Our Paradise in Beltsville
We Invite You
to share our vision,
and advance our mission
Background: Our parish was founded in 2001 with the purpose of bringing the Gospel and Divine Services of the Russian Orthodox Church to the people of America in the English language. We are part of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, under the protection of Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America and New York.
We began our parish life in a little house in the woods, our paradise at the beginning. A year later, we moved to our present location, a 1200 square foot rented office park space.
The Chapel and Campus: Through a providential gift in June of 2009, Holy Apostles Orthodox Church became the steward of an historic chapel in Beltsville, Maryland. Situated on two acres of beautiful grounds, in the midst of a parcel of land where President Grant once walked, the chapel is on the National Historic Register. This is our future parish home, which we hope to grow into a divine oasis and spiritual haven for the salvation of many.
The Financial Side: We commissioned an in-depth study of the chapel by an historic restoration consultant, who projected the cost of restoration and renovation of the chapel to be approximately $1,000,000. (This does not include the interior beautification of the chapel.) Since the study, we have made significant progress, securing five grants from the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission Historic Preservation Program, totaling about $250,000 towards the chapel restoration.
In addition, our parishioners have put much hard work into the chapel since 2009. Before it was gifted to us, it had fallen into a state of disrepair, having been boarded up for about 50 years. Gift has been added to gift, and God’s providence has continued to bless our efforts. Now to we are ready to take the next step.
To enable the move to the historic chapel, our plan calls for building a new parish hall on the chapel campus, where we will hold the divine services while we continue to work on the restoration of the chapel. By building the parish hall and vacating our office park space, we will be able to apply that monthly rent amount to our building fund. In addition to the chapel restoration, the cost of building the parish hall is estimated to be approximately $1,000,000.
The Architect: We have secured the architectural design services of Andrew Gould, one of the leading Orthodox Christian architects in America. We have raised the $50,000 necessary to pay his design fees and those of a local architect of record. Having reached this initial goal, we have launched our Capital Campaign to build the parish hall.
Through God’s grace, the history of America is being grafted onto the tree of Orthodoxy in Beltsville, Maryland. It is our heartfelt prayer to be able to build on this foundation that the Lord has laid for us, and to one day see the dedication of the newly restored historic chapel, as Holy Apostles Orthodox Church. We invite you to join us in fulfilling this vision, our paradise in Beltsville.
View these videos to see the early steps of faith we took in restoring the historic St. Joseph Chapel and preparing to move to our new campus, our gift from God!
Here is a special album of photos from our Cross Procession:
http://marinacavanaugh.com/Photography/HolyApostlesCrossProcession
Help us build our new Parish Hall,
and move to our historic Chapel Campus!
(Want to contribute to our General Fund?
Please scroll down ~ Thank you!)
From 'St John of Shanghai and San Francisco, Zealous Builder of Churches'
Everywhere he went he either oversaw the building of churches or supported the same with his attention and prayers... He wrote about the godly work of building churches:
"In building churches here on earth, we create for ourselves eternal habitations in heaven."
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Since 2009 we have been restoring our beautiful chapel, gifted to our parish that year by the Christian Brothers. We have received and administered grants of approximately $350,000 so far, and continue to apply for the grants as they become available.
