Our Church

The first Coptic Egyptian family to arrive in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was in 1968. Since then, more families arrived in Milwaukee as well as in Madison, Appleton, Fond De Lac, and also in other areas of Wisconsin. The number of families in the state of Wisconsin now exceeds sixty.

Since the arrival of the first few families in the late 1960s, the Copts longed for the services of their home Church. Early on, Coptic Egyptian priests used to come to Wisconsin from surrounding cities with larger Coptic communities in the U.S. and Canada to serve the Divine Liturgy. In the mid 1970s, the Chicago congregation had their own priest, and he started to come to Milwaukee on a semi-regular schedule to serve the Divine Liturgy and Holy Communion, baptize babies, perform wedding ceremonies, and all other services needed of him by the growing community. All of this took place at different rented church buildings in the area.

On December 22, 1988, after twenty years of yearning for a church building of their own, the Copts of Wisconsin bought their church in Waterford, Wisconsin. At that time, a second priest was serving the growing congregation in Chicago. The presence of two priests in the area facilitated servicing Wisconsin on a more regular schedule. Fr. Isaac Tanious, the priest from Chicago, attended to the services in Milwaukee on alternate weekends, while the priests serving other neighboring states such as Minneapolis and Indiana also visited to pray the Divine Liturgy in Milwaukee.

The Copts of Wisconsin were in need for a permanent priest. His Holiness Pope Shenouda III saw their desperation and their growing congregation. In 1993 he assigned Fr. Rewis H. Awadalla to come from Tanta, Egypt to serve the congregation in Wisconsin as a permanent priest.

Father Rewis’s fruitful services and prayers helped the Wisconsin congregation to look into purchasing a new church or piece of land to build a Coptic Orthodox Church according to the traditional style. Since the Waterford church building was getting to be small for the growing congregation, the search intensified and a lot was purchased in Oak Creek, Wisconsin where our church stands today.