History

Saint Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church of Libertyville, Illinois carries a history that began not in Libertyville but in Waukegan, more than eighty years before the present church was built. In 1925, sixty Greek families in the Waukegan area came together to form a Greek Orthodox community. They had no formal place of worship at first, holding services wherever space could be arranged. In 1929 the community elected its first Parish Council, and in 1931 president James Nakis rented the German Ebenezer Congregational Church for twenty dollars a month. The congregation named itself Saint Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church of Waukegan and North Chicago, and on September 25, 1931, Archbishop Athenagoras appointed the first full-time priest.

Through the following decades the parish grew and the community invested in its home. The congregation purchased the property housing an old military armory to serve as their worship facilities, before groundbreaking on a proper new church at the corner of Glen Flora and North Avenue in Waukegan on April 29, 1959. Archbishop Iakovos officiated at the Opening of the Doors ceremony on July 4, 1960, and on October 4, 1970, Bishop Timotheos and Metropolitan Paul of Ierissou, visiting from Greece, consecrated the church.

In 1983, with the Lake County Greek Orthodox community increasingly concentrated further north and west than Waukegan, the parish purchased a twenty-five-acre parcel on O'Plaine Road in Libertyville, selling ten of the acres and paying off the remainder. In May 2005, the congregation voted unanimously to build a new church on the O'Plaine property. Groundbreaking was held in 2006, and on September 21, 2007, three cranes lifted the golden Millennium stainless steel dome, seventy-five feet high, into place, a dramatic moment visible from Interstate 94. The Thyranoixia was celebrated on April 13, 2008, with over 700 faithful in attendance. The 9,000-square-foot sanctuary draws on fifth-century Byzantine cross-in-square design and incorporates millwork, ornate wood, and gilt fixtures transferred from the original Waukegan church, carrying the history of the community visibly into its new home.

Saint Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church at 1400 North O'Plaine Road in Libertyville serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of Lake County as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a thriving community of more than 250 families whose roots in the Greek immigrant life of the Waukegan shoreline stretch back a full century.