The American hospice movement is thriving. Forty-two percent of all Americans who died in 2010 were in hospice care””up from 22 percent in 2000. The number of organizations providing hospice care has grown steadily, up 13 percent from 2006””from 4,500 to over 5,000””as has the length of time that patients spend in hospice care. More people are spending their dying days experiencing the holistic medicine and dignified care that hospice seeks to provide.

But the growth in the hospice movement has tended to neglect African Americans. African Americans constitute 13 percent of the U.S. population, but only 8 percent of hospice patients are African American””even though blacks have the highest cancer rates of all ethnicities and are more likely to die from cancer than whites.

Read it all.

Passing from a state of keenest grief I came to one of quiet reconcilement—-to the profound conviction that, living or dying, God will take care of us. God seemed very near to me in that wood; the beauty of it all trembled with His grace; the music held His voice. I saw there both life and death—-in the green leaves and the brown, in the standing trees and in the fallen. If one is honest with himself when he asks the question, What is it that perishes? he will be obliged to answer, Everything that the eye sees. In the forest, amid those things that God provided, I came to understand that if we are to hold anything—-and in times of sorrow we must have something to which we can cling—it must be to the unseen. For the strength that is permanent, we have to lean on visions; for immortal hope, we have to trust, not the things that we perceive but those invisible things that our spirits affirms.

–Archibald Rutledge, Life’s Extras (hat tip: DF)

In principle, what needs to be known about the nominees can already be known. It is a candidate’s past performance, outside the walls of Synod Hall, that really matters. Evidence can be gathered from the spheres in which his ministry has been exercised, for that evidence already exists in the real world amongst the real people who have experienced his ministry already. There is nothing mysterious about any candidate, the data simply needs to be gathered:

Has he been gospel focussed (or not)? Has he encouraged Christ’s mission (or not)? Does he clarify gospel truth and stand for it (or not)? Has he made good appointments of other people (or not)? Has he built and encouraged a ministry team (or not)? What is his track record of growing a congregation in strength and size (or not), or of successfully planting and growing new congregations (or not)? Does he know the world of the laity””has he encouraged ”˜people like me’ in my part of Christ’s mission-field (or not)? Does he know the weaknesses and struggles of being a human being in a suffering world, so that, having been comforted himself, he can bring the comfort of the grace of God to others (or not)? Does he know how to encourage his fellow clergy to keep at their task of shepherding God’s flock with patience and joyful endurance (or not)?

Read it all.

Tensions ran high at a north Charlotte church Sunday morning as members protested Pastor Andrew Rollinson’s leadership, saying he was fired nearly three months ago but refuses to leave.

“Rollinson must go!” about a dozen people chanted outside Morningstar Baptist Church at 5623 Phillips St. “When? Today!”

Rollinson said he has no intention of leaving the church. He said the members who fired him did not follow church bylaws, and therefore the decision is invalid. He did not say how the members violated the bylaws.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/07/21/4179928/members-of-charlotte-church-protest.htmlRead it all.

So how can we be shaken out of our lethargy and awakened to our need to grow? Here are some principles that I have gleaned from Newton’s letters over the years.

1. Know that your worst character flaws are the ones you can see the least.
By definition the sins to which you are most blind, that you make the most excuses for, and that you usually minimize””are the ones that most have you in their grip. As we said before, one way we hide our blemishes is that we look at places that our natural temperament resembles spiritual fruit. For example, a natural aptitude for control and self-discipline can be read as ”˜faithfulness’, and a natural desire for personal approval could look like ”˜gentleness’ or ”˜love.’ Or we mistake a bubbly, sanguine temperament for joy, and a laid-back, phlegmatic temperament for peace. We give ourselves spiritual credit for these things, when actually we aren’t growing spiritually at all. The lack of other fruit shows that real supernatural character change is not happening.

2. Remember that you can’t learn about your biggest flaws just be being told””you must be shown.
There are two ways we come to see our sins and flaws more clearly. One way is that we are shown them by troubles and trials in life. Suffering is ”˜God’s gymnasium’””it reveals our spiritual weaknesses just as a workout reveals physical weaknesses.

Read it all.

