OCMC Mission Team Kenya 2009 (video 2)

OCMC Mission Team Kenya 2009

The Completion of the Archbishop Anastasios and Archbishop Demetrios Missionary Training and Administration Building

St. Augustine, FL - On April 13, 2009 the staff of the Orthodox Christian Mission Center began working in the Archbishop Anastasios and Archbishop Demetrios Missionary Training and Administration Building. The opening of this facility marks a new era in North American Orthodoxy’s mission movement. The building will prove to be a vital resource of the Church as more Orthodox Christians answer their call to share the Faith with people around the world through participation in the ministries of the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC).
This is the first permanent facility of an agency of the Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA); it will serve as an international missions headquarters for North America’s estimated 1.5 million Orthodox Christians.

Formal dedication ceremonies will be held on May 21, 2009. Both His Beatitude Anastasios, Archbishop of Tirana, Durrës and All Albania, and His Eminence Demetrios, Archbishop and Primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and Chairman of SCOBA, together with other hierarchs of SCOBA, will be at the dedication to celebrate this historical moment in Orthodox missions and to lead the gathered faithful in praying for the continuation of this vital work of the Church.

OCMC currently has 12 long-term Missionaries serving in three countries; and is in the process of deploying 6 more Missionaries this year. In 2009, OCMC will also send nearly 100 volunteers on 11 short-term Mission Teams that will serve in 8 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Central America, and North America. The OCMC is committed to training and equipping these individuals and has developed intensive training programs for long-term Missionary Candidates and Mission Team Members. With an interactive learning center, a training room, and seven dormitories, over half of the building's 12,000 square feet are dedicated to training these mission workers. Commenting on the completion of this facility, OCMC's Executive Director Fr. Martin Ritsi stated, "The new Mission Center was designed for the needs of today, with a vision for the needs of tomorrow."

In response to Christ's final command to "make disciples of all nations," the OCMC is dedicated to helping the Church realize its missionary vision. In addition to sending Missionaries and Mission Team volunteers, the OCMC subsidizes the salaries of over 350 indigenous clergy in 18 mission countries. It helps train new church leaders by supporting seven seminaries around the world, and it funds numerous ministry and philanthropic projects of the Church abroad. In the new state-of-the-art Missionary Training and Administration Building, these programs will be able to work toward sharing the Gospel of Christ in more areas around the world in the years to come.

The ground for this new facility was broken in 2006, and its completion is the culmination of decades of growing prayer and support for missions among the various canonical Orthodox Churches of the Americas. The new building stands as a tribute to the many people who made its construction possible, and it reflects the Orthodox Church's growing commitment to missions.
The Orthodox Christian Mission Center is the official mission agency of the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA). It is dedicated to proclaiming the fullness of the Orthodox faith in response to Christ’s last commandment to make disciples of all nations. For more information on OCMC and the May 21 Dedication go to www.ocmc.org.

New Candidate Orientation Prepares Five Future Missionaries

St. Augustine, FL - Last week five future Missionaries and an observer joined the staff of OCMC for six days of intensive training. This New Candidate Orientation (NCO) featured classes that covered a broad range of subjects from enculturation and contextualization of the Gospel, to evangelism, team skills, budgeting and communications workshops. The NCO is just one phase of OCMC's new intensive missionary training program aimed at preparing missionary candidates for raising support and ministering to a culture different from their own. The candidates will return to the OCMC Home Office once more to complete their preparation by attending Pre-Field Training immediately before departure.

Each of the missionary candidates is planning to serve in Tanzania where, under the direction of His Eminence Jeronymos, the Church and its outreach ministries are growing at an astounding rate. Once deployed, these Missionaries will be providing assistance in nursing, public health education, text translation, communication, sewing programs, and diocesan administration. Each of these ministries is vital to the Church's efforts to share Christ with the Tanzanian people.

The candidates are now in the process of raising support for their missionary service. If you would like more information about James Hargrave, Michael Pagedas, Charita Stavrou, Felice Stewart, or Katie Wilcoxson, please visit http://www.ocmc.org/missionaries/missionaries.aspx. We encourage the Orthodox faithful and parishes everywhere to be generous in both their prayer and financial support for these missionaries who will be serving as living witnesses to the Orthodox faith in Tanzania. More missionaries are needed in other parts of the world. Contact the Missionary Department for more information at missionaries@ocmc.org.

