Keynote Address
By His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America
At the Fall Meeting of the Archdiocesan Council (Virtual)
New York, New York
November 4, 2022
Your Eminences and Your Graces,
Beloved Hierarchs of our Archdiocese,
Very Reverend Archimandrite Nektarios Papazafiropoulos, Archdiocesan Chancellor,
Archon John Catsimatidis, Vice President of the Archdiocesan Council,
Reverend Clergy and Distinguished Members of the Archdiocesan Council,
Esteemed Senators for Orthodoxy and Hellenism,
My dear Sisters and Brothers in the Lord,
We meet again, in this first gathering of the Archdiocesan Council since our Clergy-Laity Congress that marked the centennial of the sacred Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America as the most dynamic Eparchy of the Ecumenical Throne. We now embark upon the next one hundred years of our Archdiocese – a time of resurgence for our Church.
We are still struggling with the challenges that were brought on by the COVID pandemic, but we are not nearly at the levels that we were faced with in March of 2020. Despite the pandemic, we have pushed forward and seen great achievements: the Consecration and completion of the Saint
Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine, the Apostolic Visit of His All-Holiness, the centenary Clergy-Laity Congress, the Centennial Pilgrimages, the parishes across the United States that are also celebrating 100 years, and the return to basic normalcy across the Archdiocese and in our parishes.
I want to express my heartfelt thanks to each of you who agreed to serve on this esteemed body of the Archdiocesan Council. We need everyone’s involvement, not only for the tasks of the Council, but so that the Faithful of the Archdiocese experience a Church that represents their interests and their concerns. There are many ways to engage in the business of the Church, but to do so in a responsible, accountable, and transparent way will be the most effective for everyone. I would also like to point out that expectations for members of the Archdiocesan Council were included with the appointment letter that each of you received.
In anticipation of your dedicated and active participation in the Council as a whole and in the Committees on which you will serve, I convey to you my deep gratitude. Serving on the Archdiocesan Council is a high honor, and I am confident in your abilities that you will serve our Church faithfully: offering your God-given talents and skillsets, your time and expertise, and your resources and gifts for the strengthening of our sacred Archdiocese and to help share our common mission of bringing the message of the Gospel to all the Faithful of this land, from sea to shining sea.
To begin, I warmly welcome all of you to this term of the Archdiocese Council. I want to especially thank the Most Reverend
Metropolitans of the Holy Eparchial Synod for their dedication and energy, as each strives both separately within their own Metropolis and collectively in the Holy Eparchial Synod to magnify the ministry of the Church.
But of course, we also have our lay leadership. This brings me to the business portion of my remarks as Archbishop — and therefore I now put forward as officers for the Archdiocesan Council the following:
Mr. John Catsimatidis for Vice-President; Mr. Nick Karacostas for Secretary; and Mrs. Elaine Allen for Treasurer. I ask for unanimous consent to accept these individual to serve in these roles for the coming term that we now commence.
And speaking of officers, what can we say of our dear brother, Judge Theodore Bozonelis, who has served as Secretary of this Council since my ascension to the Throne of the Archdiocese. On behalf of the entire Council, I express our profound gratitude to Judge Bozonelis for his steady hand, his respectful and Christian demeanor, and his faith-filled service. I am especially pleased that he will continue on the Council as the Chair of the Administration Committee.
As I said, the accomplishments of our Archdiocese are undeniable, even in the midst of COVID. I should add to the ones already mentioned the effort to secure additional funding for the Pension Fund for the Clergy, an intervention that has delivered on the commitment that the Archdiocese made during the Clergy-Laity Congress of 2020.
None of these have been easy to bring about, and all of them require vigilance and diligence. We can all give particular thanks to Leadership 100, which has provided much needed funding to all our endeavors. And as far as the Saint Nicholas Shrine is concerned, we owe profound thanks to The Friends of Saint Nicholas, the non-profit formed to raise, manage, and supervise the distribution of funding the complete the Shrine. Their generosity has enabled the Church to complete its mission, and next month, on the Feast of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of Myra in Lycia, we shall commence the regular operation and liturgical life of the Parish and begin the mission of the Shrine as a place of remembrance, a place of honor, and a place of tribute.
At the Centennial Clergy-Laity Congress here in New York a few months ago, we celebrated our past, the marvelous legacy and inheritance that has been bequeathed to us. But we also took stock of the present and where we might be at our Bicentennial. This will all depend on whether we have educated our people – especially our youth – and whether or not our future generations of leaders make the same commitment to the Church that you have.
