So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

–Philippians 2:1-11

O Almighty God, who by thy holy apostle hast called upon us to present our bodies to thee a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is our reasonable service: Graciously hear us, we beseech thee, O Lord, and grant that we may so dedicate ourselves wholly to thy service that henceforth we may live only to thy glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Liturgy of the Catholic Apostolic Church

Give us, O Lord, a steadfast heart, which no unworthy affection may drag downwards; give us an unconquered heart, which no tribulation can wear out; give us an upright heart, which no unworthy purpose may tempt aside. Bestow upon us also, O Lord our God, understanding to know thee, diligence to seek thee, wisdom to find thee, and a faithfulness that may finally embrace thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

At Clockwork Active Media, a digital strategy agency based in Minnesota, there are no set hours and vacation time is unlimited. Potluck chili is what’s for lunch, ice cold beer is always on tap, and you can bring your kids to work whenever you want. The CEO says this environment is a reflection of her belief that employees should bring their “whole selves” to work.

“When you talk to the folks that work here, they say that they are all treated like adults,” said Nancy Lyons, CEO of Clockwork. “We create sort of this optimal environment for them to feel comfortable and to feel like they have the freedom to actually live.”

Lyons ”” together with a little money, a couple of friends, and a big dream ”” founded the company in 2002. Today, Clockwork employs 75 people and is hiring. Target, Best Buy and General Mills are among the agency’s clients.

“We have gone from being a scrappy little shop that worked with tiny clients that nobody’d ever heard of, to a nimble technology firm in the Midwest that works with global organizations,” Lyons said.

Read it all (or watch the video) from NBC.

Two Ohio men wrongly accused of murder experienced freedom for the first time in nearly four decades on Friday morning, but said they don’t harbor bitterness over their unjust imprisonment.

A Cleveland judge on Wednesday had dropped all charges against Ricky Jackson, 57, and Wiley Bridgeman, 60, allowing for the pair’s release.

Jackson was 19 when he was convicted along with Bridgeman and Bridgeman’s brother, Ronnie, in the 1975 shooting death and robbery of Harold Franks, a Cleveland-area money order salesman.

Testimony from a 12-year-old witness helped point to Jackson as the triggerman and led a jury to convict all three. Ronnie Bridgeman, now known as Kwame Ajamu, was paroled from prison in 2003.

Read it all from NBC.

Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, M.Sp.S., auxiliary bishop of Seattle and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Migration, welcomed the news today that the Obama administration will defer deportations for many undocumented immigrants and their families.

“We have a long history of welcoming and aiding the poor, the outcast, the immigrant, and the disadvantaged. Each day, the Catholic Church in the United States, in her social service agencies, hospitals, schools, and parishes, witnesses the human consequences of the separation of families, when parents are deported from their children or spouses from each other. We’ve been on record asking the Administration to do everything within its legitimate authority to bring relief and justice to our immigrant brothers and sisters. As pastors, we welcome any efforts within these limits that protect individuals and protect and reunite families and vulnerable children,” said Bishop Elizondo.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

[Archbishop] Welby argued that a unified Church, able to love one another in the face of difference, is able to “speak with authority” to a world incapable of dealing with diversity.

“In Christ we are held together In Christ the barriers are broken, peace is held out to us as a gift established, which needs living. In Christ there is hope of a life that provides hope of peace,” he said.

However, the Archbishop added that he did not want to sound “triumphalist”, and acknowledged the presence of “deep divisions” in many areas of the Communion. “Our divisions may be too much to manage,” he said, denouncing tribalism within the Church.

“There is a belief that opponents are either faithless to the tradition, or by contrast that they are cruel, judgemental, inhuman. I have to say that we are in a state so delicate that without prayer and repentance, it is hard to see how we can avoid some serious fractures,” he said.

Read it all from Christian Today. You can compare this story to others from the Press Association, the Church Times, and ACNS there.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has vowed to hire 10,000 veterans at Starbucks and is on a mission to make sure those who defend our country have their stories told.