Volunteer Needed at OCMC

The Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC), located in St. Augustine, Florida, is seeking 5 volunteers to join their Thank You Calling Team. Individuals on this team commit to calling a monthly list of OCMC donors and thanking them for their gifts on behalf of OCMC. Solicitation is not a part of this program. Training and orientation will be provided, and calls can be made from the OCMC offices or from home if the volunteer has unlimited calling. The time commitment is 3-4 hours per month. To find out more information, or to volunteer to become a part of this team, contact Kenneth Kidd, Annual Gifts Officer, at 877-GO-FORTH or at kenny@ocmc.org.

Debra Hile: Short-term Mission Team Member to Romania

Debra Hile, an Orthodox convert and a member of the Protection of the Holy Mother of God Orthodox Church in Falls Church, Virginia, is always willing to meet a need at church. When I am in the Washington, DC, area, I often visit Debra’s church, and I have seen her sweeping the floor and cleaning the icons before joining the other chanters for Wednesday night Vespers. She also teaches a Sunday school class and is active in various women’s groups.

Recently Debra saw a need beyond her local church; she volunteered for an Orthodox Christian Mission Center Team. And when the OCMC assigned her to a Team going to Romania, she noted, “In many ways that seems so appropriate now that I am in a church under the Romanian Episcopate!”

It was not the first time Debra had participated in overseas missionary endeavors. “When I was an Episcopalian I used to go on mission trips,” she said, “but this was my first trip since becoming Orthodox. I waited two years to at least begin to understand and live Orthodoxy before going.”
And her understanding of her Orthodox faith grew deeper during the mission trip—an unexpected blessing. “I learned so much about what it means to be Orthodox by being present in a country where it is such a part of life,” she said. “It was a great joy to be in a country that is about 85 percent Orthodox. Being relatively new to Orthodoxy, I was able to learn much about the roots and depth of the Orthodox faith.

“Romania is full of churches, monasteries, and wayside shrines, as well as people who live a pious life. Even though the communist years in Romania shut down most churches and monasteries and limited faith to the older generation, the priests we met with said most Romanians do attend Liturgy on Sunday. And it is clear that some of the younger generation are finding their way to faith and seeking to find its fullness and life.”

In Romania, Debra and the other four members of the OCMC Team worked with the younger generation. They assisted at two youth camps, one for older teenagers and one for nine- to thirteen-year-olds. The team worked with a Romanian university student group called (in English) the Association of Orthodox Christian Students in Romania (ASCOR). Debra holds wonderful memories of her time spent with the campers, the ASCOR students, the priests, and her fellow OCMC team members. She formed ties that will last a lifetime.

She recalled, “Both camps started the day with morning prayer and held Vespers before supper. What delight to hear each of the campers taking turns participating in the readings and praying to God! The morning was taken up with talks by the Romanian priests and discussion groups. Our OCMC team members gave short talks on the North American saints. The remainder of the day was spent in sports and workshops such as making icons from prints, learning the knots to make crosses and prayer bracelets, and group games. In the evening gathering I experienced both the Romanians’ love of music and the beauty of their voices. We sang in English and Romanian and included songs about God, the Theotokos, the beauty of the ocean, and a Romanian Robin Hood.

“I loved the people—both the campers and the ASCOR volunteers. All the ASCOR students were overflowing with a love rooted in their faith, and they drew everybody else into that. We had a couple of blind campers at the first camp, and watching the ASCOR folks surround them with love, making sure they were included in everything, and then seeing the campers do likewise, was amazing. From my years of experience as a teacher and camp counselor, at the Romanian camps I would often notice a camper who needed a little comfort and direction. All I had to do was point it out to one of the ASCOR volunteers and they were by that person—talking, listening (I couldn’t do that in Romanian), and caring.”

Several of the campers stand out in Debra’s memory. For example, “Antonio, a dark, curly-haired camper, did not speak much English but he was a delight. He always had a big smile and welcome, and was quick to help at meals or getting ready for services of singing. He also was a fantastic soccer player. Father Oviduu [the Romanian priest at the first camp] also was a highlight of the camp. When he worshiped, he worshiped with all his heart, and you couldn’t help joining in. He taught us a beautiful song to the Theotokos in Romanian, singing with great love. He equally played with all his heart.”

