New Building for St. Hermans Orthodox Church

Fairbanks St. Herman Orthodox Church

St. Herman’s Orthodox Church in Fairbanks, Alaska is one of many parishes in Alaska belonging to the Orthodox Diocese of Alaska, a diocese of the Orthodox Church of America (OCA).

Our parish includes a variety of people: Alaska Natives, Yupik & Aleut, Americans, Ukrainians, Rumanians, Russians, Eastern Europeans, and numerous converts and members of the US Army & Air force. Services are performed in English with Yupik, Russian, Greek and other languages included during special occasions and feasts, such as, Easter (Pascha) and Christmas.

Orthodox Churches take their name, from a patron saint or a feast. Our church’s patron saint is St. Herman, one of the first Orthodox monks who came to Kodiak Island, Alaska in 1794 on a mission. Out of the initial group of missionaries, St. Herman would eventually be the only one to complete that mission. St. Herman used the holy water from the bay, blessed on the feast of Theophany, to cure the ill. St. Herman had the gift to perform miracles, and possessed prophetic insight. In his time, he was able to win countless people to Christ through his love for the people, teachings, lifestyle, and holines, and continues to do so today.

Founded in 1976, six years after the Moscow Patriarch gave self-governance to the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), St. Herman’s was the inaugural missionary church of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) in Fairbanks, Alaska. The first permanent priest of St. Herman Orthodox Church was Archpriest Michael Oleksa, who arrived in September 1983. After Fr. Michael, a group of local Orthodox Christians continued to gather, meeting at makeshift places of worship. However, in only four years, St. Herman’s went from an average of 30 people in attendance each week to almost double that amount. In 1992, after 16 years of moving from one temporary facility to another, the church settled into its current home, a large property on Goldstream Road, which had once been a historic Lutheran church in Fairbanks. St. Herman’s Church devotees worked hard to transform that structure into a symbol of the Heavenly Kingdom by making extensive repairs, clearing space for a sanctuary, and installing an iconostasis. St. Herman’s Orthodox Church was officially designated as a parish in 1998, elevating it from mission status.

Since 2020, it is not uncommon for our church to be filled with 100 or more people during a regular Sunday Liturgy. Many of our parishioners are families with young children. To accommodate our growing congregation, we began planning construction for a new, larger church on the property owned by our parish. The new building design is engineered according to building codes and has the blessing of the Bishop of the Alaska Diocese, Bishop Alexei. Our parish can coordinate the project and is asking for help to finance the construction of our new building.