History

The story of Saint John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church of Las Vegas begins with the steadily growing number of Greek immigrants who settled in the Las Vegas Valley beginning in the early 1900s. In 1929, John Pappas and two partners opened the city's first Greek-owned restaurant, the White Spot Cafe, and Pappas would come to be regarded as the godfather of the parish that eventually bore his community's faith. Among the valley's other early Greek settlers were George Sackas and his wife Lea, who arrived from Los Angeles after their marriage in 1931. As Las Vegas' only married Greek couple at the time, their home became the city's gathering place for Greeks to celebrate and socialize together.

As the Greek population of southern Nevada grew, Orthodox Christian residents began holding informal religious observances in their homes, though baptisms still required traveling to parishes in Salt Lake City or Los Angeles. In 1954, following a Greek Orthodox baptism performed in a borrowed Christian church in Las Vegas, Bishop Athenagoras Kokinakis, who had traveled to officiate, met with the women in attendance and encouraged them to organize formally.

On April 9, 1959, the Eastern Greek Orthodox Community of Las Vegas was formally incorporated in the State of Nevada, welcoming Orthodox Christians of every background, Greek and non-Greek alike. John Pappas was selected chairman to establish a permanent home for the new community, and fundraising efforts began that September with a dinner dance. Orthodox services were celebrated at Christ Episcopal Church in the parish's earliest years.

The dream of a permanent church complex advanced significantly in 1988, when Father Ilia Katre arrived as parish priest with the blessing of Bishop Anthony, and a building committee formed the following year. Bishop Anthony encouraged the parish to pursue authentic Byzantine architecture, drawing inspiration from St. Euphemia of the Hippodrome in Constantinople. The community marked the beginning of construction with a week-long celebration in September 1990 called "A New Beginning," opening with a 9.3-mile relay race from the church's downtown location to the new site, and construction began that October. The doors of the new church opened on September 27, 1992, with Nitsa and George Filios winning the honor of turning the key for the first Divine Liturgy in the new location.

The parish continued to grow through the following decade. The Saint John the Baptist Community and Education Center celebrated its grand opening on May 10, 2003, with a ribbon-cutting and gala attended by a capacity crowd. On the weekend of June 4 and 5, 2005, the parish celebrated the consecration of its church, formally dedicating the building to God.

Saint John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church on a ten-acre campus in the southwest Las Vegas Valley serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of southern Nevada as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a community that has grown from a handful of immigrant families gathering in private homes into one of the largest Orthodox Christian congregations in the Mountain West.