life in Christ. The vulnerability and honesty of his songwriting is refreshing in a time when putting on a face for social media is seen as the only way to “make it” as an artist.

I’ve attached a link to his short film and the correspondent album — it’s a perfect album for easing into a Saturday morning.

If you have an album, film, creative project, or business you’re working on, feel free to send it our way at: [email protected]

As always, feel free to send us any events you’d like to share with the broader community at the same email address. We’re here to build community and want to encourage you to take an active role in this newsletter.

If you want to stay in touch throughout the week and talk to other like minded Orthodox Folks, Join our discord: https://discord.gg/NXEbZ43WQ