Who We Are
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Below are the basics about what we believe,
our mission as a parish, our weekly services, and our leaders. |
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Our Mission
Our mission is to worship one God in Trinity and share the good news of Jesus with each other, people from all backgrounds, our neighbors, and the world. We do this through worshipping beautifully, connecting in fellowship, serving those in need, and providing spiritual teaching for daily living.
Our Main Services and Times
We are at 722 E. College in Iowa City.
- Vespers, which starts at 5:00 pm on Saturdays, is the first service of the daily cycle of divine services. Because the Orthodox liturgical day begins at sunset, Vespers is traditionally in the early evening and is about 75 minutes long.
- Matins, which starts at about 8:45 a.m. on Sundays, is the morning prayers that prepare us for the Divine Liturgy.
- Divine Liturgy, which starts at about 10 a.m. on Sundays, is the highlight of Orthodoxy, the time and place where we worship God and receive the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ. It lasts about 100 minutes.
- See our full calendar for other services and events.
The Nicene Creed: The Basics of What We Believe
Our basis of faith is the Nicene Creed. It informs not only what we believe but also how we live.
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten of the Father before all ages, Light of Light, True God of True God, Begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father, by Whom all things were made:
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man;
And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried; And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures;
And ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father; And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, Whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, Who spoke by the Prophets;
And I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.
I look for the Resurrection of the dead, And the Life of the age to come. Amen.
For more information, contact our priest, Father Symeon.
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten of the Father before all ages, Light of Light, True God of True God, Begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father, by Whom all things were made:
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man;
And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried; And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures;
And ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father; And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, Whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, Who spoke by the Prophets;
And I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.
I look for the Resurrection of the dead, And the Life of the age to come. Amen.
For more information, contact our priest, Father Symeon.
Our Clergy and Patron Saint
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Father Symeon Kees
A priest leads the services and is a pastor to the people. He serves as the representative of the bishop. Father Symeon is a native West Virginian. After High School, he entered United States Air Force training and served in the West Virginia Air National Guard, completing his service as a Staff Sergeant. He graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Basic Humanities, Religious Studies concentration, from Marshall University (WV). He holds two Master of Divinity degrees. His first MDiv is from Asbury Theological Seminary (KY), a school following the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition. Several years after his reception into the Holy Orthodox Church in Houston, Texas, Fr. Symeon studied at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (PA), where he earned his second MDiv, graduating with Distinction in Scripture. Fr. Symeon’s thesis, completed under the supervision of OCA Archbishop MICHAEL of New York and New Jersey, focused on the centrality of the Biblical narrative in Orthodox education from the Apostolic era until today. While a seminarian, Fr. Symeon served as assistant to Bishop THOMAS of Oakland, Charleston, and the Mid-Atlantic. He has since served Bishop THOMAS on occasion, including most recently accompanying His Grace to Dallas, Texas and Austin, Texas to assist with the Hierarchical Divine Liturgies and ordinations. Fr Symeon is further planning to assist His Grace during an upcoming Parish Life Conference in Dallas, Texas this summer. Fr. Symeon was ordained to the Holy Diaconate and the Holy Priesthood by Bishop BASIL of Wichita and Mid-America in 2010. He served as Deacon and then Associate Pastor of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, the largest of the five Antiochian parishes in the Greater Houston area. He spent three years as the priest of the Church of St. Paul in Katy, Texas, a parish of our Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate, overseen by Bishop John of Worcester and New England. After returning to the Eastern Rite and to Saint George as an attached priest, Fr. Symeon focused on evangelism-related projects and ministry at The Saint Constantine School in Houston. Fr. Symeon was a founding Director of The Saint Constantine School, an Orthodox K-12 school projected to educate more than 500 children next year. He served as an officer of the Board of Directors, the first Campus Spiritual Director, and, currently, as Chaplain of the school. He also teaches as Instructor of Orthodox Studies in the undergraduate program of Saint Constantine College. In addition to military service, Fr. Symeon’s professional experience includes pastoral ministry in a Protestant denomination and civilian federal service in the United States Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, as well as in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Fr. Symeon has also served on the international Board of Trustees of the Fellowship of All Saints of China and on the Council of Presbyters of the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America. He is currently a Spiritual Advisor for Orthodox Christian Fellowship in Houston. Fr. Symeon holds particular interest in Orthodox approaches to mission, evangelism, and church growth, Orthodox education, the intersection of Orthodoxy and medicine, and East Asian (especially Chinese) literature and culture from an Orthodox perspective. He hosts two podcasts and a Youtube Channel dedicated to introducing non-Orthodox people to the Orthodox Way. Fr. Symeon is married to Kh. Jing (Anastasia) Kees, a physician specializing in Internal Medicine, who works as a hospitalist in the Texas Medical Center and serves on faculty of Baylor College of Medicine. Fr. Symeon and Kh. Jing have three children: Marina (11), Genevieve (8), and Alexander (3). |
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Subdeacon Panteleimon
