Supported Priests & Missions

Share the Faith assists a wide variety of canonical Orthodox priests in the United States who are:

  • Assigned to mission parishes which cannot provide adequate support, and so must supplement their income with secular work.
  • Pursuing missionary / outreach ministries in addition to their regular parish duties for which they need assistance.
  • Assigned to parishes which are “re-missionizing” their areas. Unfortunately, Orthodox parishes can find themselves with too few members for a variety of reasons. These parishes either learn to evangelize, or they cease to exist. Share the Faith helps keep these parishes open and also helps them develop the evangelism skills needed to attract new members.

The parishes we are currently assisting are below.

Fr. Elijah Drake of All Saints Orthodox Mission – Lodi, CA

Jurisdiction: ROCOR, Western Rite

Status: Mission Parish

All Saints Orthodox Mission was started in November 2021 as a ROCOR Western Rite Mission with the blessing of Metropolitan Hilarion of blessed memory. We started off with 5 baptized members (my family) and 10 inquirers. We met in a chapel we built in my converted garage in Stockton, California. At this time almost everything we had as a mission we had to build ourselves from scratch.

We met in that garage chapel for 9 month. In July 2022, the Lord in His great mercy and love, provided a store front space for us to rent (at a monthly rental rate one third of the market rate). The store front was located in Lodi California, so we officially moved All Saints to Lodi, where we are the first and only Orthodox Church in the city of Lodi (population 60,000+)

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Fr. Andrew Short of St. Anna Orthodox Christian Church – Columbia, TN

Jurisdiction: Antiochian

Status: Mission Parish

On November 1, 2018 a small group of former parishioners from St. Ignatius Orthodox Church in Franklin, TN were given the blessing and name of St. Anna from His Eminence Metropolitan JOSEPH to officially begin meeting and offering Orthodox liturgical services as a mission in Columbia, TN.   The Very Reverend Fr. Stephen Rogers, who had only one year earlier retired from St. Ignatius Orthodox Church in Franklin, TN after serving as the senior Priest for over 20 years, was asked to serve as the Priest at St. Anna and Fr. Andrew Short was ordained as a Deacon and continued to assist Fr. Stephen in that capacity until he was ordained to the Holy Priesthood on May 30, 2021, replacing Fr. Stephen who then retired for a second time.

In 2018, when this mission was officially chartered as St. Anna numbered about 20 men, women, and children.  At this date, five years later, the mission has a membership of 75 and we are welcoming new visitors and inquirers nearly every week, and several are currently inquirers and catechumens, preparing for baptism and chrismation in 2024.

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Mission of Fr. Cassian Dunlop of St Andrew the Apostle Antiochian Orthodox Church in Eustis, FL

Jurisdiction: Antiochian, Western Rite

Status: Re-missionizing Parish

St. Andrew the Apostle is a community of Orthodox Christians located in Eustis, Florida, worshiping according to the ancient Western Rite practiced by the early Christians in the West for the first 1,000 years of Christianity. We are canonical (mainline) Orthodox in the Antiochian Patriarchate headquartered in Damascus, Syria, under His Beatitude Patriarch John X, and in the self-ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America under His Eminence Metropolitan Joseph.

Fr. Cassian Dunlop has served as the rector for St Andrew parish for 24 years. He received his BA in Philosophy at the University of South Carolina in 1987 and was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1989 after completing his Divinity degree from St Joseph of Arimathea Anglican Seminary in Berkeley, California. As an Anglican priest he served parishes in Washington, DC and Anderson, SC. In 1995, he and his parish in South Carolina converted to Orthodox Christianity after a year of study, and he was ordained as an Antiochian Orthodox priest, continuing to serve his parish, now a new Western Rite mission.

