In the later 1970s Fr. James worked in Silicon Valley as a senior production supervisor making integrated circuit “chips” while also serving as a pastor of an Evangelical Orthodox Church (a small Protestant denomination) on the path to becoming Orthodox. In 1981 he and his family were received into the canonical Orthodox Christian Church (Orthodox Church in America – O.C.A.) Four years later the Bernstein family, now expanded to six, moved to Crestwood, New York where he attended Saint Vladimir Seminary, receiving his Masters of Divinity degree in 1989. His wife worked as a registered nurse and received a Master's degree from Columbia University in midwifery. While at the seminary his friends in the Evangelical Orthodox Church movement became canonically Orthodox as they were received into the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese. Soon after the Bernstein family transferred from the O.C.A. jurisdiction to the Antiochian Orthodox jurisdiction in order to be reunited with their Evangelical Orthodox friends within the Antiochian Archdiocese. In 1988 he was ordained a priest and given the ordained name of James (named after James the Just, the brother of the Lord and first bishop of Jerusalem). Two years later he was assigned to Saint Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church in Brier, Washington where he continued to pastor for over a quarter of a century.

=== Books and Booklets ===