By Linda Taaffe

Last week’s destructive three-alarm fire is not the first time members of the Antiochian Orthodox Church of the Redeemer in unincorporated Los Altos have banded together without the shelter of church walls to overcome an obstacle.

The church began in 1961 with a group of Episcopalians who held church services at a member’s Palo Alto home until the group could find its own place to worship.

And when the congregation outgrew its chapel in 1985, the parishioners simply enclosed the church patio with plastic sheets and held services outside until they had sold enough spinach pies, falafel, hummus and other traditional foods from their homelands to build the bigger, 6,000-square-foot church that an arsonist burned down last week, according to fire investigators. The fire gutted the church April 7, causing an estimated $1 million in damages.

Through their annual food festival, church members were able to pay the church’s mortgage within 15 years.

Church members continued the fall food festival with plans to add a new church hall.

The Antiochian congregation is a mixed parish including immigrants from Turkey, Albania, Romania and Greece.

The church bought the land near Interstate 280 in the 1960s when the freeway was under construction.

Because of a disagreement over changes in the Episcopalian doctrine, the congregation had split from the Episcopalian church by the time the chapel was complete.

The chapel opened as a member of the Antiochian Orthodox Church founded in Damascus, Syria.

Its location and affiliation began attracting large numbers of Bay Area immigrants from the Middle East. The church later switched the liturgy to Eastern Orthodox in order to better serve its new Middle Eastern members.