Fr. Matthew Swehla, Proistamenos
Father Matthew was born in Modesto, California. He grew up attending the Lutheran church, until his father, formerly a Lutheran pastor, became disillusioned by the direction of the national church and left the ministry. A few years later his family visited the Orthodox cathedral of St. John Maximovich in San Francisco—on a whim because of a Russian exchange student they were hosting—and began their journey to Orthodoxy. Father Matthew entered the Church, along with his immediate family, when he was 15 years old.
As a young college graduate, Fr. Matthew attended an Orthodox College Conference at St. Nicholas Ranch, where he renewed his acquaintance with, Annie Nieuwsma. The two knew right away that they were meant to be together and married in 2003.
After working in several professions—in journalism, restaurant fine dining, and commercial real estate development—Father Matthew was called to the priesthood. He entered Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in 2009, along with Presvytera Annie and their first three children. He received his M.Div. degree in May 2013. Fr. Matthew’s first parish assignment was St. John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was ordained to the Holy Priesthood on September 8, 2013 and served for four years as the second priest.
In 2017, Father Matthew was assigned as the proistamenos (presiding priest) of St. John the Baptist in Beaverton.
Father Matthew and Presvytera Annie have eight children: Dimas (married to Jessica), Débora (married to Nathaniel), Thomas, Peter, Nicholas, Joseph, Maria, and John.
Dcn. Innocent Duchow-Pressley, Deacon
Deacon Innocent was born and raised in Southern California with his younger sister and brother. He began attending various Protestant churches when he was young, mostly through the influence and help of neighbors and friends.
He moved to Cottage Grove, Oregon for high school. After attending church with friends for a while, at the age of sixteen, he made his own decision to live for Jesus Christ. Deacon Innocent attended college at Lewis and Clark in Portland, Oregon, where he earned his degree in Chemistry. He then attended graduate school at both Lewis and Clark and Portland State University, where he received his teacher’s license and began teaching high school science. While in college, he met his future wife Sandy Duchow. They were married in 1987 in a small chapel in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Deacon Innocent remains a full-time high school science teacher, while Sandy is a neonatal intensive care nurse.
Both Deacon Innocent and Sandy attended various Protestant churches for the next decade, but never felt satisfied with their spiritual experience or the spiritual foundations of any of the churches they attended. With their son, Teddy (born in 1995), they began to look into the Orthodox Church. They were all received in the Orthodox Church in 1999. They had their second son, Samuel later that same year. Deacon Innocent was ordained to the Holy Diaconate on the Third Sunday of Lent, the Sunday of the Veneration of the Holy Cross, in 2004.
In addition to his duties as a deacon, Deacon Innocent has been active at St. John in both Youth Ministry and in the area of Missions and Evangelism.
Ioan Gheorghiu, Director of Youth & Family Ministries
Ioan was born in Los Angeles, CA to Romanian immigrants. He grew up going to St. Katherine GOC in Redondo Beach and spent much of his middle and high school years backpacking, rock climbing, and surfing. Early on, he began searching for answers to deep existential questions, which led him to study cultural anthropology at UC Santa Cruz. During his second year, through the influence of the priest and parishioners of Prophet Elias GOC, he discovered The Hidden Man of the Heart: The Cultivation of the Heart in Orthodox Christian Anthropology by Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou, finding answers to questions he had been posing in his secular studies. Soon after, he transferred to Hellenic College in Brookline, MA and after graduating in 2020 with a B.A. in religious studies, he continued on to Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology for seminary. There, he worked in the library and as the ecclesiarch. During covid, he translated a book by Fr. Sofian Boghiu–a contemporary Romanian elder who had been in the communist prisons–an excerpt of which was published in the Orthodox Word. His parents have also done much to publicize Mother Siluana Vlad’s teachings on healing and forgiveness through the book God, Where is the Wound? by Sebastian Press. After graduating in 2023 with an M.Div. degree and traveling to the Holy Land, Constantinople, and Greece, he began work at St. John’s.
