Editor's Note: This story is part of our Faith in Action series of stories exploring faith-based and faith-inspired works, the people accomplishing them, and the connections with the community they are creating. The series is supported by the Fetzer Institute.

Headlines seem to be popping up everywhere with the same message: church attendance in the United States is in sharp decline. Over the past 25 years, as many as 40 million Americans who once warmed pews every Sunday are no longer attending church services. 

Children are a large part of church programming at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church.Depending on who one asks, the answers to the question of why the decline is happening vary. It has become a question not only about faith but perhaps also about more recent changes in a more polarized American society, as people have grown more intolerant of each other, and more distant in their relationships. 

Yet one church in the Kalamazoo community seems to be defying the odds and thriving at a time when other churches are closing their doors. The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, located at 507 South Westnedge in Kalamazoo, has been growing its numbers and seeing new visitors to services nearly every Sunday. In 2022, the church celebrated its 70th year in its current building — and had much to celebrate.

A history of many centuries

“We’ve seen big changes over the years,” Jeanne Doukas said. “I’ve been a member all my life, and I will be 97 this summer. My parents were immigrants from Greece, and when they came to Kalamazoo, this church began in a rented hall on Portage Street in the 1920s — that building is gone now.”

Doukas recalls a visiting priest who drove in from South Bend and gave services in the Greek language. Children of a small community of Greek immigrants gathered five days a week for lessons in the language and culture of their ancestors.

Altar boys Luca and Michael Doe during the service at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church. “That was after regular school,” Doukas said. “As our community grew, we raised money to build a bigger church. There were potluck fundraisers bake sales and even a raffle for a new Chevrolet car. Everyone chipped in.”

The Orthodox Church is a continuity of the faith, love, and teaching of Christ as given to the Apostles. The American Orthodox community has its roots in the 19th Century. For the Greek Americans, it has been a place of faith, as well as a place for nurturing their cultural identity. 

The term “orthodoxy” means "conforming to the Christian faith as represented in the creeds of the early Church."

The assimilation of nationalities and cultures

For Jeanne Doukas, the church was and is an integral part of her life, even as she now has difficulty attending in person — she still enjoys the online services the Church posts on its Facebook page. 

The glass doors leading into the sanctuary of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church. “In those early years, the Church tried to keep the Greek language and culture alive,” she says. “I was married in the Church; my daughter was baptized there. But over the years, there was intermarriage in the community as younger generations assimilated, and the congregation today is changing. My parents, too, quickly assimilated.”

“The Church is no longer focused only on the Greek community,” Sophia Quinn agrees. Quinn has served as Church board president since November 2009. “Initially, we had full- and part-time priests. For a number of years, we had only visiting priests. Our Church was a storefront. Father Theoharis Theoharis served our Church from 2010 to 2022, and he brought with him financial stability. He brought continuity.”

The current building on Westnedge Avenue became home to the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in 1952. The congregation was a tight-knit community, but the assimilation of younger generations beckoned for a change.

The liturgy was done in Greek, but as fewer members understood Greek, the services incorporated more English. The numbers of the Greek community in greater Kalamazoo were shrinking. About 20 years ago, Church elders realized they, too, may have to close their doors due to declining membership.  

“We studied books about how to help the Church grow,” Quinn says. “We worked with the Church in Detroit to discuss our future. We realized we needed a more formal process and developed a five-year strategic plan for our future.”

A new faith leader

Along with strategic plans, however, the Church was also in need of a miracle. And a miracle came — in the form of a new, full-time priest. Father Bryce Vasilios Buffenbarger, a native of Kalamazoo, who isn’t Greek and did not grow up in the Orthodox Church.

“I grew up Protestant. My family attended a Baptist church when I was young, and then started attending an evangelical church when I was in junior high,” Father Bryce says. “When I went to Cornerstone University to earn a degree in philosophy, I realized I needed to find my own church. My first college years, I tried different churches. Most often, I went to what we called house churches — groups gathering in different homes each week. We would pray together and have communion, no long sermons.”

Father Bryce, the priest of the church since September 2022. Father Bryce continued his studies for a master’s degree in philosophy at Western Michigan University.

“I didn’t know Orthodoxy growing up,” he says. “But I knew I wanted a church that was historically rooted. I tried different jobs in those years, but I finally realized that the priesthood was my calling.”

In 2009, Father Bryce became a member of the Orthodox church. He began seminary studies at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in 2013 and graduated with a Master’s in Divinity in 2017. He served as assistant to His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas of Detroit and was ordained to the diaconate by Metropolitan Nicholas in 2018 at Saints Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Westland, Michigan. His next assignment took him to Carmel, Indiana, where he was elevated to priesthood in 2020.

“When I served my first liturgy, it was strange to me how NOT strange it felt,” Father Bryce says. 