Take the time to watch it all.

Last week, Princess Anne, the Queen’s daughter, visited Washington, D.C., as part of the U.K.’s commemorations. Among other engagements, she unveiled a plaque at Arlington National Cemetery dedicated to American recipients of Britain’s highest military honor, the Victoria Cross. These exceptional Americans received the Victoria Cross (rather than its U.S. equivalent, the Medal of Honor) because they fought with the armed forces of Canada, then part of the British Empire.

Today, Canada is a key member of the Commonwealth, an association of 53 nations that aims, among other things, to promote human rights and good governance. Hundreds of Commonwealth war cemeteries across the world mark the shared sacrifice of men and women from all over the Commonwealth.

More and more, British and American military personnel work together not just in training and on operations but in recuperation. Two months ago, at London’s Olympic Park, Princess Anne’s nephew, Prince Harry, hosted the inaugural Invictus Games, bringing together wounded British, American and allied servicemen and women in a hugely successful sporting competition modeled on America’s own Warrior Games.

President Wilson was, understandably, reluctant to bring the United States into a conflict he described, with some reason, as “the most terrible and disastrous of all wars.” But in explaining his decision to do so, he hit upon what I believe are some of the lasting themes of the special relationship.

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The purposes of Veterans Day and Memorial Day are often confused. Memorial Day honors military personnel who died in service to their country.

Veterans Day thanks all men and women who have served honorably in the military during times of war and peace. To these brave men and women, we offer the following tribute:

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
— John Fitzgerald Kennedy

“Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhow

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We live in a world at the moment in which in many areas it feels as though the darkness is falling ever more severely on whole swathes and regions of the world, and in which the light of news very often seems to go out. Whole areas where there is fighting that is forgotten because there is simply so much of it. Whole areas which depend only on the likes of James Foley and Steven Sotloff to show some light on what is happening.

The front-line reporter is the one who sees first-hand what is going on. They are the look-outs, who stand on the watchtower, day after day and all night long, in the watches of the night. “Watchman, how goes the night?”, as Isaiah described it from two and a half thousand years ago. They are the ones who witness the full horror of what is going on and dare to speak it. The rest of us are one step, or many steps, removed ”“ both from the adrenalin and from the agony. We rely on the reports. And the nature of the reports has become more and more immediate, of that we can be thankful.

I remember as a child being shown a letter from an ancestor who had been in the Charge of the Light Brigade, and wrote to his mother that evening to reassure her that he was alive and unhurt and to describe the battle. In those days things were heard by word of mouth, by propaganda. It was the bush telegraph, famously unreliable, exceptionally partial and profoundly delayed.

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Simply put, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. According to yesterday’s exit polls, the religious layout of the electorate looks almost identical to the last midterm election in 2010, and not much different from the 2012 presidential election.

In 2010, Protestants voted Republican 59 percent to 38 percent, this time it was 60-38. (White Protestants went from 69-28 to 71-27.) As for Catholics, it was 54-44 Republican in 2010, 53-45 this year, with white Catholics staying at exactly 59-39. For the Nones, it was 68-30 Democratic in 2010 and 69-29 this year. The only significant difference from 2012 came among Catholics, who that year voted narrowly Democratic, 50-48. At 57-42, Protestants were only marginally less Republican.

The one group that appears to have shifted significantly compared to the last midterm were members of “other religions” ”” Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, etc. In 2010, three out of four voted Democratic, while this time around it was two out of three. And given that their proportion of the vote increased from 8 percent to 11 percent, that was not a trivial number of votes.

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The split of the Fort Worth Episcopalians became official in 2008 when Bishop Jack Iker and a majority of the 56 congregations in the 28-county diocese voted to leave the national church, saying its leadership had moved away from biblical and church tradition in many ways….

Episcopalians loyal to the national church went to court, arguing that under the Episcopal Church’s “Dennis Canon,” diocese property should belong to those still loyal to the national church.

