For our SCV Partners and Friends: A Brief Review of the Year

December 2019

Beloved Ones to God, SCV Partners and Friends,
 
Thank you for your prayers, support and friendship! 
 
Over the past year, SCV has enjoyed incrementally, much progress!  Our website attests to a witness of service offered on behalf of the Church at the highest level of theological and spiritual accountability.  By God’s grace, since our inception we have been striving to cultivate a charism of spiritual renewal, unity and education through Pan-Orthodox initiatives advancing education, dialogue and service. With gratitude and joy we have been offering our efforts as acts of love for Christ and His Church. This past year, SCV has been:

• publishing our latest book, Encountering Women of Faith, Volume III our first official book review is attached.  Please, encourage your pastor, your parish and community libraries, Christian scholars and educators, parish bookstore, Philoptochos and other philanthropic organizations, students and study groups, as well as your friends to order copies! If you have benefited from reading the book, please write a review.
  
  
• writing collaboratively with an international panel of eminent Orthodox theologians brought together under the leadership of His Eminence, Metropolitan Methodios of Boston, a Proposal for the: Introductory Parameters for the Ministry of the Ordained Deaconess in the Orthodox Church. This is now published on our website and available to the public.
  
  
• visiting Hellenic College/Holy Cross female students twice-per-semester informally providing support, education, mentoring and relationship building.
  
  
• assisting and promoting the work of Anberin Pasha, M.Div., Th.M. (candidate) SCV’s “Up and Coming Scholar for 2019-2021”. (See her acclaimed documentary on St. Maria Skobsova of Paris, here: www.lovetotheend.com.  We are planning to collaborate with her on new educational initiatives in the coming year!)  
  
  
• cultivating our ongoing Facebook and social media outreach ministry, through the generous efforts of Advisory Board members.
  
  
• bolstering SCV outreach activities and building relationships with other Pan-Orthodox groups focused on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery. (See for example, The Orthodox Peace Fellowship Journal edition on human trafficking, https://incommunion.org/human-trafficking/). Our SCV Advisory Board member, Pres. Maria Drossos (M.Div., candidate), also a member of the Task Force on Human Trafficking of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople has been of great assistance regarding this effort!
  
  
• granted permission to publish digitally, the Orthodox Women Speak: Discerning the ‘Signs of the Times’” book as a free educational resource! This is now available online in its entirety and by each chapter.

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