Three Town Hall meetings scheduled June 24 - 28, 2008
The next three in a series of Town Hall meetings in preparation for the 15th All-American Council of the Orthodox Church in America will take place in Dallas, TX, on June 24; San Francisco, CA, June 26; and Washington, DC, on June 28.
The June 24 Dallas meeting will take place in conjunction with the annual assembly of the Diocese of the South at Saint Seraphim Cathedral, at 3:00 p.m. His Eminence, Archbishop Dmitri of Dallas and the South, will attend the meeting, which will be facilitated by Archpriest Alexander Garklavs, OCA chancellor.
San Francisco’s meeting on June 26 will take place in conjunction with the Diocese of the West’s annual assembly at Holy Trinity Cathedral at 7:00 p.m. It will be attended by His Grace, Bishop Benjamin of San Francisco and the West. Facilitating the meeting will be Preconciliar Commission member Michelle Jannakos.
On June 28, the Washington, DC meeting will be held at Saint Nicholas Cathedral from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. His Beatitude, Metropolitan Herman, will attend, while Father Alexander Garklavs will will facilitate.
On June 23, the Preconciliar Commission announced that the time and date of the Orlando Town Hall meeting have been confirmed. The Orlando meeting will take place on Saturday, August 30, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the site of the 2008 national FOCA convention, Disney’s Contemporary Resort, Lake Buena Vista, FL. The FOCA national executive board has offered convention space to hold the meeting outside of the convention’s scheduled sessions. The meeting will be open to the general public.
The Preconciliar Commission also announced that there will not be a meeting scheduled on July 12 in Montreal, QC, Canada. It further announced that a meeting will be scheduled for the Diocese of Western Pennsylvania; further details on this meeting will be announced when finalized.
In other Town Hall meeting news, during the July 16, 2008, Preconciliar Commission meeting, one of the topics that emerged at the first Town Hall meeting in Ottawa, ON, June 7, 2008—the request of some participants to read written statements—was discussed.
“Commission members acknowledged that some individuals best express their thoughts by writing them down, and this must be honored at the meetings,” said the Very Rev. Andrew Jarmus, OCA director of ministries and communications. “They also considered that a lengthy statement can break the flow of dialogue in a meeting. In the interest of allowing all participants to express their thoughts in as an effective way that they can, while at the same time keeping the meeting dynamic as open and interactive as possible, the Preconciliar Commission has decided to limit written statements to a maximum of 500 words in length.”