In 2011, state District Judge John Chupp agreed, ruling that because the Episcopal Church is a hierarchical body, property should be retained by the group still loyal to the national church.

Iker’s group appealed, and the Texas Supreme Court ordered Chupp to rehear the case and to base his judgment on neutral principles of Texas law governing nonreligious groups.

The group loyal to the national church appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Most American evangelicals hold views condemned as heretical by some of the most important councils of the early church.

A survey released today by LifeWay Research for Ligonier Ministries “reveals a significant level of theological confusion,” said Stephen Nichols, Ligonier’s chief academic officer. Many evangelicals do not have orthodox views about either God or humans, especially on questions of salvation and the Holy Spirit, he said.

Evangelicals did score high on several points. Nearly all believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead (96%), and that salvation is found through Jesus alone (92%). Strong majorities said that God is sovereign over all people (89%) and that the Bible is the Word of God (88%).

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In its report to Synod on divorce, the bishops noted the issue was controversial and that the church was not of one mind. “The Church of England’s teaching is that it can be said of two living people that they were married and are no longer married. The Church of England recognises the sincerely held convictions of those who do not believe this because, on theological grounds, they hold that marriage is indissoluble. It also respects the convictions of those who, while not holding an indissolubilist view, believe that further marriage after divorce is not an option for those in ordained ministry.”

The national secretary of Forward in Faith at that time, the Rev. Geoffrey Kirk said its members believed that Scripture was clear in stating that divorce and remarriage were not permissible for Christians. He told the Sunday Telegraph: “The doctrine of matrimony is closely associated with ecclesiology and so it would seem utterly unacceptable that divorce and remarriage be part of the regimen of those who are called to represent and effect the unity of the Church.”

“Promoting divorced bishops is a far more serious matter than homosexual bishops because it is undermining one of the fundamental teachings of scripture.”

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[Here are]…Pham’s own words ”” the next two paragraphs of the story:

“I would first and foremost like to thank God, my family, and friends. Throughout this ordeal, I have put my trust in God and my medical team,” she said. “I am on my way back to recovery, even as I reflect on how many others have not been so fortunate.”

Pham, 26, said she felt “fortunate and blessed to be standing here today,” praised the care she received in Dallas and Maryland, asked for her privacy and said all she really wants to do is come home and be reunited with her 1-year-old Cavalier King Charles spaniel.

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Andy Warhol was a devout Catholic.

That’s a weird sounding sentence, isn’t it? It doesn’t say that Warhol — the hipster icon, godfather of Pop Art, and gay trailblazer — was a lapsed Catholic. Or an indifferent Catholic. Or ironic Catholic.

It says that Warhol was a devout Catholic. He prayed and went to Mass. He volunteered in a soup kitchen. Andy Warhol was a believer.

I was reminded of Warhol’s Catholicism recently when I was witness to two supposedly incongruous exhibits.

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“Sex and the Altar” was the title our campus minister gave to a series on sexuality, hoping students might mistake it for a similar, more blasphemous phrase. (You have to be creative to get the attention of the 18”“22 set.) It worked. The campus ministry house was full to bursting for those talks. In one session, two married clergy of differing orientations and races led a discussion about premarital sex. With passion and emotion, students discussed how to live a life in Christ while being in committed, sexually intimate relationships. After an hour or so, the clergy shared their beliefs, stating that they agreed with the position of our denomination: sex belongs only within the sanctity of marriage. Engaged discussion turned to silence, then anger and fear. One young woman broke down in tears. The students had made themselves vulnerable, and their church had shut the door in their faces. Later the two ministers recanted and explained that they’d wanted to show this contrast.

Mainline churches have struggled to express a theology, ethics, or spirituality of sexuality. The liberal church I attended while growing up was silent on the issue despite being quite vocal on many others. In my twenties I turned a few times to evangelical websites, looking for any kind of theology of singleness and sexuality that I could relate to.

