2006 Incoming President's Letter

Fellow Board members, Committee Chairmen and District Supervisors,

I hope the summer has been relaxing and that you are enthusiastically looking forward to the new ecclesiastical year. I’m finally home after taking several trips this summer. After the conference in Orlando, Edith the Neylands and I went to Vancouver Canada where we quickly discovered that in the mountains, our cell phones offered limited or no service. Then in mid-July we went to Nashville to the National Forum Meetings held in conjunction with the Clergy Laity Conference. Now I’m anxious to get started on my new assignment.

First and foremost let me say that I consider it an honor and a privilege to be serving as President of the Choir Federation. I know I am succeeding a person whose shoes will be hard to fill. Mary Zervos has set a very high standard during her term and she is credited with accomplishing a number of things we will all benefit from. Among them are:

  1. The first and only federation in the Archdiocese to have its own website. - www.sfgocm.org
  2. Our biannual publication Keynotes is now distributed online.
  3. Updated and revised our Federation Charter and Bylaws.
  4. Re-introduced the position of District Supervisors to strengthen our communications.
  5. Established a chanter liaison to help bridge the gap between choirs and chanters.

Thanks Mary and I’m so glad you will continue to be serving on the board to offer your advise and council.

I will be operating under the assumption that all those who have been serving in the capacity of committee chairmen or district supervisors will continue through the coming year. If I am wrong please let me know. We are still searching for a person in the Western Conference to serve as District Supervisor. A Youth Initiatives chairman has been approached but in the mean time Vice President Margaret Sarafoglu has agreed to be the temporary contact.

We find ourselves in a very interesting and challenging time in the history of our federation and probably our church in america. It has become very clear to me over the past several years that the term "Preservation of Byzantine Chant" means different things to different people. Especially among the clergy in our metropolis. Since there does not appear to be a standard approach offered by the Metropolitan on how to implement this "Preservation of Byzantine Chant", it appears that parish priests have taken it upon themselves to implement it based on their own interpretation.

Although I do not profess to be an expert in this area, I have come to the conclusion that there are 3 types of implementation.

  1. Get rid of the organ and eventually the choir and just have a trained Byzantine Chanter.
  2. Have the choirs learn the Byzantine Chant and get rid of the "Western" arrangements of the Divine Liturgy.
  3. Keep both choirs and Chanters and just educate them on the "Byzantine Chant" but allow parish choirs to sing either Western or Byzantine arranged liturgies.

In future meetings with the metropolitan, I will try and convey the concern of many choirs that we may be sending the wrong message and that there is room for co-existance.

Note: For your information these are current activities we are working on:

  • Recruiting a Western Conference District Supervisor and Youth Initiatives Chairman.
  • Schedule joint meet with the Executive Board and Conference 2007 committee in Savanna.
  • Finalize the selection of music to be sung at the 2007 Conference.
  • Print and distribute copies of the agreed to updates to our Federation Charter and Bylaws.

I encourage your feed back and ask that you feel free to contact me anytime.

With my best regards,

John Mitchell

President