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HILLSBORO – As Christians across the Eastern Shore prepare to celebrate Christmas, St. Thekla Orthodox Church is celebrating almost a full year since they found their church home. After more than a decade of worshiping in borrowed spaces, the growing Orthodox community purchased the old St. Paul’s Episcopalian Church in Hillsboro, and in doing so, “brought life back into this beautiful edifice after a 50-year hiatus,” said Diane Pappas, an involved member of St. Thekla.
St. Thekla traces its beginnings to the fall of 2014, when a small group of Eastern Orthodox Christians recognized a need for an organized Orthodox presence on the Mid-Shore. What started with a newspaper ad and a meeting in a classroom at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Easton quickly became something more. With guidance from Archpriest Boniface Black, who is an experienced mission pastor with the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese, they were able to hold their first Divine Liturgy on December 3, 2014, with 33 people in attendance.
For the first several years, Divine Liturgy was held monthly, first at St. Mark’s, then in a meeting room at a local hotel. They often had to hold the worship service on weekdays due to space limitations. In 2020, the church found a temporary home at Talbot Evangelistic Church in Trappe, where the parish was able to meet weekly.
The parish was formally named St. Thekla Orthodox Christian Church in 2021. Membership continued to expand, drawing parishioners from across the Eastern Shore, from Cambridge to Chestertown and from Tilghman Island to Georgetown, Delaware. On January 31, 2025, the parish officially held the keys to the former St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and the adjacent retreat house in Hillsboro.
St. Paul’s, a Carpenter Gothic-style church, was consecrated in 1858. The building had sat unused for many years before St. Thekla came along. After completing the necessary repairs and renovations, more than 100 parishioners, family members, and visitors gathered for the first Divine Liturgy in the restored sanctuary last May.