A new approach to caring for young adults with developmental, cognitive and intellectual disabilities is quietly rooting and growing in a cozy mustard-colored house behind a West Ashley strip mall.

The dozen or so participants at Healing Farms Ministries recently graduated high school, and said good-bye to all of the structure and help that the school system provided them.

Read it all.

The crown jewels of the Church of England are its parishes. Priests have the cure of souls””not just the churchgoers but of every resident of the neighborhood, where every blade of grass in the entire country has a church that seeks to make itself in some way a blessing to all, where the clergy know that “I can’t know everyone, but everyone can know me.” But this inheritance is under pressure. In the corners of clergy gatherings there are mutterings. Stories are told of spouses or friends in health care and education who see very few patients or students any more, but instead sit behind computers filling in forms about targets and thresholds. The same is said about priests””that a Prussian-style bureaucracy is infesting the poetry of the priest’s relationship to the parish.

In the Church of England, parish clergy are all paid the same; there are no “rich rectors” with well-endowed churches and sprawling expense accounts, so the conventional commercial appraisal””balance sheet healthy, 2 percent pay increase, MBA completed, another 2 percent increase””doesn’t apply. But now appraisal schemes for ministry review have been introduced by some dioceses, and this is the bureaucracy that is resented by clergy who see it, with its target goals, assessments, statistics and accountability, as another layer of control.

When I overhear the clergy grumbling, the elderly Welsh millworker comes to mind, and I find myself asking, “Shouldn’t we pause for a moment and ask ourselves why all these systems and controls have been introduced? Isn’t it because the glorious parish system puts the parish priest in a position of extraordinary trust, and because that trust has gone without honor rather more times than we’d care to admit?”

Read it all.

To compare the mentality of a brother bishop to school shooters (see here), or to call him and presumably those close to him “petty deciders or wolves who masquerade as sheep” is incredibly inappropriate for any Christian, not to mention bizarre. I truly have never before heard or read such a spiteful and hate-fueled speech on either side of our present unpleasantness. This type of hateful and over the top language is even worse coming from a leader who claims to speak for the “national Church” and all Episcopalians. Let me be clear: I am an Episcopal priest and the Presiding Bishop does not speak for me. I have no delusion that I share in any ownership of anything outside of my parish and my diocese. The idea that one person, even if one agrees with the present incumbent, can speak for all Episcopalians is sheer lunacy.

To be fair, this centralization of power and influence certainly did not start with the present Presiding Bishop, but we do well to consider the state in which we find ourselves. Power corrupts, and the Presiding Bishop rightly notes that when one figure assumes the power it often leads to abuse, tyranny and corruption. She apparently fails to see how this truth has been demonstrated in her term as Presiding Bishop. Fast tracking bishops to “renounce their orders” rather than letting the House of Bishops speak, inhibiting without the consent of the three most senior active bishops (which the new Title IV conveniently does not require), and setting up new dioceses (which TEC has every right to do) while violating the canons of TEC all point to an office that has overgrown its canonical bounds and is running unchecked.

Read it all.

Dear Friends,

I’m often asked “What does it mean to be a member of St. John’s?” and I usually answer, “it all depends.” Of course it is possible to wax theological about the fact that through the resurrection, God put all things under Jesus’ feet “and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph 1:22-23). Clearly, the church is at the heart of God’s eternal purposes and infinitely precious to Christ. But I think people are usually after a more concrete and practical answer.

There is a very helpful answer to this question on p. 555 of our Book of Common Prayer which enunciates six practical commitments. It states:

Every Christian man or woman should from time to time frame for himself or herself a RULE OF LIFE in accordance with the precepts of the Gospel and the faith and order of the Church; wherein he or she may consider the following:
The regularity of attendance at public worship and especially at the Holy Communion;
The practice of private prayer, Bible-reading, and self-discipline;
Bringing the teaching and example of Christ into everyday life;
The boldness of spoken witness to our faith in Christ;
Personal service to the Church and the community;
The offering of money according to our means for the support of the work of the Church at home and abroad.