This means that how we involve our faithful is the key. We know what the teaching of the Church is. We have a sophisticated and highly developed liturgical and community life. We have all the ingredients; but like the flour, water, yeast and salt that make a loaf of bread, unless they are worked together and baked, they are inedible and can nourish none.
Therefore, from this Council’s point of view, we must continue to engage in our Committee work in a more intentional manner. As you well know, there are three Standing Committees that mainly focus on governance — Administration, Finance and Audit — and there are several Ministry Committees that engage the various aspects of Church Life. Each Council member will be given the option to select the Committee (or Committees) that are of interest to them and will be asked to serve on at least one Committee. Concerning the Ministry Committees, I am appointing the Reverend Protopresbyter of the Ecumenical Throne Panagiotis Papazafiropoulos to be the liaison between all Archdiocesan Council Members and the Ministries of the Archdiocese.
Why? Because the role of each Ministry Committee is to work with its corresponding National Ministry and/or Department of the Archdiocese under whose purview that ministry falls. Over the next two years, each Committee will work, not only to become informed about what is currently happening in the Archdiocese Departments and Ministries but will also evaluate the effectiveness of those ministry areas and how they are implemented across the Nation. It is not enough to know what is going on across the Archdiocese. This Council must take on a role which proposes ideas and recommendations for nationwide adoption to improve and scale up our ministerial activities.
These ideas should be thoroughly researched, debated, and then readied for presentation to the Council. At each Spring and Fall Council meeting, the Committees will be asked to give updates as to the work they are doing, and the ideas they are working on.
Then, at the 2024 Clergy Laity Congress, each Ministry Committee will have a public meeting open to all the delegates of the Congress. Here,
they will present the work that they have done over the last two years, as well as the areas of ministry that they have overseen and how they have worked with the ministry to grow the Church and Her mission. Delegates will have the opportunity to ask questions of the Department leadership, as well as the Committee members about the work of the Committee, the ministry areas they oversee, and the proposals that they are making.
As an aside: for all our Committees — and perhaps here we can use the expertise of those in the Administration Committee — one of the first tasks should be to establish a sort of charter by which your work is defined and can be evaluated. Perhaps each Committee can submit a resolution separate from their corresponding National Ministry reports to be discussed at each Clergy-Laity Congress reflecting their own work over the past two years. Of course, this model of Committee work will be more intensive than it has been in the past, but if we are to move forward as an Archdiocese, we cannot rest on our laurels. We must take hold of the direction in which our Church is headed and chart the course that God is calling us to.
When I think about the tens of thousands – even hundreds of thousands of members of our Churches from coast to coast, I think about what their experience of the Church must be like. We all know what the content of our Faith is, but how do we live that content? How do we experience the essential truths of the Church on a daily basis?
For me, as your Archbishop, it is a question of reach. Are we reaching our people? Do they feel connected to the Body of the Church? Saint Paul tells us that each of us is a member of the Body of Christ, that we are integrated with one another. But to experience that as a living reality is a profound understanding of one’s own life.
The Church is an institution, but it must not feel institutional. The Church is an organization, but it must feel organic and natural to its members. If we commit to look long and hard at the Ministries we propagate, I am certain that we will find new ways to reinvigorate the touchpoints where our Faithful integrate themselves with the life of their parishes, their Metropolises, their Archdiocese, and their Patriarchate.
To that end, the Charter process that has been endorsed and engaged by the Mother Church, in concert with us, will be proceeding throughout the term of this Council. The Joint Committee will form and do its work to present to the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate a working document to forge a Charter for the next hundred years. In this vein, I would remind you of what I said at my first Archdiocesan Council Meeting in the Fall of 2019:
“We are all members of one Holy Archdiocese of America. We are not divided into Metropolises, and Parishes, and Departments, and Organizations, and Institutions. This is a false and worldly view that misunderstands the very nature of the Church. Rather, we are apportioned for service through all of these organs of the Church that I just mentioned. We are not and can never be divided. … We must never forget this undeniable fact of our ecclesial being, which is the very foundation for everything that we do, and everything that we desire to achieve. Without this, we are nothing but a loose alliance of disinterested parties, a factional federation that will never rise above personal agendas and misplaced allegiances. We have a higher calling, one that demands our complete and utter spiritual, ethical, and moral commitment.”
This is the ultimate condition that we must be found in, so that we might fulfill our apostolic mission as Christ’s Church.
With these thoughts, and with these words, I close my remarks, and commend you all to the love and grace of God, who will empower and enrich us to fulfill our destiny in Him.
Thank you, and may God bless you all.