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Rev. Fr. John Cook of Saint Tikhon Orthodox Church – Ruther Glen, VA

Jurisdiction: ROCOR, Western Rite

Status: Mission Parish

I am Fr. John Cook, the Rector of St. Tikhon Orthodox Church in Ruther Glen, VA. Like many priests of smaller parishes, I have to work full-time to support myself and my family. I have a full-time secular job to which I travel 4 hours round trip daily, while putting in 8 to 12 hours at the office. I am a 100% disabled veteran as well. I serve on the Spiritual Council, and am also Serving as the Dean of the Northern Deanery of the Western Rite Communities ROCOR. I am also the Deputy Director of Orthodox Africa. Currently, I have no days off, and I get about 3-4 hours of sleep a night. Glory to God in all things!

The goal, of course, is to devote myself full-time to ministering to and growing my flock in central Virginia. Towards that goal, the help of Share The Faith donors has been much appreciated.

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Fr. Photios Parks of St. Anthony the Great in Hendersonville, NC

Jurisdiction: American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of North America (Ecumenical Patriarch)

Status: Mission Parish

Until April 2023, I had been working bi-vocationally for the last 6 years. I was working full-time (40hrs) as a social worker and also working 20-30 hours as a mission priest at Saint Anthony’s. I worked so much to get my wife through her nurse practitioner program as well as to make sure that our family could maintain our very basic needs. Now that my wife has completed her program, she is a nurse practitioner at a federally qualified health center. The pay is not at all on par with practicing in a for-profit facility. She is also working in a state that is ranked as the worst state in which to be a nurse practitioner. Her remuneration reflects all that.

Although our mission has strived to continue to make gains in my compensation, it is difficult because we have simple folks who already struggle to live in our very, very expensive area. Currently, I am compensated less than 50% of our Diocese’s standard rate of salary for a priest.

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Fr Aidan Keller of St. Anna’s Orthodox Mission – Louisa, VA

Jurisdiction: ROCOR

Status: Mission Parish

St. Anna’s Mission Parish is a dependency of St. Demetrios Orthodox Monastery, and the clergy are supplied to it from the monastery’s Hiero-monastic ranks. The mission itself is located on the property of the churchwarden/founders, who have furnished almost everything necessary from their own substance, and continue to bear the vast majority of the costs associated with the running of our parish.

We had our first service on July 3, 2022 with an extremely well-attended Liturgy, after which average Sundays averaged about 15. We celebrated our one year anniversary three weeks ago, with approximately 58 attendees for Divine Liturgy (with Russian and Appalachian folk music and dancing and a bake sale as well as the trapeza). The small converted cabin house was bursting to overflowing. Approximately half a dozen people were baptized on Holy Saturday 2023, four new catechumens are being prepared for baptism in January, and in general the community exhibits very positive growth in all directions. 

The principal demographic is Americans, mostly converts, with constant visitors and inquirers. Many of those who come are young people in their 20s. Often they drive an hour and a half or more.

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Graduated Missions

The goal of Share the Faith is to enable our assisted missions and parishes to become self-funding as quickly as possible. Below are missions and parishes which we have assisted that are now, by the grace of God, able to sustain themselves.

Mission of Fr. Adam Sexton from Culpepper, VA

Jurisdiction: ROCOR

Status: Mission Parish

It is my true joy to greet you in the Name of The Lord! It is such a blessing to have come full circle and to have wound up here as the rector at St. Andrew’s parish in Ashland, VA. You see, many years ago, about 22 I think, I was strolling along the sidewalk in Richmond and came upon a small Orthodox bookstore on Sheppard Street. (It’s now an upscale hair salon!) It had icons in the windows and interesting things appeared to be going on inside. Being a good Catholic boy, and also being employed by a local Catholic bookstore a few blocks away, I decided I would go in and check it out…maybe see what the competition was up to…..

Well…that, as they say, was the beginning of the rest of my life!

Find Out More!


Shoutout to Our Supporters!


Anonymous User

Anonymous

March 27, 2024

Amount Donated
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Robert (John) Hammond

March 19, 2024

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In honor of Fr. Elijah D.
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Elleni Pippis

March 19, 2024

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Anonymous

March 6, 2024

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vasko popovski

March 5, 2024

God bless

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Elleni Pippis

February 22, 2024

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Anonymous

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Elleni Pippis

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vasko popovski

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February 5, 2024

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