“Rule of Life” is an unfortunate title, conjuring images of monastic asceticism and itchy clothing, or more commandments to make us feel guilty, or worse””a list of duties to tick so I can know God cannot ask any more from me. That is not what the Prayer Book intends.
Everything we do in the Christian life is in response to the grace and goodness of God. In the death of Jesus we are remade and flooded with the Holy Spirit, who spreads the love of God and the obedience to God in our hearts. It is true that most monastic orders have a “Rule of Life” (usually poverty, chastity, and obedience), but the old Latin word for ”˜Rule’ is ”˜Regula’””which means a pattern or model to regulate our lives.

So the six principles in the BCP “Rule of Life” are intended to show what a “cross-shaped life” looks like. They are not meant to be read legalistically or as a means to gain God’s favor, but as a way to nourish our love for God and one another in practice precisely because we know God’s favour in Jesus Christ. They are the visible, realistic, and balanced behaviours of those who have been gripped by God’s grace.

I commend them to you for your summer meditation.

–(The Rev.) David Short is rector, Saint John’s, Vancouver, B.C.

After the Germans invaded Poland, the Lewis brothers opened up The Kilns to children forced to evacuate the big cities. The first group was four school girls, and throughout the war several other groups of children came in and out of their home. The highlight during this time was a delightful sixteen-year-old named June Flewett. She brought much fun and laughter to the household. The Lewises’ gift of hospitality was being reciprocated by the gift of joy that emanated from this young lady.

In his later years Lewis opened his home to a brash, gifted, divorced, Jewish American follower of Jesus, Joy Gresham Davidman, and her two sons. This relationship, retold in the movie Shadowlands, once again highlights Lewis’s hospitality. After spending time with Joy’s sons, David and Douglas, Lewis wrote humorously in a letter to his friend Ruth Pitter, “I never knew what we celibates are shielded from. I will never laugh at parents again. Not that the boys weren’t a delight: but a delight like surf-bathing which leaves one breathless and aching. The energy, the tempo, is what kills.”

Read it all.

I find joy in every day, not because life is always good, but because God is.

In spite of assurances from Bishops and senior church officers that a change to the marriage canon would not be pursued at the 2013 General Synod, two members from the Diocese of Nova Scotia will do exactly that.

The motion reads:
Be it resolved that this General Synod direct the Council of General Synod to prepare and present a motion at General Synod 2016 to change Canon XXI on Marriage to allow the marriage of same sex couples in the same way as opposite sex couples . . . (Resolution #C003)

It offers this defense:
It has been 6 years since General synod last debated this issue. Since then, some dioceses have proceeded in a manner they deemed necessary to meet the local pastoral and other needs with respect to the blessing of same sex civil marriages. It has been over 10 years since such civil marriages were legal in Canada. The general public has become much more accepting of same sex unions since we last discussed it. This is also true of the church, though not, of course, universally so….

Read it all.

Middle-aged and senior women at a Knoxville church did a Harlem Shake dance, while a Kodak church’s staff plans to jump out of an airplane.

These activities may seem a little out of the ordinary, but they are being done by area United Methodist church members to allow one very normal activity letting more people in Africa enjoy everyday life without the fear of malaria.

Since the worldwide United Methodist Church decided to try to raise $75 million in the fight against malaria due in part to the urging of Microsoft president and philanthropist Bill Gates, the local Holston Conference agreed in 2012 to try to raise $1 million.

Read it all.

If my gay and lesbian peers have the right to sexual union and companionship, why don’t I? If the scriptural passages forbidding homosexual behavior apply only to a particular context, then surely the passages about fornication (sexual behavior outside marriage) and Paul’s praise for singleness are also culturally bound. And so long as marriage ascends into the echelons of existential imperative””you must have this in order to be a complete human being””then my singleness becomes a problem. It is no longer a unique witness to the kingdom, where people “will neither marry nor are given in marriage.” It no longer reveals that the water of baptism is thicker than blood””that an entire generation of Christians could be single, and still God would renew his church. Instead, it becomes a second-class existence.

Read it all.

“The tradition of forgiving was central to the civil rights movement, and it’s grounded in two things,” said the Rev. Jonathan L. Walton, a professor of Christian morals at Harvard and minister of its Memorial Church. “One cannot be held accountable for how others treat us, but we can be held accountable by God for how we treat others. So forgiveness and reconciliation are central to us. Particularly for Martin Luther King, it was not about defeating an enemy but defeating injustice by bringing people from opposing sides into beloved community.”

