An excerpt of the letter from Emmanouil Koumbarelis (former President of SYNDESMOS), addressed to all SYNDESMOS member movements and their youth.

"[The board member] is supposed to bring people together, so that Orthodox (young) people from his/her region understand deeply why they should meet, have common activities and seek for unity. SYNDESMOS projects are glamorous in a way, whereas daily church life is not. It is not that difficult to persuade people that a trip to Albania is good for their spiritual growth or their Orthodox self-awareness. But it is quite a challenge to find a way to give them the motivation needed to go and meet the Greek or Romanian Orthodox in the church round the corner.
What is true for inter-jurisdictional relations on a local level is also true for relations within one jurisdiction. Many people (young and not so young) just don't feel they need to go and meet other Orthodox in their own town or region. I don't want people to feel they are working for SYNDESMOS, or for Orthodox unity, or Orthodox youth. I want them to do things and feel inspired while doing them, even if it is washing the dishes, driving someone to the airport, making phone-calls, or writing thank you letters. And I know it is only possible through mutual respect, trust, and friendship. I know that if I am inspired, if the people with whom I am doing things are inspired, the inspiration will spread, and doing things for SYNDESMOS or Orthodox youth or Orthodox unity will always be a blessing, not a burden. I would like to make it so that it is exciting to prepare and run a SYNDESMOS project. And I know it is possible, even if it is difficult.
Everything I said about the local work, I believe also applies to the work of the Board. If the members of the Board don't feel they grew spiritually as a result of the decision-making procedure, the whole thing is a failure. We absolutely must bear in mind that if we don'tknow/trust/respect/love each other in the Board, SYNDESMOS cannot work properly on an international level. SYNDESMOS, SYNDESMOS Board, SYNDESMOS members are witnesses of Christian love, and must never forget it, no matter how difficult it can sometimes be, no matter how big the various temptations can be."
These words of a member of the Board describing her vision for the work in SYNDESMOS constitute the greatest challenge for SYNDESMOS today: the challenge of the spirit in which we should BE and DO: the spirit of love, trust, respect, friendship, sincerity and inspiration. Some other current challenges of SYNDESMOS follow.

1. Membership
In the Assemblies of 1992 and 1995 SYNDESMOS membership increased by 71 members, meaning that for every two members SYNDESMOS had three new ones. Almost everybody thought at the time that SYNDESMOS's service to the Church had at last reached recognition. However, there were some significant drawbacks: a) Until 1992 the progressive expansion of SYNDESMOS allowed the new members to be integrated into the spirit of the Fellowship through their contact with the old members. After 1995, when the new members suddenly became the majority, the life of the Fellowship is dominated by an overall confusion of identity. b) Several new members neither send youth in SYNDESMOS projects nor they communicate and co-operate with other Orthodox youth. Often their youth is not informed about SYNDESMOS life and the leadership keeps the information sent by the Secretariat for itself. Additionally, some movements falsely consider SYNDESMOS as a "rich western organization".There is a need to initiate a seriously coordinated effort to strengthen the understanding of SYNDESMOS among the youth of the active members. The only way to achieve this is to organize visits to their meeting places in their countries of small teams of experienced SYNDESMOS people, who will directly talk with the youth.

2. General Secretariat
The expansion of SYNDESMOS, the new potentials and demands combined with the limited resources of SYNDESMOS make it impossible for the General Secretariat to fulfil properly its duties. Specific tasks need to be officially assigned to young people or youth groups, who do not work in the Secretariat and are willing to offer voluntarily their services. Additionally, all Board members should be able to assist the Secretariat.

3. Board of Administration
The function of the Board has serious problems. The number of its members needs to be reduced and all those elected should have previous experience of participation in several international SYNDESMOS events and should have proved that they are able to organize inter-orthodox youth events and to perform fundraising for them.

4. Regionalisation
A dynamic balance between the strength of the regions and the unity of the body of SYNDESMOS has to be found. At the moment there is an urgent need to support
the body as a whole. The Board members have to co-organize events in regions outside of their own. Inter-regional events have to be organized by the regions or member movements coming from different regions. The pan-Orthodox vision of SYNDESMOS has to be emphasized and real ized at every opportunity. It is important to inspire the youth to feel the need for this once again.