Verlee Copeland and Dale Ro­sen­berger seek to fill that mainline gap, countering both “society’s prevailing affirmation of sex as entertainment” and the “painful chasm between our spiritual and physical natures” in traditional church teaching.

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The warm horizontal light of @BowdoinCollege. The weather is amazing & the leaves match that. #Bowdoin #Maine pic.twitter.com/6hPllrfCIz

— Jen Jack Gieseking (@jgieseking) September 28, 2014

“The easiest 50 bucks I ever spent.”

That’s what the Michigan police officer said after purchasing a booster seat for a 5-year-old girl who was riding without a car seat.

This instance of gift-giving began as an ordinary traffic stop. Last Friday, Emmett Township Department of Public Safety Officer Ben Hall stopped a vehicle in the southwest Michigan community after someone reported there was a young child riding without a car seat. Alexis DeLorenzo and her daughter were driving in the car of a friend who was at the wheel.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has claimed the authority to determine who is Anglican. In a wide ranging conversation with the Church of Ireland Gazette, the archbishop offered his appreciation of the ecclesiology of the Anglican Communion, placing his office in the center of the church’s polity.

He further stated he saw the Anglican Church in North America as an ecumenical partner, not a member church of the Anglican Communion.

While Archbishop Justin Welby’s comments about the ecclesial relationship between the Church of England and the ACNA break no new ground, his defense of his appointment of an ACNA priest to an honorary post in the Church of England by asserting the priest’s orders were valid as they were conveyed by the Episcopal Church of the USA raises the question of the validity of the ministerial orders conveyed by ACNA’s bishops.

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O Lord, who by triumphing over the power of darkness, didst Prepare our place in the New Jerusalem: Grant us, who have this day given thanks for thy resurrection, to praise thee in that city whereof thou art the light; where with the Father and the Holy Spirit thou livest and reignest, world without end.

— William Bright

My motto has always been to “serve God and serve humanity.” There is no better time to stand with my country than now. Through Living Water, I’ve seen the women widowed and children orphaned by the outbreak. I’ve heard from people unable to afford food as prices rise in the midst of government lockdowns, surviving on rainwater alone.

As Jesus showed us, ministry is relational and asks standing with our neighbors and loved ones during challenging times. I can’t abandon my people. For my nation, Sierra Leone, I must serve as a change agent, just as Christ was, with love and compassion for the people. My desire is to see others live on in health and strength so that they can have the opportunity to hear and share the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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How contagious is the virus?
Officials have emphasized that people are only infectious if they have symptoms of Ebola. There is no risk of transmission from people who have been exposed to the virus but are not yet showing symptoms. You are not likely to catch Ebola just by being in proximity to someone who has the virus. It is not spread through the air like the flu or respiratory viruses such as SARS.

Instead, Ebola spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids. If an infected person’s blood or vomit gets in another person’s eyes, nose or mouth, the infection may be transmitted. In the current outbreak, most new cases are occurring among people who have been taking care of sick relatives or who have prepared an infected body for burial.

Health care workers are at high risk, especially if they have not been properly equipped with protective gear or correctly trained to use and decontaminate it.

The virus can survive on surfaces, so any object contaminated with bodily fluids, like a latex glove or a hypodermic needle, may spread the disease.

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When Jennifer Hopper raced to the emergency room after her husband, Craig, took a baseball in the face, she made sure they went to a hospital in their insurance network in Texas. So when they got a $937 bill from the emergency room doctor, she called the insurer, assuming it was in error.

But the bill was correct: UnitedHealthcare, the insurance company, had paid its customary fee of $151.02 and expected the Hoppers to pay the remaining $785.98, because the doctor at Seton Northwest Hospital in Austin did not participate in their network.

“It never occurred to me that the first line of defense, the person you have to see in an in-network emergency room, could be out of the network,” said Ms. Hopper, who has spent months fighting the bill. “In-network means we just get the building? I thought the doctor came with the E.R.”