Some of those moments of reconciliation have been soul-stirring in their force. One thinks of former Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama rolling his wheelchair into a reunion of Selma marchers in 1995 to renounce the segregationist beliefs that had defined his political career. Yet even if the offender never apologizes at all, black Christianity has repeatedly offered God’s grace in the all-too-real world.

“Forgiveness is just expected,” said the Rev. Douglas A. Slaughter, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Aiken, S.C. “Even as a child, we were not allowed to hate the racist but to hate racism, and to fight against it. We were taught ways to understand that the racist is more in need of understanding than we were. It’s just how you were raised.”

Read it all.

Assurances that a candidate for the episcopate who is in a civil partnership is living a celibate life may not be sufficient to qualify him for appointment to a bishopric, new guidance from the Church of England’s legal office said this week.

The revised guidance on the impact of the 2010 Equality Act on the selection of bishops follows the decision by the House of Bishops last year to lift the ban on celibate clergy in civil partnerships’ being put forward for the episcopate….

Like the old guidance, the new document explains that, while it is unlawful to treat a candidate to an office less favourably than other candidates because of his sexual orientation or civil partnership, churches and other religious organisations can apply requirements relating to sexual conduct, including a requirement not to be in a civil partnership “where that requirement is applied to give effect to the non-conflict principle”.

Read it all.

After 25 years of consulting and researching local congregations, I have found four common approaches churches take to break attendance barriers regardless of size. There are certainly more than four possibilities, but allow me to evaluate these four more common approaches.

Read it all.

Listen to it all.

I recently received the following message from a stranger: “So basically, the ”˜orthodox Catholic’ game you all play is just that . . . a game?” It was in reference to a Catholic man with whom I am friendly, and like very much. She had apparently read on social media that this man was planning to marry another man.

My friend had never “come out” to me, and””call me old-fashioned, or call me incurious””it had never occurred to me to ask, so the wedding plans were mildly surprising. But reading the email I thought, “Yes, so? What does this woman want me to do? Should I now hate him? Am I supposed to ”˜un-friend’ him (that ridiculous term) or even publicly denounce him in order to demonstrate sufficiently ”˜orthodox’ Catholic bona fides for her satisfaction? Is that what she wants?”

Well, I couldn’t do that….

Read it all.

My first congregation was located in a diminishing rural area, but after a year, we were growing. We began a youth group. Families and young members began attending. More people started commuting from the larger city to attend the church.

Then the local governing body put a minimum salary in place that was 10k above what I made. I applied for a grant that got me enough money for the next three years, but a struggle at the church arose between those who wanted to “go out with a bang” and those who wanted to hold onto the little bit in the bank account. There was an idea that having money in the bank was going to keep the church alive for an eternity. So I got a better job. (And yes, it was a better job at a more stable church. I don’t want to spiritualize it too much by saying it was God’s calling.)

When I look back, I’m sad about how it all went down. Not to overblow my importance, but it was as if the church didn’t buy the prescription medicine that they needed to live well, because it would cost too much.

Read it all.

Priests working through the ”˜S curve’ of change in their ministry should seek inspiration from 20th Century poet and priest RS Thomas and the film Of Gods and Men, suggests the book Moving on in Ministry. Being launched this week at the Seventh Annual Faith in Research conference at Church House, London, the book comprises essays focusing on transition and change by respected authors in their fields*.

Realising that development can slow down then speed up in an ”˜S’ shape , and can actually take place without moving to a new role, the book encourages priests to make reflective and practical responses to moving on in ministry. It begins with an essay by Tim Harle on the ”˜S Curve’, to help priests identify where they are in the process of accommodating the change they are experiencing; and also to help them “live comfortably out of control”.

Mark Pryce uses the poetry metaphors for priesthood of RS Thomas to analyse change, looking particularly at the “self-in-relation to God” and the “mystery of God disclosed or hidden in others”; Thomas’s poem The Moor, for example, is quoted from: “There were no prayers said. But stillness of the heart’s passions ”“ that was praise enough.”

