Weatherford sits on I-40 in western Oklahoma, far from the places most people associate with Orthodox Christianity. At 323 North State Street, a converted rock house holds St. Basil the Great Orthodox Mission. I wanted to know how it got there.
The mission’s own history traces the idea to a 2007 visit to Custer County. Father Nicklas Aiello saw Weatherford’s university, regional traffic and mix of people as the right place to plant an Orthodox community where the Orthodox Church in America had no local presence.
The plan took time. Father Nicklas entered St. Tikhon’s Seminary, the family moved to Oklahoma in 2009, and St. Elijah Antiochian Orthodox Church in Oklahoma City helped provide a base while the mission was taking shape.
In the summer of 2011, the first chapel was a rented office in Weatherford. Icons went on the walls, a reader’s stand was built, a website went live and daily Matins and Vespers began. It was not grand. It was enough to start.
Father Nicklas was ordained to the priesthood in 2012. Early Divine Liturgies were served with help from visiting clergy. The Orthodox Church in America formally lists St. Basil as founded in 2013 within the Diocese of the South.
The community eventually acquired a rock house near Main Street and Southwestern Oklahoma State University. Volunteers remodeled it, and the mission moved in during October 2015. The building is modest, but that is part of the point: a permanent place for prayer was built out of what was available.
Today the OCA directory lists Saturday Vigil at 4:00 PM and Sunday Hours at 9:10 followed by Divine Liturgy at 9:30. Feast-day services change, so anyone planning a visit should check the mission’s current calendar first.
What interests me is not the growth language. It is the persistence. A visit in 2007 became a rented office, then a chapel, then a parish home serving western Oklahoma. Small things stayed small long enough to become real.
Related: Saint Basil the Great — The Bishop Who Would Not Bend