Another delight to Debra was to worship in the beautiful Romanian monasteries and churches—and not just the large churches. “Some of the tiny, very old churches with their more primitive icons were wrapped in a depth of prayer and piety that you could feel as you walked in,” she observed.

“The churches had icons painted all over the walls and ceilings and were holy spaces of great joy. In the villages, piety was seen in the many pilgrims walking to monasteries carrying offerings of flowers from their gardens. What a joy to see several monasteries with many young monastics! The monasteries have been built on grounds where communities destroyed by the communists once stood, thus carrying on the history of the faith.”

She added, “The depth of piety of the ASCOR group we were working with was amazing. Many of them spend several hours at church almost every day of the week, and keep up a full academic load. The ASCOR priest in Cluj, Father Cyprian, provides weekly Unction, Vespers, and Liturgy, with extra services for feast days. He also teaches classes several days a week and asks most to come to confession on a weekly basis. The students are managing this and their heavy academic loads, and they are true examples of the faith.

“While we were told the church wouldn’t be full because it was summer holiday time, each service we attended there was full of young people. The depth of spirituality, the beauty of the surroundings in icon-filled churches, and the gentleness and purity of the chanting enfolded me in such a way that my lack of understanding the language made no difference as I participated in the sacraments of Communion and Unction at several different churches and monasteries.”

Debra asks Handmaiden readers, “Please pray that folks there remain faithful and aren’t drawn away by secularism and Western life.”

Debra and the other team members began their mission adventure at the OCMC office in St. Augustine, Florida. She said it was a joy to meet the staff and learn from them. “They are doing great work to support the sharing of the Gospel throughout the world. The Teams staff was a lot of fun—and really knew their stuff as they prepared us for the trip.”

The OCMC staff members are always looking for dedicated people willing to become a short-term mission Team Member or even a long-term Missionary. Debra urged, “Please consider joining a team and seeing God act both in your life and in the country you visit.”

She added, “To go on a trip, you fill out an application and get your priest to fill out a referral form and submit them to OCMC. The OCMC team is great at answering questions at any point in the process, and they are easy to reach by phone or email. They send you a packet on how to raise support. I was truly blessed in that my parish held a luncheon on my behalf and raised funds that were matched by our Ladies Guild. Many of the parishioners also gave me money or sent money to the OCMC for my trip.”

Article by Fran Presley
This article originally appeared in the "Women Making a Difference" Section of the Handmaiden, Vol 13. No. 1.

An Icon of Missions: The Archbishop Anastasios and Archbishop Demetrios Missionary Training and Administration Building

The international mission efforts of North American Orthodox Churches began in 1962 with members of the Lenten Self-Denial Club (LSDC) of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which was under the pastoral care of Fr. Alexander Veronis. They used the money saved by forgoing meals to send religious materials and support to newly planted Orthodox communities in Uganda, Mexico, and Korea.

With the blessings of Archbishop Iakovos and Bishop Silas, Fr. Veronis expanded the LSDC to other communities, and in 1966 the Greek Orthodox Clergy-Laity Congress established the Archdiocesan Foreign Missions Committee. By 1984, the Committee had become the Greek Orthodox Archdiocesan Mission Center, with Fr. (now Bishop) Dimitrios Couchell as the first Executive Director.

What was once a program of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese is now the inter-jurisdictionally supported Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC). After forty years of a continually growing base of prayer and sacrificial support, the missions movement of the Church in North America will see the completion of the new Archbishop Anastasios and Archbishop Demetrios Missionary Training and Administration Building in St. Augustine, Florida – the first permanent structure ever built cooperatively by the canonical Orthodox Churches in the Americas. Dedication ceremonies for the new building, led by the two honorees, will be held on May 21.

This new facility’s placement in St. Augustine is appropriate both historically and developmentally. It was in St. Augustine that the St. Photios Shrine was built to remember America’s earliest Greek settlers. Named after the Patriarch credited with sending two of Orthodoxy’s most prolific missionaries to the Slavs (Sts. Cyril and Methodios), the Shrine was also home to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocesan Mission Center in the 1980s. Later, the Center moved into an old house which was appropriately named “The Fr. Alexander Veronis Mission Center.” St. Augustine would remain home to the Church’s mission efforts even after the Archdiocesan Mission Center became the Orthodox Christian Mission Center, the official missions agency of the Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA), in 1994. At that time, the Board of Directors was expanded to include representatives of all of the SCOBA jurisdictions.