Read it all.

Whenever we come close to despair, the strongest lifeline is to think like Joseph. That is how psychotherapist Viktor Frankl saved the lives of several of his fellow prisoners in Auschwitz, by helping them realise that they had a task to perform or a mission to fulfil that they could only do by surviving. This gave them the will to live. People who have suffered tragedy have often found meaning by alleviating the suffering of others. The grief may not disappear but it is redeemed. The adagio, with its intense sadness, is not the last movement of the symphony.

Seen through the eyes of faith life is not what Joseph Heller called it: “a trashbag of random coincidences blown open in a wind.” Each of us is here for a reason, to do something only we can do, and all the pain and heartbreak are bearable if we can discern God’s purpose or hear, however muffled, His call. As Nietzsche used to say, “He who has a strong enough Why can bear almost any How.”

In crisis, the wrong question to ask is, “What have I done to deserve this?” The right one is, “What am I now being summoned to do?” Each of us has a task. Every life has a purpose. We can bear the pain of the past when we discover the future we are called on to make.

Read it all.

The city of Philadelphia has rejected overtures made by Archbishop Charles Chaput and others to give the babies killed by notorious “House of Horrors” abortionist Kermit Gosnell a fitting burial.

For now, the unclaimed fetal remains of Gosnell’s victims, once stored in the abortionist’s freezer, will have their final resting place at the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office.

At the close of the trial that resulted in Gosnell’s conviction on three charges of first-degree murder, Archbishop Chaput renewed the archdiocese’s request made back in 2011 to gain custody of the bodies of Gosnell’s fetal victims and bury them.

Read it all.

We need to go deeper to the only lasting way to change our hearts””take them to the radical, costly grace of God in Christ on the cross. You show your heart the infinite depths to which he went so that you would be free from sin and its condemnation. This fills you with a sense not just of the danger or sin, but also of its grievousness. Think about how ungrateful it is, think of how your sin is not just against God’s law but also against his heart. Melt your heart with the knowledge of what he’s done for you. Tremble before the knowledge of what he is worth””he is worthy of all glory.

A second powerful thought from Newton is this: we sin not simply out of a rebellious desire to be our own masters, but also because we are looking to things besides God to satisfy and fulfill us. While Newton was good at pointing out the danger of having too low or light a view of one’s sin, he was also good at pointing out the opposite problem””too light a grasp of what Jesus has done for us.

Read it all.

In the… [crucial] section of his order, Judge Houck sets out the law that is applicable to these various claims and assertions (“Standard of Review”). Citing another 4th Circuit case which is binding upon him, Judge Houck writes: “Thus, ‘(i)f a plaintiff can establish, without the resolution of an issue of federal law, all of the essential elements of his state law claim, then the claim does not necessarily depend on a question of federal law.” To determine this question, the U.S. Supreme Court requires a federal court to which a state-law case has been removed to analyze whether or not the federal claim involved is “substantial”, or is merely an incident to the dispute:

Under the substantial federal question doctrine, “federal jurisdiction over a state law claim will lie if a federal issue is: (1) necessarily raised, (2) actually disputed, (3) substantial, and (4) capable of resolution in federal court without disrupting the federal-state balance approved by Congress.” … If the defendant fails to demonstrate all four of these elements, removal is improper under this doctrine.

Now Judge Houck turns to a detailed analysis of the defendants’ arguments to see how they fare under each of the four prongs of this test. He preliminarily disposes of the defendants’ claims concerning the Lanham (federal trademark) Act, and observes that the plaintiffs had the absolute right to base their complaint upon State trademark law only. Thus the fact that there may be federal-law claims assertable in addition to the state-law ones pled in the complaint is irrelevant to the analysis.

And in a few thoroughly researched and well-written pages, Judge Houck now demonstrates how insubstantial are the defendants’ federal-law arguments. He takes each of the four prongs one by one, and shows how the defendants’ arguments fail to satisfy any of them. ((That is why Judge Houck’s order would almost certainly be upheld if defendants were able to appeal from it (see below). Failing four out of four grounds of the test does not even make this a close case….)

