For Immediate Release – For many of the Churches in the Oriental Orthodox Communion – specifically for the Coptic, Ethiopian, and Eritrean – September 11 marks the start of the ecclesiastical new year, and this year, the Standing Conference of Oriental Orthodox Churches (SCOOCH) and its subsidiary organizations the Standing Conference of Oriental Orthodox Youth Associations (SCOOYA) and Orthodox Christian Campus Ministries (OCCM) are starting things off with a bang.

For starters, SCOOCH will convene its annual Concelebration of the Divine Liturgy, to be held this year on Saturday, October 22, 2016 at Archangel Michael & St. Mena Coptic Orthodox Church in Staten Island, NY, hosted by H.G. Bishop David of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of New York & New England and featuring the presence of all of the hierarchs and representatives of the Oriental Orthodox Churches in the metropolitan New York area.

The very next weekend – October 29, 2016 – will see the Fourth Annual Philadelphia Regional Oriental Orthodox Concelebrated Liturgy taking place, hosted by H.G. Bishop Karas of the Coptic Orthodox Archdiocese of North America at St. Anthony Coptic Orthodox Church in Medford, NJ.  The Liturgy will be immediately followed at the same venue by a regional youth conferenceorganized by the Rutgers Camden chapter of OCCM exploring the issues of how faith, culture, and identity are intertwined in the various traditions of Oriental Orthodoxy, and how the Orthodox Faith manifests itself in given cultures, including our culture here in North America.

This event will lead into SCOOYA’s Fifth Annual Oriental Orthodox Youth Conference, which will be hosted by H.E. Mor Titus Yeldho of the Malankara Archdiocese of the Syriac Orthodox Church in North America at St. Ephrem Cathedral in Whippany, NJ.  The conference – which will further explore how everything starts for the Orthodox Christian with his Faith, which then informs his identity, and is planted in and transforms his culture, creating a new culture and a new and living witness – will feature such speakers as the V. Rev. Fr. Saife Selassie, the former dean of Addis Ababa’s Holy Trinity Ethiopian Orthodox Theological College and the V. Rev. Fr. Joseph Varghese of St. Mary’s Malankara-Syriac Orthodox Church in Bergen, New Jersey.

Seating is limited.  Please register as early as possible here:http://www.scooch.org/2016/09/5th-annual-youth-conference/

Please see the flyers posted on this page for further details about each of these important events, and watch www.scooch.org andhttps://www.facebook.com/officialSCOOCH for information on future events.