LDS-dominated Utah County gets its first-ever Orthodox Christian Church — ‘Utah is a very ripe missionary field’

Metropolitan Joseph consecrates St. Xenia — a Payson congregation that has tripled in dimension and now has its personal parish.

Believers from throughout Utah and past gathered not too long ago to take part within the consecration of Utah County’s first Orthodox Christian church.

Positioned in a county dominated by Latter-day Saints, the Payson constructing — with its iconic onion domes and conventional frescoes — symbolizes the fruits of the religion’s regular development within the state, in line with the pastor of the brand-new parish.

St. Xenia Church first opened to worshippers in November 2020. Since then, it has operated as a second campus of Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Christian Church, positioned in downtown Salt Lake Metropolis.

That modified Saturday, July 16, when Metropolitan Joseph, chief of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, “baptized” the construction as an Orthodox church, thereby establishing it and its congregants as their very own separate parish.

Father Justin Havens is the pastor of St. Xenia Church. A convert to the religion from Protestantism, Havens beforehand served as a pastor in Salt Lake Metropolis. To be current for the consecration of an Orthodox church “is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion,” he mentioned, noting that it had been seven years since Metropolitan Joseph final visited Utah.

‘Relics work miracles’

About 200 attendees had been current for the consecration, which included a triple-procession across the constructing to represent, Havens defined, that “it’s being put aside.”

“As soon as it’s consecrated,” he mentioned, “it will probably by no means be something once more — it can’t be offered.”

Sacred relics — items of bone from two saints, one from the fourth century and the opposite from the twentieth — then had been entombed into the church’s altar used for serving the Eucharist, together with a scroll containing the names of all those that contributed to the constructing and parish’s creation.

“We imagine relics work miracles and are very highly effective,” Havens mentioned. “Folks come from all around the nation for this.”

Saturday additionally noticed the blessing of what Havens mentioned represents the Beehive State’s first Orthodox Christian cemetery. Adjoining to the church, it would serve Utah’s whole Orthodox Christian neighborhood.

A imaginative and prescient realized

It was Havens’ thought to construct a brand new church in Payson.

“Folks thought I used to be loopy,” he mentioned, citing the town’s relative remoteness even just some years in the past. However the father of 10 was not deterred: “I had a imaginative and prescient.”

That imaginative and prescient met a couple of obstacles, mainly funding.

“We now have no actual wealthy folks in our neighborhood,” Havens mentioned. Simply to purchase the property required parishioners to “scrimp and save.”

“Everybody,” he mentioned, “bled for the property.”

Then got here the problem of elevating the funds for the constructing itself.

“I might stroll across the property doing my prayers asking God” for assist, Havens recalled. And the Almighty wasn’t the one one he requested. “I used to be begging and advertising and marketing everywhere.”

Elevating the stakes was the truth that, within the Orthodox Christian custom, a church can’t be consecrated till it’s paid off.

Ultimately, Havens was capable of safe “huge out-of-state donors,” a few of whom weren’t even members of the religion, to cowl the development prices. There was even sufficient to rent an Orthodox Christian fresco painter from Serbia, a person named Aleksander Zivadinovic, to color the inside.

“He’s top-of-the-line on this planet,” Havens mentioned, including that it’s “fairly uncommon” for newer church buildings to characteristic frescoes — regardless of their being deeply embedded within the religion’s custom.

‘A really wealthy missionary subject’

If there was one a part of the method that by no means gave Havens and his staff any bother, it was working with metropolis officers.

“Payson bent over backwards to assist us construct this church,” he mentioned. Havens attributed this keen angle to the neighborhood’s “seriousness” about religion. Utahns, and particularly these dwelling in Utah County, he mentioned “perceive the necessity to worship God.”

Havens urged this deal with religion as one purpose for the expansion of Orthodox Christianity he’s witnessed through the previous few years. In line with the pastor, the “fledgling” group of worshippers in Payson has tripled in dimension because the constructing’s doorways opened in fall 2020.

About half these, he estimated, are latest converts, the “overwhelming majority” of whom beforehand had been members of Utah’s predominant religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Havens believes a few of this has to do with the similarities between Latter-day Saint and Orthodox Christian traditions, together with the emphasis each place on marriage, kids and what he referred to as the “conventional life.”

In his expertise, former Latter-day Saints arrive with a “skeleton” of a perception system that’s “enfleshed after they discover Orthodoxy.”

“Utah,” he mentioned, “is a really wealthy missionary subject.”