Read it all and please note that there is a link provded to the full document from the Judge for those of you interested in such things–KSH.

When it comes to leading denominational conversations on sexual violence, clergy across traditions express twin reactions: encouragement over the protocols already in place and the efforts of fellow advocates; and frustration with a culture of silence around sexual violence in the church. Despite strikingly different experiences across denominations ”” and church by church ”” the clergy, church staff, and seminarians who spoke with Sojourners are in agreement that addressing this issue in one’s own house is complicated at every level.

First, the good news: Several major Protestant denominations, across progressive and fundamentalist strains, subscribe to a practice of what the United Methodist Church calls “safe sanctuary” ”” a commitment to ensure their church buildings and leadership are free from sexual predators. These policies generally include running background checks on any volunteers working with children and establishing protocols (many developed by Marie Fortune and the Faith Trust Institute) for interpersonal interaction at the church.

These denominational policies are the first line of defense against abuse, particularly of children, in houses of worship. So what else, if anything, beyond this basic groundwork is needed from leadership?

This is where consensus breaks down, and in speaking with clergy and seminarians across denominations and traditions, various barriers and fear patterns were revealed.

Read it all.

Jim Lewis, Canon to Diocese Bishop Mark Lawrence, said the Diocese is very pleased with the decision since the “issues involved are essentially those of legal identity and are wholly determined by state law, so the most appropriate place to settle is clearly in state court, where we first took the matter.”

Thomas S. Tisdale, Jr., Chancellor of TECinSC said the group is disappointed with the result, but “we are confident in our legal position going forward.”

A separate federal lawsuit, filed by Bishop Charles G. von Rosenberg, who heads TECinSC, is still before Judge Houck. That suit asks the court to find that only Bishop von Rosenberg, as The Episcopal Church’s recognized bishop, should control the name and marks of the diocese.

Read it all.

“Reunification might not be the right thing everywhere in the Episcopal Church,” Jennings said. “But I think it’s a hopeful sign that people within the church are willing to try new things. It shows the rest of the church that we can do things different ways and there are new ways of being able to collaborate.”

Others, however, are skeptical that reunification will do much to help a church struggling with internal dissent and decreasing membership.

“I think the right way to see it is as a face-saving attempt of a denomination that’s facing significant internal hemorrhaging,” said the Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon, an Episcopal scholar in the Diocese of South Carolina. Though the geography makes sense, he said, “it does not reflect the kind of radical restructuring that needs to happen.”

Read it all.

My spiritual director, a Norbertine Priest, diagnosed the problem as impasse and gave me an article by Constance Fitzgerald on the subject.

By impasse, I mean that there is no way out of, no way around, no rational escape from, what imprisons one, no possibilities in the situation. In a true impasse, every normal manner of acting is brought to a standstill, and ironically, impasse is experienced not only in the problem itself but also in any solution rationally attempted. Every logical solution remains unsatisfying, at the very least. The whole life situation suffers a depletion, has the word limits written upon it”¦.

This has been my relationship with the church for the past seven years””no way out of, no way around a sense of exile and alienation, despite much effort. Fitzgerald ties this to the teaching of the imprisoned 16th-century monk St. John of the Cross. In impasse, God is at work preparing us to know him in new ways. So, the proper response to impasse””as to the dark night””is not frantic effort, but simple, expectant waiting on God, “contenting [oneself] with merely a peaceful and loving attentiveness toward God, and in being without anxiety, without the ability and without desire to have experience of Him or to perceive Him,” as St. John of the Cross writes in The Dark Night of the Soul.

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Church Pension Group issued a statement Tuesday saying it is trying to ensure that clergy and employees in parishes that have left The Episcopal Church have access to their funds, in accordance with federal laws.

“In doing so, we are following protocols required by the Internal Revenue Code to avoid any adverse consequences for the participants in the plans,” the statement said. “We expect to complete this process shortly. In the meantime, all funds remain invested in the options selected by these employees, and all accounts are fully viewable on (a) website.”

[Canon Jim] Lewis said he has consulted lawyers for the diocese and is unaware of any legal issues precluding employees from rolling over their plans. He believes that preventing employees from doing so could be illegal.

Read it all.