St. George • When Mykel Giannakakos was ordained at 27, the Southern California native didn’t foresee leading a rapidly growing flock at a fledgling Eastern Orthodox church in southern Utah.

Three years later, the 30-year-old pastor — known to his congregation as Father Mykel — oversees St. George Orthodox Church, a mission parish that has swelled from a few dozen worshippers to 150 every Sunday.

That growth is prompting a major move. The church soon will trade its rented St. George storefront for a new 6,500-square-foot sanctuary under construction at 1570 N. Coral Canyon Blvd. in neighboring Washington City.

“This is the only Orthodox church in southern Utah,” Giannakakos said. “Geographically speaking, the closest one to St. George is in Las Vegas, and the next closest is in the Salt Lake area.”

Giannakakos, an American-born son of Greek and New Zealand immigrants, arrived with his wife, Sarah, in July 2023 as the new pastor for the tiny mission church. A graduate of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Yonkers, New York, he was assigned to the area by a senior bishop after his studies.

When he arrived, he said, the couple’s 2‑month‑old son, Ashton, was the only child in the congregation.

“But you come here now,” Giannakakos added, “and it’s overflowing with married couples and young families with kids. We still have retirees, but we attract people of all different ages.”

Converting to Orthodoxy

Many of the new parishioners, he noted, came from outside traditional Orthodox homelands. Some were members of Protestant churches. Others had walked away from religion altogether.

“I’ve been surprised,” the pastor said, “at the amount of former atheists who have become Christians.”

He said people who gravitate to the Orthodox faith are not looking for specific programs or musical styles. Instead, he said, they come wanting to find the real God and his true church.

Peter Bellflower said he certainly felt the church’s pull. He recalled feeling “despondent and really disheartened at the state of Christianity” when he discovered the 12th-century writings of St. Peter of Damascus that spoke to his heart.

“He happened to be Orthodox, and that started my journey into discovering what Orthodoxy was,” said the St. George resident, who serves as a tonsured, or robed, reader reciting scriptures and hymns at services.

Orthodox tradition, church officials attest, stands apart from Catholicism and Protestantism. Giannakakos said Orthodoxy views itself as the historic New Testament church, holding an unalterable faith delivered once and for all to the saints. He said the faith traces an unbroken line of apostolic succession from the original apostles to today’s bishops, centering on a sacramental life that affirms Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.

No addition or subtraction

While the Orthodox view holds that Catholics added dogmas over time and Protestants later stripped away ancient rites of worship, Giannakakos said, Orthodoxy has preserved the original faith, doctrine and liturgy without addition or subtraction.

For his part, the parish’s full‑time cantor, Zach Rodriguez, was drawn to the church by its icons, which are sacred, two-dimensional images that serve as focal points for prayer and meditation. A former Baptist who passed through several Protestant traditions, he wandered into an Orthodox vespers service more than a decade ago.

“What I felt while I was there was that these people treat these icons and this service with a sacred disposition and with reverence,” Rodriguez said. “That is something I didn’t come across in any other church that I visited.”

On Sunday mornings, worshippers at the St. George church gather for a prayer service at 8:30 a.m., followed by the Divine Liturgy at 10 a.m. Services, often stretching close to three hours, are marked by long periods of standing, bowing and incense while nearly the entire liturgy is sung or chanted rather than spoken.

Rodriguez leads the congregation in Byzantine monophonic chanting, a practice he said is aimed at keeping the worshippers in a continual state of prayer for the duration.

“Our services are not known for brevity,” Giannakakos deadpanned. “Part of our beauty is captured in the elaborate expression of the liturgical rhythms.”

Reverencing icons

One practice, he noted, that often surprises visitors is the Orthodox veneration of icons: painted images of Christ and the saints that worshippers kiss as they enter. While the practice may strike some as uncomfortably akin to idol worship, Giannakakos likens it to how people treat cherished family photos.

“A picture of your son is in essence not your son,” he explained, “but it is a representation of your son.”

Orthodox worshippers kiss and bow before icons not as idols, the pastor said, but as a way of confessing Christ. “When we see an icon of Christ and we venerate it, we are making a theological confession about the person of Christ, and the honor and reverence which is attributed to wood and paint… is symbolically or mysteriously offered unto the prototype, whom it depicts.”

Kissing is a big part of the service. Aside from venerating icons, the church’s website attests, congregants kiss the sacramental chalice and the “priest’s vestment as he passes by.” Acolytes often kiss his hand, and everyone lines up to “to kiss the cross at the end of the service.”

Funded by parish tithes and donations, the large new Coral Canyon church will formalize the community’s transition from a mission to a full parish. For Giannakakos, the construction — expected to wrap up in October — is more about faith than square footage.

“It’s an achievement,” he said, “We give glory to God for it because, apart from him, no good work is ever accomplished.”