A brief history of our parish

St. Alexis Orthodox Church began as a student organization at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, a quarter century ago. Priests came from nearby areas to serve Divine Liturgy. 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 worshipping at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Chapel 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 Purdue Student Fellowship. He was appointed Mission Parish Administrator by Metropolitan Nicholas of the American Carpatho-Russian Greek Catholic Archdiocese 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 (Dale) Allard, assisted by Father Deacon Alexander Boutselis. In July of 2001, our beloved Fr. Charles and Matyushka Ann Sunderland retired to Colorado.

Within the jurisdiction of the American Carpatho-Russian Greek Catholic Archdiocese, the St. Alexis Parish serves a growing number of both university students and families from north-western Indiana. "Cradle" Orthodox from the Greek, Syrian, Russian, Romanian, Ukranian and Carpatho-Russian traditions worship at St. Alexis along with converts from a number of Protestant denominations and Roman Catholicism in our uniquely "American" melting-pot parish.

Our Diocese is a member of SCOBA and we are under the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Archbishop of Constantinople.