Thieves Target Bixby Church, Take Relic Members Consider ‘Priceless’

Members of an Egyptian Orthodox Church in Bixby are upset after they said someone took thousands of dollars’ worth of video and TV equipment they use for worship.

"They tried to break in one door, and they couldn't, so they broke a window in my office, and they got in from the window," said Father Silas Andrew.

It's not what members of the church expected to find when they walked in on Thanksgiving Day.

"I had a computer that was taken, printer was taken, a big bag of new tools worth a lot of money, I had it in my office it was taken," said Andrew.

Andrew said thieves also took a TV, an iPad, and their sound system, but he isn’t too worried about the electronics or other expensive equipment. He’s upset that the thieves got away with a holy relic, something he said is priceless.

"This one we cannot replace, it's very important to us and if he opens it or if he breaks it, he's not going to find anything valuable at all, to him, but it's valuable for us," said Andrew.

The priest said he doesn't know who stole all the items from the church. The only lead is a mysterious video that popped up on their Facebook page a day before they knew anything about the burglary.

"Wednesday night, I checked our church website, our Facebook and I found this like one minute taped, and it seems like not in the church, in someone's house," Andrew said.

He said it didn’t make sense at the time, but when he realized the camera that they use to stream services to Facebook was taken too, it all made sense.

"Maybe the one who took the camera tried to turn it on in his house and it taped like one minute, but unfortunately there is no faces, it's just what you just saw," Andrew said.

Father Andrew hopes they can find out who stole from the church if only to get back their cherished relic.

Members of the church have set up a GoFundMe to raise money to replace the stolen items and buy a security system.