The second of four children, Bishop Nikodhim (Preston) was born in 1979 in northern Idaho, where most of his family still lives. Graduating from high school early, he enrolled for two years in the music program of the local community college before transferring to the University of Idaho at the age of eighteen. There he studied music theory and composition, adding a second major of classical languages, Latin and Greek. Receiving his bachelor degree in 2002, he moved eastward to pursue formal graduate studies in religion at the University of Chicago. Deferring doctoral studies and desiring a deeper understanding of the particular and living history, theology, and traditions of Eastern Christianity, he departed Chicago with a master’s degree in 2004, and enrolled at Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary [SVOTS].
Upon graduation from SVOTS, he began to work at a different sort of community, a homeless shelter for young people in downtown Newark, New Jersey. He remained there for the next three years, commuting to Queens at every opportunity to serve and sing and teach at St. Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Church while all his working hours were devoted to his clients and to helping them forge some place back in society.
He was ordained a deacon at Saint Nicholas in 2009. A year later almost to the day, he was ordained a priest. Half of his year of diaconate was without a pastor, and he spent those six months trying as best he was able to serve the needs of the community, shuttling back and forth between his work at the shelter and the homebound and the needy and the sick of Saint Nicholas. Upon his ordination to the priesthood, he was named rector of Saint Nicholas Church.
In 2017, in obedience to the wishes of His Eminence Archbishop Nikon, he was made a monk and given the honor to bear the name of the neomartyr Nikodhim of Vithkuq.
In the years of his pastorate, he was also called to serve the national Church from 2015 to 2019 in the then Department of Pastoral Life, reviving its ministry to the pastors and clergy families of the Orthodox Church in America. He led retreats, researched and presented papers for the use of the Holy Synod, secured grants, and implemented programs which had (and continue to have) as their aim the help and strengthening of those who serve the Church in professional ministry and the well-being of their families. He is a founding board member of the Thriving in Ministry program and continues in that role. Additionally, he was a volunteer chaplain at the New York City Metropolitan Detention Center from 2013 until his move to South Boston in 2023.
In the spring of 2021, he was asked to assist his home diocese by assuming administrative responsibilities as its interim chancellor, and in the fall of 2022 was nominated by the archdiocesan assembly to the Holy Synod to be the next ruling bishop of the Albanian Archdiocese. Elected at their fall session that year, Archimadrite Nikodhim was consecrated a bishop on September 16, 2023, and installed as the ruling bishop of the archdiocese, at the historic Saint George Albanian Orthodox Cathedral in South Boston, MA.