Aim

Be the loving presence of Christ and the Orthodox Church on college campuses; be an integral part of students’ spiritual formation by challenging them to explore the Faith; inspire students to commit to living an Orthodox Christian way of life daily.

History

Orthodox Christian Fellowship (OCF) has a rich history in North America that spans over 50 years. Following World War II, an Orthodox college student movement emerged. Individual campus groups formed at various universities, including Columbia, McGill, and Penn State, and—for the first time—Orthodoxy was being celebrated and shared on college campuses. In recognition of this, the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the America (SCOBA) formalized the Church’s campus work in the spring of 1965 by creating the Campus Commission to oversee and coordinate these developing local fellowships. James Couchell (now Bishop Dimitrios of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese) was named OCF’s first Executive Director. Visiting colleges coast-to-coast, he established hundreds of campus chapters, launched the very popular quarterly magazine Concern and held annual retreats at St. Vladimir’s and Holy Cross seminaries (predecessors of our present-day College Conferences). In 1971, when James Couchell was re-assigned, Orthodox campus ministry unfortunately struggled and eventually closed. Despite this, the spirit and mission of OCF was kept alive by individual chapters across the country. Chapters continued to form and grow. In 2001, three seminarian classmates—Fr. Michael Nasser of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese, Fr. Mark Leondis of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, and Fr. Michael Andersen of the Orthodox Church in America—recognized this natural growth and pledged to work together towards the resurgence of a pan-Orthodox campus ministry. With SCOBA’s blessing and Metropolitan Isaiah of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Denver as OCF’s overseer, OCF was reconstituted and structured as a collaborative Orthodox effort with jurisdictional representatives on the Board of Directors. This allowed the Church to maximize limited resources and be present on a greater number of colleges with relatively few Orthodox students on campus. With this blessing and direction, OCF was first housed at the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute based on the campus of the University of California – Berkeley. This is where the process of building a chapter structure began. The North American Office then moved to the campus of Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, MA and hired a full-time executive director. At this time, OCF received a portion of a Lilly Endowment grant awarded to Hellenic College for the Theological Exploration of Vocation. This five-year scaling grant enabled OCF to build an infrastructure, hire staff, and expand its programs.