Father Barnabas Powell, Rector
Father Barnabas was born in Nebraska and baptized a Lutheran as a baby. After a subsequently non-religious upbringing, he began exploring world religions as an adolescent. A stated desire for spiritual disciplines led a seventh-grade teacher to initially point him toward Islam. Taoism, with its ethos of harmony toward the world and our surroundings, was also attractive. But he became convinced after reading the Bible in eighth-grade (the Sermon on the Mount, in particular) that Jesus is the Son of God. An initial exploration of various forms of Christianity involved a look into his ancestral Lutheranism, but also Tridentine Roman Catholicism, Messianic Judaism and even Pentecostalism. His search ultimately focused on a quest for the original Church of the Book of Acts, which he hoped would also possess the spiritual disciplines and the ethos of connection between all things that had initially attracted him to non-Christian traditions. In discovering Orthodoxy, he found all that he sought. After being received into the Orthodox Church in high school, he earned a BA in History before attending St. Vladimir’s Seminary. There he met his wife, Elizabeth (Lela), who was raised in the Serbian Orthodox Church in Toronto. Father Barnabas was ordained to the priesthood in 2005, and initially served a parish in Colorado before being assigned to St. Katherine’s in 2011. He and Protinica Lela have three children. They all enjoy reading and hiking, and try to get outdoors into the beauty of God’s Creation whenever they can.

Deacon Athanasios
Deacon Athanasios was an Assemblies of God pastor before being baptized into the Orthodox Church in 2013 with his wife, Sarah Elizabeth, and their two children. His journey began in graduate school. While studying at Fuller Theological Seminary, he was first introduced to St. Athanasius’ text On the Incarnation. From there, his academic pursuits increasingly brought him into contact with Orthodox theology. After joining the church in 2013, he was tonsured a Reader in 2015, and a Subdeacon in 2017, all at St. Katherine’s.

The Most Blessed Tikhon, Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada
His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon, the primate of the Orthodox Church in America, was raised as an Episcopalian and converted to Orthodoxy at the age of 33. He entered a monastic community as a novice in 1990. He was elected Primate of the Orthodox Church in America in November 2012.

His Eminence Benjamin, Archbishop of San Francisco and the West
Archbishop Benjamin, our diocesan bishop, converted to the Orthodox faith at 18 years old. He served as a choirmaster and deacon for years before being ordained to the priesthood at 43. He was elected in 2007 to lead the Diocese of the West.