Diocese: Diocese of the West
Deanery: Missionary District
Address
14001 SE 1st St, Ste. 220
Vancouver, WA 98684-3513
USA
Email:
Website: blagovest.faith
Parish Contacts
Schedule of Services
6:00 Catechism; 7:00 PM Great Vespers followed by Confessions.
Saturday Evening
9:30 AM Hours; 10:00 AM Divine Liturgy followed by lunch and fellowship.
Sunday Morning
Parish Background
Saint Matthew The Evangelist Mission was created by His Eminence Archbishop Benjamin, then Archbishop of San Francisco and the West. He wanted to create a mission which would serve Russian-speaking diaspora of the Portland metro area.
We conducted monthly services in Russian at the Church of the Annunciation in Milwaukie, OR from May of 2023 until June of 2025, when His Eminence created St. Matthew The Evangelist Mission and we received the blessing to move to Vancouver, WA, which is just across the Columbia river from Portland. The new place is more centrally located in relation to the Slavic population of the Portland metro area.
We rent a classroom from a homeschool resource center, where we set up the whole worship space on Saturday and take it down on Sunday. It is a lot of work to start a brand new mission with limited resouces, but benefits abound. We have a small, closely knit community of people who find it very rewarding to attend services where they can, in the words of the apostle Paul, “...pray with the spirit, and ... also pray with the understanding.”
The vision of St. Matthew The Evangelist Mission is to bring Orthodoxy closer to Russian speakers geographically and culturally. Currently, all services in the mission are conducted in modern Russian. This not only opens the beauty of Orthodoxy to those outside of the Church, for whom Slavonic is a foreign language, but also sanctifies the spoken language, bringing Church services and prayer closer to people’s hearts. It helps Christians to live a fuller life in Christ.
Our mission is not a closed ethnic clique; we welcome people of any nationality and background. Everyone is welcome to come, see, and stay.