St Alexis Mission - Lafayette, IN
Saint
Alexis Orthodox Church in Lafayette,
Indiana, began as a student
organization at Purdue
University more than 30
years ago. Priests came from nearby areas to serve Divine Liturgy and hear
confessions whenever they could be scheduled. In the 1980's, some faithful
Orthodox in Lafayette
and West Lafayette
began the search for a full-time priest and a permanent location to establish a
parish. Between 1976 and 1990, the faithful had been worshiping at St. Thomas
Aquinas Catholic Church on the Purdue University Campus. Attendance averaged
25.
Then in 1993, Fr. Charles Sunderland, who had been retired for some time,
volunteered to begin the mission parish on the foundation established by the Orthodox
Christian Fellowship at Purdue. He was appointed Mission Parish Administrator
by Metropolitan Nicholas in October, 1993. Services moved to St. Elizabeth
Hospital Chapel that year and both attendance and membership rose steadily. In
March, 1998, St. Alexis Orthodox Church moved to our first permanent home on South
24th Street in Lafayette.
In October, 2000 our parish was blessed by the ordination to the Holy
Priesthood of Father Gregory Allard, and a few years later Father Deacon
Alexander Boutselis was ordained to the Diaconate. In July of 2001, our beloved
Fr. Charles and Matushka Ann Sunderland retired to Colorado.
Within the jurisdiction of the American Carpatho-Russian Greek Catholic
Archdiocese, the St. Alexis Mission Parish serves a growing number of both
university students and families from north-western Indiana. "Cradle" Orthodox from
the Greek, Syrian, Russian, Romanian, Ukrainian and Carpatho-Russian traditions
worship at St. Alexis along with converts from Protestant denominations and
former Roman Catholics in our uniquely "American" melting-pot
parish. With the grace of God inspiring
the generosity of our parish family, we retired the mortgage on the 24th
street property and began saving for the construction of a permanent temple.
In 2004, St. Alexis Mission Parish
was gifted with a plot of land just north of Lafayette-West Lafayette which
will become the site of the new temple.
A building committee has been hard at work with a local architect to
finalize a design and develop a construction budget. It is our firm prayer that God will bless our
efforts and that a new St. Alexis Orthodox
temple will grace the wooded hillside at the junction of State Routes 43 and
225.
