Our Mission

We are a community of Orthodox Christians from all over the Detroit area committed to serving Christ through service to the needy in our city (Mt 25.14).

Our goals are simply to love God and love others (Mt 22.37-40). Recognizing the image of God in every person (Gn 1.27), we will always strive to serve with humilty, compassion, patience, and above all, love (1Co 13).

Our purpose is to extend the Church beyond the confines of the parish and bring it into the local community. We will do this by bringing Detroit-area Orthodox Christians together to perform the work to which Christ called his Church: to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, to look after the sick and visit the incarcerated, to welcome the stranger, to give everything we have for the benefit of those in need. 

Orthodox Detroit Outreach will strive first and foremost to fulfill the Gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ, being faithful to the Apostolic teachings and Living Tradition of the Orthodox Christian Church. We seek to be known by the fruits of our ministry.

We will actively and in an ongoing manner strive to assess the needs of those in Southwest Detroit, providing through various ministrations towards the material sustenance and spiritual aid to those in need.

We will serve the churches of our area by providing both local and coordinated ministries aiding those in need, and offering an educational and experiential resource as requested.

Our Neighborhood

The location where we serve in SouthWest Detroit has been the site of an Orthodox Church since 1907, the oldest Orthodox church in the state of Michigan - Saints Peter & Paul parish. The parish is one of the very few remaining Orthodox churches in the city of Detroit. Many of the previously active Orthodox churches have since relocated to the suburbs.

Detroit has suffered from disinvestment and population loss since the 1960’s, culminating in the largest municipal bankruptcy ever in the U.S. and a population drop from 2 million to less than 700,000 today.

Saints Peter & Paul, although struggling with the same issues as the city, has remained open for 110 years. It has graciously allowed ODO to serve in it’s community center since 2011.  

We serve here because we are needed here. We serve with an Orthodox ethos at an Orthodox parish in an ethnically diverse, challenging, and impoverished neighborhood. God has called us here and we have built relationships here with the neighbors, serving all as Christ has commanded us.