From its home in St. Augustine, the OCMC has helped Orthodox Christians across North America to answer their call to share the Faith with others. Over the years, they have witnessed and participated in the resurrection of the Church in Albania and Romania after decades of communist oppression, the explosive growth of the Church across Africa, and the establishment of new communities in Asia.

Though the financial support of these Churches, which was the aim of the LSDC, remains an integral part of international Orthodox missions, the efforts of the Church in regards to this work have expanded and evolved in the decades since the LSDC. As awareness of missions grew, the availability of financial resources rapidly expanded, facilitating the training and support of priests serving mission churches around the world. In 1969, Fr. Eugene Pappas was sent by the Archdiocese to assist the struggling Orthodox Church in Korea, becoming the first of many Americans to serve in foreign lands. Fr. Dan and Pres. Nancy Christopulos arrived in Kenya in 1985, becoming the first Orthodox missionaries to serve through what would become the OCMC; and by 1987, a team of faithful from across the United States would join the Kenyan effort by acting as the first Orthodox Mission Team. Also at this time, fundraising initiatives like the Agape Canister Program and Coin Boxes were being employed to raise support for the Church's many philanthropic projects that served to witness to people in mission lands.

Long-term Missionary service, Orthodox Mission Teams, the theological training and financial support of mission priests, and the funding of ministry and philanthropic projects of the Church abroad have become the core initiatives of the Orthodox Christian Mission Center and the primary means through which North American Orthodox Christians share the Gospel.

This is not an accidental model. The hierarchs of SCOBA have taken great care to encourage the installation of OCMC staff and board members who bring increasingly deep missiological training and understanding to an agency commissioned by them to facilitate this work on behalf of Jesus Christ and His Church. This ensures that the implementation of OCMC’s core initiatives are done in a way that preserves Orthodox theology while respecting the language and culture of a given people group.

This modality, and the Church’s vision to make disciples of all nations, has born much fruit. In Kenya, for example, North American Orthodox Christians, through the OCMC, have supported and taught at an Orthodox seminary in Nairobi, which trains priests who may receive support from American donors to serve a community, whose church was built by an Orthodox Mission Team, and whose school and clinic may have been equipped with an Agape Canister Grant.

For Orthodox Christians the sanctification of a culture and welcoming people into the body of Christ requires ministering to the whole person. Today, OCMC programs work in an integrated fashion to provide this holistic witness.

With the completion of the new Missionary Training and Administration building, under OCMC’s Executive Director Fr. Martin Ritsi, who also served as a Missionary in Africa and Albania, the Orthodox faithful of North America are poised to share the Gospel of Christ at an entirely new level and in ways that may have been unimaginable to those early supporters of missions. In 1987, 25 people served on one Orthodox Mission Team. In 2008, nearly 100 people served on 16 Teams. In 1985 only Fr. Dan and Pres. Nancy were serving as Missionaries. Today there are 12 people serving as Missionaries in three countries. Five more people are preparing to serve, and over 100 people have inquired about long-term service in the past year alone. The program to support a handful of priests in the 1980s has become a vital resource for 354 priests in 18 countries, allowing them to dedicate themselves full-time to ministry. Many of these priests were trained in the seven seminaries that the faithful in North America have come to support over the years.

In fact, Orthodox Christians, through the programs of the OCMC, have served as a living witness to the faith in some 35 countries, but this is just the beginning. The new building is a symbol to the Church’s unwavering commitment to share the light of Christ with the world, and it is a necessary tool in making this work possible. With over half of the facility’s 12,000 square feet dedicated to training new generations of Missionaries and mission workers, the new Mission Center has been built for the needs of today, with a vision for tomorrow.

The new building, along with its 20 acre campus, is an icon of Orthodox missions, and it reflects the intent of the North American faithful to be Christ’s witnesses to the ends of the earth. It is a monument to those who denied themselves, including Fr. Alexander Veronis, who is still actively serving as President Emeritus on the OCMC Board of Directors, in order to support their brothers and sisters half a world away, and it is a promise that the work of missions will continue for God’s glory and the love of humankind.