History

Saint George Greek Orthodox Church of Ocean, New Jersey traces its roots to the Greek immigrants who settled along the north Jersey shore in the early twentieth century. Efforts to organize a community and establish a church first took shape in Long Branch in 1913, when the Agio Voithitiko Silogo, an auxiliary association, was formed. In 1924, a small gathering of Greek residents from Long Branch, Asbury Park, and Red Bank came together to celebrate the Paschal Resurrection service, united by a shared commitment to building a permanent house of worship.

The Silogo relocated to Asbury Park in 1928, where the Greek population was growing more rapidly, and was renamed the Saint George Hellenic Community. The first officially recorded church service was held on Saint Demetrios Day, October 26, 1929, in the basement of the Asbury Park Library. The community's Godfather, George S. Pappayliou, formally bestowed the name Saint George Greek Orthodox Community and Church of Asbury Park. Through the 1930s the parish was served by a succession of temporary priests while worshipping in the Interlaken Hotel on Sixth Avenue, which housed the congregation from 1937 to 1947. A permanent priest arrived in September 1947 and would go on to serve the community for thirty years, shepherding it through its most formative decades.

As the community grew, a permanent building became essential. Property was purchased at 700 Grand Avenue in Asbury Park, and in 1949, twenty years after that first library basement service, the parishioners celebrated Divine Liturgy in their own church. A cemetery was acquired in Neptune in 1954, with Saint George Greek Orthodox Cemetery officially opening in 1957. In 1963, the Philoptochos Society donated $14,000 toward a cultural center addition, groundbreaking for which was held in 1965. The Philoptochos also launched the community's beloved festival tradition beginning in 1975, donating the entire proceeds of the first festival to retire the parish's remaining mortgage.

For more than two decades, the dream of a larger and more complete church home grew alongside the parish. A tract of land on West Park Avenue in Ocean Township was identified, purchased, and approved, and groundbreaking took place in the summer of 2008. On April 1, 2012, the community celebrated the Thyranoixia of its new House of Worship at 1033 West Park Avenue in Ocean Township, a campus that includes a Cultural Center, Administration and Education Building, and Athletic Center, fulfilling a vision the community had carried for a generation.

Today, Saint George Greek Orthodox Church stands at 1033 West Park Avenue in Ocean Township as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of New Jersey, continuing more than a century of Orthodox Christian worship and Hellenic heritage along the Jersey Shore.