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 and supported Priests 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+)
Fr. Andrew Short of St. Anna Mission – 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.
Fr. Cassian Dunlop of St Andrew Mission – 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.
Fr. John Cook of Saint Tikhon Mission – 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.
Fr. Photos Parks of St. Anthony Mission – 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.
Fr Aidan Keller of St. Anna 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.
Fr Dimitri Mihaliov of St Ambrose Mission – Upper Michigan
Jurisdiction: ROCOR
Status: Mission Parish
Fr Dmitri Mihaliov felt called to serve this community as he grew up in a small family that lived hours away from the nearest church and remembers how spiritually taxing it can be to feel so isolated. He began attending St Vladimir Orthodox Church in Ann Arbor regularly while a student at the University of Michigan. In 2018, he began a PhD in Applied Physics at University of Michigan, but soon also felt called to the clergy. He was tonsured in 2021 and ordained to the priesthood in August 2023.
Graduate school is a time typically marked with tight schedules and tighter budgets, and it’s common for PhD students to isolate themselves from activities not related to their work. Fr Dmitri was already an oddity by marrying, but having kids was even more unusual. The reality is, a graduate student salary wasn’t meant to be the primary source of a family’s income, especially near Ann Arbor, one of the most expensive areas to live in Michigan. Add to that a new mission that needs a variety of basic items, supplies, and importantly, clergy and choir. The priest and choir director (Fr Dmitri and Matushka Katherine) need to travel to the Straits Area (a 4 hour drive each way) to serve the Liturgy monthly at minimum.
Despite these challenges, St Ambrose Mission typically has 15-20 communicants at Liturgy. On Sundays when a priest is not present, Typika is served to provide spiritual consistency for the families living in the area. Services are held primarily in English, but Church Slavonic, Greek, and Latin are used both to reflect the attendees and as a point of outreach to the Roman Catholic population in the area. Many inquirers have visited, and the first catechumen was made at the beginning of Great Lent 2024.
Fr Jesse of St Jacob of Alaska Mission, Marquette, MI
St. Jacob of Alaska started with a Moleben served on the Feast Day of St. Jacob Netsvetov, July 26/August 8, 2021, in venue space at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. Archpriest Gregory Joyce of St. Vladimir Russian Orthodox Church in Ann Arbor served as the first rector and appointed Deacon Jesse Rimshas of Sts. Sergius and Herman of Valaam in Houghton, Michigan as the Mission Coordinator.
St. Jacob’s mission has always been labor of love for its founding members. Fr. Jesse and his family drove two hours from his home in L’Anse with icons, music stands, and other church supplies, and the community set up and tore down the Mission in a conference room on weekends. Vespers and Divine Liturgy were served about every six weeks by a visiting priest from Traverse City or Houghton, and other weekends the community would hold Reader’s Vespers and Typikas. They held lunch at a local coffee shop that allowed them to plug in Crock Pots and dine at a room upstairs as long they ordered a carafe of coffee.
In March of 2022 the mission leased 5,000 square feet of space on the main level of an old middle school in Ishpeming, Michigan, about 20 minutes from Northern Michigan University in Marquette. The community has made this space their own. Fr. Jesse and his fifteen-year-son Anthony designed and built a portable wooden iconostasis.
On July 12/June 29, 2022, Archbishop Peter ordained Deacon Jesse to the Holy Priesthood and tonsured parishioner George Hunt, who is currently the mission’s sole seminarian, a reader. Fr. Jesse was appointed Rector on the community’s second anniversary, August 8/July 26, 2023. St. Jacob’s currently serves as Marquette County’s only full-time Orthodox Church, and parishioners drive as far as ninety miles for Divine Liturgies. The community is very active and has a full schedule of services.
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!
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