Altar boy Luca Doe.He was asked his preference for his next assignment in 2022, and the answer was clear — there was an Orthodox church in Kalamazoo that needed a full-time priest. Having traveled that long and wide circle, it was time for Father Bryce to come home. His Eminence assigned him to Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church on Westnedge Avenue, and he began to serve here in September 2022.

“Father Bryce visited our church many years ago, maybe eight or 10 years ago,” Sophia Quinn recalls. “We thought the world of him as a parishioner. We wished he would come back to us — and he did.”

Chanters Elias Kokkinos and Dr. Alice Doe. Kokkinos has chanted for Annunciation for over 35 years, an expat Greek/ Byzantine chanter. Alice has recently stepped up to learn the intricacies of Byzantine chant.It was a prayer answered. Almost right away, the decline in church membership made a turnaround. 

“A new priest is always a curiosity,” Father Bryce says with modesty. “We hope the numbers remain high.”

The numbers have remained high and continue to climb.  

The faith formula to thrive

“Right now, we have 35 families who have made a formal commitment to our church,” says Quinn. “On a rainy July Sunday, we counted 65 people — in the past, we saw around 20 to 25. Last Easter, we had 110 people here; we’ve never had that many!”
One has to ask — what’s different at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church? While many churches struggle to fill the pews, this church is thriving and expanding. 

“We see new visitors most Sundays,” Quinn says. “And pretty much all of them are people under age 30. We seem to be what they are looking for.”

A young member of the church, Amelia Ingalls stands during the service.Quinn says the reasons are several. The congregation has made a strategic effort to provide all visitors with a warm welcome. Everyone is greeted as they enter. Current members introduce themselves and engage in conversation to learn more about the visitors. 

“We have a parishioner sit beside them during the service to give some guidance,” she says.

“After the service, we invite them to come to our coffee hour, and we make sure they are not sitting alone there either. It’s a culture we have developed here over the past few years, to give a warm welcome to everyone. It’s a big responsibility I feel I have — I want this church here for my children, a place that brings people together and brings their different backgrounds together, too. Faith is very important to me.”

It is those many different backgrounds, different cultures, and languages, that are another draw for parishioners, new and old. 

Tessie and Elias Kokkinos, owners of Theo and Stacy’s on Westnedge before retirement, attend the after-service coffee hours. “Greek, but also Romanian, Coptic, Russian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian — we bring different cultures to this church,” Quinn says. “With all these nationalities, we went from Greek to English in our services, but we include as many as seven languages in our Lord’s Prayer. Father Bryce looks to see who is attending, he recognizes people, and then he includes their language in the Prayer.”

“Everyone who comes to our church comes for a different reason,” Father Bryce says. “Usually, people are coming from a different church. They are looking for historical tradition, something stable, a robust spiritual practice that is not just going to church on Sunday. I believe a huge part of the decline in church attendance has been that you don’t have to be a Christian to attend, but people are still seeking faith.”

All members of one story

Laura Patrick, a Portage resident but a native of Minnesota, joined the Church in 2016. Today, she is a church school director. 

Laura Patrick, a Portage resident, joined the church in 2016.“When I first moved here, I went to a parish in Grand Rapids, but that was a long drive, especially in winter,” she says. “When I looked for a church in Kalamazoo, I found this one. So many churches seem to be ethnically closed off. My ancestors were Ukrainian immigrants. I was delightfully surprised by the welcome I received when I first came to this church. People said hello, they asked questions, they showed a personal interest in me.”

Patrick oversees the school with classes for three age groups — pre-K to 1st grade. The children are dismissed after communion to attend school, and Patrick enjoys seeing the fellowship the children develop, not only in class but also on field trips and other special projects they undertake. It is a building of a faith-based community for future generations.

A look at the sweet treats offered during the coffee hour and the Annual Greek Bake Sale and Lunch.“That’s why this church is doing so well,” Patrick says. “It is the fellowship we have here. We are a living, breathing church, fostering faith and community.”

Other draws for the community are the annual Greek Bake Sale and Lunch, held every June. Attendees bring their appetites from across the community. Gyros, spinach and cheese pitas, baklava, galaktoboureko (custard baked in phyllo shell), kourambiethes (powdered sugar cookies), melomakarona (honey-dipped cookies), koulourakia (butter-based cookies), and more whet appetites and raise funds. 
Delicious baked delicacies may introduce community members to the church, but it is the welcome of church parishioners that keeps them coming as their hearts long for deepening faith and a sense of meaning. 

“The world isn’t always about love and peace,” Father Bryce says. “But we hope people that come to this church will find it here. We’re not trying to impress you with big screens and music; we aren’t here to dazzle. We offer truth, hope, and love. The role of faith is to remind us that we are not the main character in this world. And it is a good thing we are not — but we are all a part of the story.”