San Francisco, September 16, 2026
A surge of Orthodox Christian missions across the American Southwest in the last several years has prompted the Western American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) to establish a new deanery serving Arizona and New Mexico.
His Eminence, Archbishop Kyrill of San Francisco and Western America has appointed Archpriest John A. Peck as the new deanery’s first Dean, giving the rapidly growing region greater local pastoral coordination and a stronger foundation for continued missionary expansion.
Now, unprecedented missionary activity in Arizona and New Mexico has created the need for another.
For years, parishes and missions in Arizona and New Mexico belonged to the Diocese’s enormous Southern Deanery, which stretches from Hawaii to Seattle and Southern California across the desert Southwest. The creation of a dedicated deanery recognizes how dramatically Orthodox life in the region has expanded—and positions its clergy, parishes, and missions for the next stage of growth.
ROCOR’s governing regulations provide for the creation of deaneries to strengthen pastoral oversight across large geographic territories. The Dean serves as the diocesan bishop’s representative in the region, strengthening communication among clergy, encouraging cooperation between parishes, supporting missionary activity, and maintaining a close connection between local communities and the diocesan hierarchy.
In Arizona and New Mexico, that mission has taken on new urgency as established parishes grow, missions take root, and increasing numbers of people encounter the Orthodox Christian faith.
Archpriest John A. Peck Appointed First Dean
Archbishop Kyrill has entrusted the leadership of the new deanery to Archpriest John A. Peck, rector of All Saints of North America Orthodox Church in Sun City, Arizona.
Fr. Peck has spent decades working in Orthodox mission, evangelism, education, and digital media outreach. He founded All Saints of North America as a mission in 2017, and has shepherded its development into one of the Diocese’s fastest-growing parish communities.
He also serves as Dean of the Great Martyr Euphemia Orthodox Theological Academy and founded several widely known Orthodox missionary and vocational ministries, including Journey to Orthodoxy, Preachers Institute, and Good Guys Wear Black, which assists men discerning vocations to the Orthodox priesthood and diaconate. He is also an Amazon #1 best-selling author on Orthodox Bible reading and interpretation.
The establishment of this new Deanery bears witness to the years of sacrifice, perseverance, and burning faith of the Orthodox clergy and faithful of the Southwestern United States. What has been planted with faith and prayer, and watered by patient labor, is now bearing fruit. Yet this is not an end, but the bright beginning.
We look ahead with a clear vision of Christ—to fulfill His Great Commission, proclaim His Gospel boldly, and hand on the ancient Apostolic Faith, whole and undiminished, to a generation searching for a Church capable of sustaining a moral tradition and transmitting it faithfully to generations yet to come. May we be found worthy of the work God has placed before us.
— Archpriest John A. Peck
Missions Multiply Across Arizona and New Mexico
In 2016, there was one ROCOR parish in Arizona: Holy Archangels in Phoenix. The new deanery brings together a growing network of Orthodox parishes and missions across the two states, including:
● All Saints of North America Orthodox Church — Sun City, Arizona
● Christ the Savior Orthodox Church — Youngtown, Arizona
● Holy Archangels Orthodox Church — Phoenix, Arizona
● Kursk Root Icon of the Theotokos Orthodox Church — Tucson, Arizona
● Saint Photios the Great Orthodox Mission — Florence, Arizona
● St. Brendan the Voyager Orthodox Mission — Bullhead City, Arizona
● St. Gregory Palamas Orthodox Mission — Sedona, Arizona
● St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church — Show Low, Arizona
● St. Joseph of Arimathea Orthodox Mission — Clovis, New Mexico
● St. Juliana Orthodox Church — Santa Fe, New Mexico
● Additional emerging mission communities throughout Arizona and New Mexico
The numbers tell only part of the story.
At Fr. Peck’s own parish, All Saints of North America has significantly grown in size each year since 2018 and now numbers more than 180 parishioners. Dozens of inquirers, catechumens, and visitors continue to arrive as the parish works to accommodate sustained growth.
The region has also become increasingly active in training clergy, developing liturgical life, and bringing Orthodox Christians together across parish boundaries.
All Saints of North America Church hosted mission conferences in the spring of 2019, 2020, and 2021 and, beginning in 2023 hosted an Inaugural Liturgical Practicum dedicated to the training and formation of Orthodox clergy which continues annually here in Phoenix.
Building on years of this missionary work, in February 2026, clergy, choir directors, and singers from across the Diocese gathered at Christ the Savior Orthodox Church in Youngtown for the inaugural Southwest Choral Symposium, strengthening liturgical music and providing practical resources for smaller and developing communities.
The creation of the new deanery now gives these efforts a permanent regional structure — one capable of supporting existing parishes while helping new missions move from possibility to reality.
Part of a Much Larger Story
The growth in Arizona and New Mexico does not stand alone.
The entire Western American Diocese is experiencing renewed missionary activity.
Across the Diocese’s immense territory, parishes are receiving new members, missions are developing into stable worshiping communities, and clergy and lay missionaries are bringing Orthodox Christianity to places where no local ROCOR presence previously existed.
Arizona and New Mexico have become one of the most dynamic fronts of that expansion.
Orthodox families continue to relocate to the Southwest, while growing numbers of converts are discovering the ancient Christian faith and seeking the sacramental life, theological depth, ascetic tradition, and historic worship of the Orthodox Church.
The result is not simply larger congregations. It is the formation of new Orthodox communities.
His Eminence Archbishop Kyrill has emphasized the essential relationship between sound ecclesiastical order and the missionary work of the Church. Reflecting upon the episcopal ministry of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, he wrote: “St. John knew and understood that without a fatherly guiding hand of discipline in diocesan affairs, chaos would rule and the mission of the Church would falter.”
The establishment of the new deanery gives concrete expression to this principle, providing the pastoral structure necessary to strengthen existing parishes and missions and to carry the Orthodox Faith into the growing communities of the Southwest.
The new deanery will help those communities work together more effectively. Clergy will be able to coordinate missionary efforts, strengthen developing missions, share resources, organize regional youth and educational events, expand clergy training, and respond more quickly to opportunities for establishing the Church in new areas.
Most importantly, the new structure will help maintain close pastoral ties between the region’s rapidly multiplying communities and Archbishop Kyrill as the missionary work of the Diocese continues.
The establishment of the new deanery therefore represents much more than a change on an organizational chart.
It marks a new chapter in the Orthodox mission to the American Southwest.
Fourteen years after the Western American Diocese last created a new deanery (Deanery of Mexico), the growth of Orthodox Christianity in Arizona and New Mexico has made another one necessary — and the Diocese is preparing not simply to manage that growth, but to build upon it.
About the Western American Diocese
The Western American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia is headquartered at the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin “Joy of All Who Sorrow” in San Francisco and is under the omophorion of His Eminence Archbishop Kyrill of San Francisco and Western America.
The Diocese encompasses parishes, monasteries, and missions across a vast portion of the western United States and Mexico, including California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Mexico.
With the establishment of the new Southwestern Deanery, the Diocese now comprises five deaneries: the San Francisco Deanery, Northern Deanery, Southern Deanery, Deanery of Mexico, and Southwestern Deanery serving Arizona and New Mexico.
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