History

Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church of Sioux Falls, South Dakota was founded over fifty years ago by Greek Orthodox immigrants who sought to establish an Orthodox Christian community in the largest city in South Dakota, planting the ancient faith on the northern Great Plains far from the established Greek Orthodox communities of the Midwest. The parish is the only Orthodox Christian community in the Sioux Falls area, making it the sole center of Eastern Orthodox worship for a wide geographic region.

From its Greek immigrant origins the parish has evolved into one of the most genuinely diverse and outward-facing Orthodox communities on the Great Plains. Its congregation today includes faithful whose roots trace to Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the Middle East, and many other traditionally Orthodox lands, alongside a growing number of parishioners who have joined from Lutheran, Baptist, Roman Catholic, and other Western Christian backgrounds, drawn to the ancient, unchanging faith of the Apostolic Church. Services are conducted almost entirely in English, reflecting a deliberate commitment to making the fullness of Orthodox worship accessible to all who seek it regardless of ethnic background or prior religious tradition.

The parish understands itself as a healthy, Eucharistic-centered Orthodox Christian community continually committing itself to the Christian life through repentance, catechesis, loving hospitality, and service to its neighbors, building up a solid foundation for the future of Orthodox Christianity in South Dakota.

Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church at 1936 South Summit Avenue in Sioux Falls serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of Minnehaha County and the surrounding region as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.