5. Integration of the youth of the Oriental Orthodox member movements
SYNDESMOS has a very important role to play in this field. Those Orthodox people who live in societies where the two families do not coexist, do not even know how the others really are in their ecclesiastical life and what they believe, while the Synods of their churches discuss the possibility to accept or reject the restoration of full unity. SYNDESMOS's task is to serve the need of bringing together open-minded young people of the two families in all SYNDESMOS events and ask them to share when they return home their experience with their communities.

6. SYNDESMOS contribution to Christian unity
Since its very first steps SYNDESMOS has been seeking to witness the Truth and the Orthodox way of life to the heterodox in order to promote visible Christian unity. Today SYNDESMOS needs to contribute further to the efforts of preparing Orthodox young people for a responsible representation in ecumenical events. It should select carefully the events to be represented and send experienced youth of diverse ethnic origin to the most official of them, while introducing less experienced youth to ecumenical life in events where wider youth participation is possible. Participants should be well instructed in the faith and tradition of the Church in order to serve as living witnesses. At the same time a series of bilateral youth programmes should be initiated, in which Orthodox youth will learn how the youth of another Christian church experience their ecclesiastical life and faith, and share with them their own experience. The time has come for people to be prepared to participate in the ecumenical dialogue, knowing each other well and being free from prejudice and misconceptions.

7. Discuss again the challenges our Church faces today
Express openly an opinion. The situation in our Church is again at a critical point. SYNDESMOS should take an initiative to allow the youth to express itself more clearly and constructively. Not only with a new, short, clear and respectful letter to the Bishops, but also by new methods through which the youth may influence directly their communities. I would dare say that SYNDESMOS should speak:

a) Again on Panorthodox Unity. The tensions among the local churches, even of the same ethnic origin are getting worse and worse. Our spiritual and ecclesiastical life is affected by this situation, which we cannot accept any longer. We need once again to speak up loudly, but humbly. Church politics, power games, ambitions to take ecclesiastical offices, are foreign and malignant elements for the Body of our Church and they have to be expelled from It. We should constantly and sincerely pray to God to give us again the gifts of Unity and Humbleness.
b) On the crisis of the contemporary Orthodox Theology. Despite a long history of contribution to Orthodox Theology in
the past, SYNDESMOS has not played a
significant role in the promotion of theological thought in recent years. Today we witness the existence of "islands" of rather isolated, theologically active circles. SYNDESMOS needs to bring together some eminent, young representatives of these circles and to contribute to the creation of an international network of people able to speak on Orthodox theological matters with a global perspective and capable of proposing to Orthodox youth, who struggle to live in Christ, a modern pastoral interpretation of Orthodox dogma.

c) On new-conservatism and isolation from the world. The youth that live in the Church progressively become more and more isolated from the rest of the youth, especially in the traditionally Orthodox churches. We develop our own terminology that even "traditionally Christian societies" do not understand any longer, we live in our sheltered environments, we socialize with those who agree with us and we consider others strange, but we do not pray for them day and night. We teach our people to live in the fear of those who threaten us and we constantly want to protect our secular rights. Even when we have the sincerity to deny that we express the Church of Christ, "others" still think that we are the Church. They feel that the Church is not open to them, that we like to criticize and condemn them, that we are full of sorrow and unable to love. The missionary spirit of
the Orthodox Church, without which the Door of Paradise will not be opened to us, does not characterize our life.

This attitude dominates plenty of Church circles. It does not describe SYNDESMOS and any newcomers to the Fellowship should understand this from the start. SYNDESMOS is a child of openness, of the desire to witness to the world and to gather all the children of God around Christ.

Dialogue is the air that it breathes; Truth is the ground that it steps on.

A few months ago a journalist told me in a SYNDESMOS programme: "I write for the local newspaper. I am an atheist and I come from an atheistic family, but your group impressed me. You are normal; you laugh; you even sing; you are so alive. You are not very much like the Orthodox I know. I want to know about you. Is SYNDESMOS always like this or this is by chance?" The world needs love, hope and joy. Let us pray that SYNDESMOS will continue to witness the Resurrection of our Lord in the world.

Emmanouil Koumbarelis, January 2001