History

The story of Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church of Waco, Texas begins with commerce and community. A London company sent a Greek cotton merchant to Waco to purchase cotton for English mills, and he liked what he found well enough to stay. That single decision planted the seed of what would become Waco's Greek community. In the early 1900s the city's first Greek family opened a restaurant that proved so successful it drew more Greek families to the Heart of Texas, each one adding to the community that would eventually build a church.

In 1926, the growing community formally founded the Hellenic Orthodox Community of Waco and adopted a local Episcopal church as their meeting grounds, which became the hub of Hellenic traditions and the Orthodox faith in central Texas. Over the following decades the community worked toward a permanent home. A pivotal moment came when Michael Colias, a Greek immigrant from Sparta who had settled in Waco in the early twentieth century, convinced the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association to hold their next national conference in the city. AHEPA donated all profits from the Waco convention to the construction of a new church, which when combined with other fundraising efforts proved sufficient to begin building at 617 North Seventeenth Street.

Construction was completed in 1949, and the new building served both as a church and a community hall for Hellenic celebrations and gatherings. The name Saint Nicholas was chosen through a creative fundraising drive in which community members voted with their dollars, each fifty-dollar donation representing one vote, and Saint Nicholas prevailed. A fellowship hall was added next door to the church in 1960. The parish did not receive its first full-time priest until 1963, and over the following decades the community navigated periods of visiting clergy and shared arrangements with neighboring parishes, all while maintaining its identity and continuity. A significant turning point came in the early 1990s when the decision was made to celebrate the Divine Liturgy in both English and Greek, which opened the doors to many non-Greek families and helped the parish grow into the diverse Orthodox community it is today.

Today, Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church continues to worship in the original building at the corner of 17th and Sanger Avenue in Waco, a member of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Denver. Its congregation reflects the breadth of Orthodox Christianity, welcoming Romanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Lebanese, Syrians, Greeks, and American converts, serving as the home of Eastern Orthodoxy in central Texas for more than seventy-five years.