Subdeacons assist the priest at the altar during the services and supervise altar servers. They may have other responsibilities, too. Todd Wiblin (Panteleimon) became a member of the Orthodox Church at St. Raphael in April 2005, along with his wife, Karen. He received his education at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and currently works at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. He and Karen live in Iowa City, Iowa. |
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Bishop Anthony
A bishop is the overseer of a group of local churches. He is the chief teacher and leader of services in that area. After receiving a bachelor’s in literature, science, and the arts at the University of Michigan, Bishop Anthony (Michaels) attended St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York, where he earned an MDIV and was a valedictorian of his class. He taught modern philosophy at Gogebic Community College in Ironwood, Michigan, before becoming a pastoral assistant and youth director at St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. As youth coordinators at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church in Akron, Ohio, he and a fellow seminarian gave concerts and retreats as part of the musical group KERYGMA. He was ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood in 2004 at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in West St. Paul, Minnesota. He served his home parish for seven months before leading the faithful of St. John Chrysostom Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In December 2011, he was consecrated to the sacred episcopacy and assigned as the auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Toledo and the Midwest. Metropolitan Saba
A metropolitan is an archbishop with pastoral and administrative authority over an archdiocese. Metropolitan Saba was born in Latakia, Syria in 1959. He holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Tishreen, and a bachelor's degree in theology from the St. John of Damascus Institute of Theology. His Eminence was ordained a priest in 1988 and elevated to the dignity of archimandrite in 1994. He pastored St. Michael the Archangel Church in the Archdiocese of Latakia until 1998. In 1998, Metropolitan Saba was elected and consecrated as an auxiliary bishop to His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatius IV of thrice-blessed memory. In 1999, His Beatitude and the Holy Synod of Antioch elected him as metropolitan of the Archdiocese of Bosra, Hauran and Jabal Al-Arab in Syria. Simultaneously with his pastoral and episcopal duties, from 1995-2006, His Eminence served as instructor of Pastoral Care and Introduction to the Old Testament at the St. John of Damascus Institute of Theology in Balamand. He has authored a number of books in pastoral life and theology and has also translated a number of titles from English to Arabic, including works by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev and Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko. Patriarch John X and the Holy Synod of Antioch elected His Eminence to lead the Archdiocese of North America on February 23, 2023. |
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Patriarch John X
A patriarch is a bishop who has responsibility for the largest entity in the Orthodox Church, a patriarchate. The patriarch presides over a gathering of bishops called a synod. Our patriarch received all his early education in Latakiya, Syria, graduating with a degree in civil engineering there. He earned a degree in theology in 1978 from the St. John of Damascus School of Orthodox of Theology at the Balamand University and a doctorate in theology in 1983 from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. He was tonsured a monk at the Athonite Monastery of St. Paul on the Holy Mountain, was ordained to the holy diaconate in 1979 and to the holy priesthood in 1983, and in 1981 became a professor of liturgical studies at the St. John of Damascus School of Orthodox Theology at Balamand. There he was the dean from 1988 to 1991 and again from 2001 to 2005. He was elected and consecrated to the sacred episcopacy in 1995 with the title Bishop of al-Hosn. He served as superior of the Monastery of St. George al-Humayrah in Syria, superior of the Our Lady of Balamand Monastery, and spiritual father to the Convent of the Dormition in Blemmana, Syria. In 2008 he was elected as the metropolitan of the Archdiocese of Western and Central Europe. In 2012 he was elected to succeed the late Patriarch Ignatius IV. |
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Our Patron, Saint Raphael of Brooklyn
Orthodox churches usually bear the name of an honored follower of Jesus Christ. This person, a saint, becomes the patron of—or the heavenly advocate for—that church community. Saint Raphael (Hawaweeny) was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1860. He received his primary and secondary education in the parochial schools of Damascus, Syria, and his first theological training was at the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Theological School at Halki in Constantinople. He later studied at the Kiev Theological Academy in Imperial Russia, served as the rector of the Metochion of the Patriachate of Antioch in Moscow, and taught at the Theological Academy of Kazan. In 1895, Raphael left Russia to aid the Orthodox parish in New York City, which later became St. Nicholas Cathedral in Brooklyn. He traveled widely throughout the United States in 1896 to organize parishes. In 1898, as the representative of the American mission, Raphael greeted Saint Tikhon (Bellavin), the new diocesan bishop. At Saint Tikhon’s request, Raphael was consecrated bishop at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Brooklyn in 1904. For the next 16 years, he continued his work with Syrian Orthodox and helped administer the mission. He consecrated the grounds of St. Tikhon’s Monastery in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, the first Orthodox monastery in the New World. After 20 years of service in North America, at the age of 55, in 1915, he fell asleep in Christ. At the time, he administered 30 Syrian Orthodox congregations with 25,000 faithful. His relics were finally moved to the Holy Resurrection Cemetery at The Antiochian Village near Ligonier, Pennsylvania. His sanctity was officially proclaimed and his glorification celebrated in 2000. |
Our Parish Council
The Parish Council is responsible for making the day-to-day decisions required to run our parish, including decisions about repairs, finances, special projects, charitable works, fundraising, etc. Parish Council members are also responsible for eliciting feedback from the parish and listening and responding to the concerns, goals, and needs communicated by parishioners. The Parish Council meets monthly and as needed; anyone is welcome to attend the meetings.
The 2023 Parish Council is:
The 2023 Parish Council is:
- Alli Rockwell, Chair (2023-2025, elected)
- Brian Horak, Vice-chair (2022-2024, elected)
- Becky Morey, Treasurer (2021-2023, elected)
- John Michalski, Secretary (2023-2025, appointed)
- Olena Bezugla, (2023, appointed)
- Austin Collins (2022-2024, appointed)
