Mission team Chicago benefit - 2009

Mission Team Chicago, an organization promoting Orthodox missions, announced today that His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios, Chairman of SCOBA (Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas) and Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, will speak at its benefit dinner at 6:30pm on Thursday, February 26, 2009.

The 12th annual dinner, benefiting the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC), will take place at The Carlisle in Lombard, Ill. The cost of admission is $75 per person. Reservations are now being accepted for tables of 10 ($600 per table). Table reservations after December 1, 2008, will be $750.

Among his many responsibilities, Archbishop Demetrios serves as Chairman of SCOBA, an organization which brings together the hierarchs of Orthodox jurisdictions in the U.S. OCMC is the official international mission agency of SCOBA.

Elected Archbishop of America in August 1999 by the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Archbishop Demetrios leads a church of more than one-and-a-half million Greek Orthodox Christians in the U.S.

Since his enthronement, he has labored together with the hierarchs, clergy and laity of the Archdiocese in an intense effort to strengthen conditions of unity and peace, and to advance the administrative and ecclesiastical stability of the work of the Church in America. His arch-pastoral message has been one that has called for faith, unity, love, genuine relationships, and an ever-increasing commitment to God and to service in the name of Christ.

Ordained a deacon in 1960 and a priest in 1964, Archbishop Demetrios was consecrated Bishop of Vresthena in 1967, an auxiliary hierarch to the Archbishop of Athens. He graduated with distinction from the University of Athens-School of Theology in 1950 and earned his Ph.D. with distinction from Harvard University in 1972. In 1977, he earned a Th.D. in Theology from the University of Athens.

His Eminence also has served as distinguished professor of Biblical Studies and Christian Origins at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Mass. Serving as a faculty member for more than a decade, he taught many of America's Greek Orthodox clergy. In addition, he taught at Harvard Divinity School as a visiting professor of New Testament during the academic years of 1984 to 1985 and from 1988 to 1989. After several years in the U.S., he returned to Greece in 1993 to pursue full-time scholarly writing and research.

Among his published works are A Call to Faith, and Authority and Passion.

Source: http://www.serborth.org/newest.html