Church in the News!

Church comes home
Altar, gleaming icons mean temple is ready for anointing
BY CHELSEA KELLNER -ckellner@newsobserver.com RALEIGH

As Laurie Hooten walked through the temple doors, she jumped up and down and clapped her hands. "Oh, it's beautiful!" she exclaimed.

Photos by Chuck Liddy - CLiddy@newsboserver.com

Ahead, a team of men was carefully gluing a tall golden icon of the Virgin Mary to the ornate wooden wall surrounding the sanctuary. Two more icons already gleamed to its right, paintings copied from antiquity of Jesus and the icon of All Saints.
 
"There really is a God, there really is Jesus, there really are all those people in heaven, and now we can walk in and see reminders of that," Hooten said.

After years of waiting, All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church finally has a permanent home. Last Wednesday, workers rushed to finish the altar and iconostasis in time for the building's consecration Nov. 9.

"It's a coming-of-age," Father Nicholas Sorensen said. "The church will finally be consecrated, a holy, permanent structure for people to worship. We've got that sense of completion."

On Nov. 9, a bishop will anoint the building with oil and holy water in a long service, marking the building as a temple, not to be used for any other purpose from that day forward.

Photos by Chuck Liddy - CLiddy@newsboserver.com

A consecration is rare, a once-in-a-lifetime event for most priests and parishioners. Then again, this is a temple more than a decade in the making.

Before its location on Buck Jones Road, All Saints was a "port-a-church," says founding member Tony Brancaccio.

Founded in 1992 with about 30 members, the parish rented the Page-Walker Arts and History Center in Cary for services, or the Boys Club in Raleigh, or reserved a park community center.

After buying their current property, parishioners attended services in a building intended to become the parish hall. Attendance ballooned to about 400 members and that space got crowded, with standing room only at some services. The altar was a table covered by cloths, and the icons were small printed reproductions.

All Saints tried twice before to begin its main building, but found it unaffordable. The new structure cost about $1.6 million, saved during the decades by a careful congregation. It has high ceilings and gold domes and plenty of room to grow.

"We think of it as home and as an extension of our home," parishioner John Cook said. "Nothing makes it better than to have room for a bigger family and more people to love."

Services have been held in the new building for the past year. But to be consecrated, the altar needed to be permanent and the iconostasis - the wall of icons leading to the sanctuary where the altar stands - had to be complete.

Icons are an important part of Orthodox worship, Sorensen said. Each is a portrait of Jesus, Mary, an apostle or a saint painstakingly reproduced by hand with careful adherence to the ancient originals. Sorensen stresses that the icons themselves are not worshipped, but that they serve as a representation and reminder of those revered by the parish.

Very little has changed about the Orthodox service or the church structure itself since the first century, Sorensen said. The idea is for the church to provide stability in rapidly changing times. That means that particular icons are required for the new sanctuary, with a particular placement. An icon of Jesus stands to the right of the doors to the hand-made wooden altar, the Virgin Mary to the left. They are flanked by John the Baptist, the All Saints icon and two angels. The other positions are up to the individual parish. Here, parishioners chose to place St. Nicholas in one of those spots, in honor of Sorensen.

Last Wednesday, the iconostasis was complete. Parishioners rushed to finish the altar.

"If you go 20 years back, we could only dream of this," Brancaccio said. "For me, this is living a dream."

In another 20 years, the scent of the incense will have worked its way into the ductwork. Jesus and Mary will still hold their arms out to the world from the wall behind the sanctuary.

And, parishioners hope, the temple will continue to be an oasis of stability in a volatile world.

"I leave the world behind when I come in here," Brancaccio said. "The world stays outside, and I'm at peace."

Kellner: 919-829-4802

Minor correction, the Consecration service will be 6 November not 9 November. LOL!

One thing I asked of the Lord,
   that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord
   all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
   and to inquire in his temple. Psalm 27:4

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner!

Relevant Reading
All Saints Orthodox Church Consecration Service & Event Information