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Christianity in Britain is declining at a faster rate that had previously been thought, according to an analysis of the 2011 census figures by the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
The new analysis shows that Christianity is declining 50 per cent faster than had been estimated. In its initial analysis ONS found a 15 per cent decline, but this figure included 1.2 million Christians born overseas. A more detailed analysis also came up with the finding that the majority of Christians are now aged over 60 (a quarter of them over 65) and that for the first time less than half of young people describe themselves as Christians.
As a result ONS has calculated that in a decade only a minority will describe themselves as Christians. In the 2011 census the figure stood at just under 60 per cent with a total of 33.2 million followers.

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So who is he? Stoke City kit man, clown with Billy Smart’s circus, part of the furniture at Keele University for half a century, Neil Baldwin’s life seems to defy definition. Journalists have tried: a Walter Mitty with true stories; Keele University’s mascot.

Above all, Neil is a Christian.

“Every morning I get up and pray. Prayer is the best gift you can have.” I ask him whether his faith comes through in the documentary and he smiles. “My friends who came along to the premiere said ”˜you’ve put God in it first’ ”“ and that’s it how should be. Sometimes Christianity is not portrayed very well. If you’ve got no Lord, you are lost. God is always working in me, and through all the people that I’ve met.“

“Where do you go to church?” he asks. I tell him, and he shoots straight back “Your curate’s leaving, isn’t he? He’ll be missed. And a very good cricketer.” With unerring detail, Neil proceeds to tell me a history of comings and goings from my church over the years.

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O God, who for our redemption didst give thine only begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection hast delivered us from the power of the enemy: Grant us to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Gregorian Sacramentary

As the people were in expectation, and all men questioned in their hearts concerning John, whether perhaps he were the Christ, John answered them all, “I baptize you with water; but he who is mightier than I is coming, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

So, with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people. But Herod the tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Hero”²di-as, his brother’s wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, added this to them all, that he shut up John in prison.

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven, “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.”

–Luke 3:15-22

There is something quite surreal about the prospect of a vote, by those who happen to reside in Scotland at the moment, on whether or not the 300-year-old Union of Great Britain should continue. Despite the opinion polls, I have a sneaky feeling that it will be a fairly clear ”˜No’ vote. Because of the emotive nationalism, my sense is that people are reluctant to tell anyone that they are planning to vote ”˜No’, and so the pollster results are skewed towards ”˜Yes.’

But whatever the result, there are going to be some serious recriminations about the way the whole process has been conducted. It is breathtaking to consider the misjudgements, incompetence and constitutional wrecking that has marked the whole process. These are the most obvious blunders:

”¢ Cameron insisting that the vote was a straight ”˜yes’ or ”˜no’, out of hubristic confidence that Scots would not dare to vote ”˜yes’, instead of including a third option.

”¢ Allowing the ”˜better together’ position to be called ”˜No.’ Not surprisingly, this looks rather negative, as does any campaign to maintain the status quo. If there had been any thought at all about this, the vote would have been cast as between ”˜yes to independence’ versus ”˜yes to union’””or, better still, ”˜yes to union’ versus ”˜no to union.’

”¢Putting that third option (the so-called ”˜devo max’) option on the table the week before the vote, which looks to everyone like a cross between a panic measure and a bribe.

ӢThe sloppy definition of who can vote, so that residents in Scotland with no long-term stake can vote, whereas those who have a long Scottish heritage but happen to have moved to England or another country cannot.

”¢The notion of making constitutional change on a mere 50% of those voting. Even a debating society has a 2/3 threshold for constitutional change””and if there is less than 100% turnout, this change could happen with a minority of the electorate voting for it, let alone a minority of all Scots.

”¢The idea that one part of the United Kingdom can vote itself independent regardless of the will of the rest of the Union. Scotland comprises 8% of the UK population””so why couldn’t other areas with 8% also decide to secede? At what percentage does the other half have a say?

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