Ask Margaret Feinberg what she thinks of being one of the leading evangelical female voices in a mostly male arena, and she bypasses the issue of gender. “I don’t really think about it. I walk into a room and see amazing leaders, thoughtful presenters, and compelling communicators regardless of gender.” Feinberg is the author most recently of Hungry for God, which reflects on ways to recognize and satisfy our longings for holy relationship in the midst of our daily lives. Having penned more than two dozen books and Bible studies, including The Organic God (Zondervan), The Sacred Echo (Zondervan), and Scouting the Divine (Zondervan), Feinberg recently released the six-week John and Genesis Bible studies series (September 2011), and is considering developing another study on the Gospel of Luke….

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Church leadership in the 21st century involves making numerous decisions about the future of ministry, frequently against a backdrop of rapid change and poorly understood but increasingly challenging circumstances.

For example, at the beginning of the 21st century, a number of churches are either in decline or (by contrast) are experiencing significant numerical growth.

Churches are facing major decisions as to whether to sustain or expand their present facilities, continue to minister in the same way, relocate to another community, disband or even sell their property and facilities.

Austerity measures and declining budgets further compound these issues.

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What Jesus offers this Holy Week is not an escape from loss but a better way of losing. In each Passion account, and especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus suffers humiliation and defeat but does not relinquish his identity as the Son of God. His final cry is addressed to his Father. His divinity is confirmed not by coming down from the cross but by his gestures of love while impaled upon it. From the cross he provides for his mother and forgives his tormentors. From the cross he draws a world of lost souls to himself. As it turns out, what remains in each of us is not the bravado of mastery but the vulnerability of love.

All our losses, however sharp or permanent they may be, deprive us of our ability to think and act beyond ourselves. They rob us of the very quality of love Jesus performed in the Upper Room and on the cross. Take grief, for example. Grief bears witness to no story or solution larger than itself. It shrinks your life to the exact size of your longing. The art of love is lost to you.

By God’s power, however, some break through the anguish and, in the midst of their own loss, find someone else to help or love. A boy dies of a drug overdose, and his parents take a new and active role in drug education for teens. A woman survives breast cancer, but instead of nesting with her own anxiety, reaches out to other women with the same disease. Poor people help other poor people. The bereaved understand and comfort the bereaved. This is the true art of losing. And it is an art or, as the apostle would say, a gift of the Spirit, no less a blessing than any of the other, better-known gifts. Jesus teaches the art of losing. It’s one of the reasons why some of us still sit in darkened churches on a Thursday and Friday night.

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Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ:

Greetings in the precious Name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The House of Bishops met together on March 29, 2012, during which time we seriously and prayerfully considered how to respond to the desire of those in the Anglican Mission in the Americas who wish to disaffiliate from the Province de l’Eglise Anglicane au Rwanda (PEAR). Those AMiA missionary bishops who resigned on December 5, 2011 have maintained their credentials in the Province of Rwanda up until now. However, in a meeting of delegates from PEAR and AMiA in Johannesburg earlier this month, they asked to be “released” from the PEAR.
According to our Provincial Canons, there are only three ways that we may “release”clergy affiliated with us:

1. By transferring them to another jurisdiction within the Anglican Communion;
2. By their voluntary renunciation of orders;
3. By formal ecclesiastical discipline.

Today we wrote to those AMiA missionary bishops who resigned and asked that if they wish to continue in episcopal ministry within another Anglican jurisdiction, that they please inform us of that jurisdiction immediately so that we may translate them appropriately.

For the time being, all remaining AMiA clergy continue to have canonical residence within the PEAR. Any clergy who wish to withdraw their credentials are free to do so in writing. We encourage all North American clergy credentialed in the PEAR to join PEARUSA, which is our missionary district in North America, unanimously erected by our House of Bishops in our today’s meeting.

We pray that you will not be distracted from the higher calling of Jesus’ Great Commission. Preach the good news, love the poor, plant healthy churches, and disciple Christ’s flock.

The grace and peace of God be with you all.

–(The Most Rev.) Onesphore Rwaje is Archbishop of Rwanda

A respected Baptist academic has called upon churches to ensure they are a welcoming home for Britain’s ageing population.

Dr Roy Kearsley, of South Wales Baptist College, admitted that ageing was a challenge for church, mission and pastoral care.

He said that recent headlines about poor levels of care for older people in Britain were “disturbing” and indicative of a “social and spiritual crisis”.

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It’s been three decades since HIV and AIDS invaded Chicago’s South Side and surrounded Bray Temple Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Englewood. But it’s been less than three years since the little church on the corner of 73rd and Greenwood did anything to address the epidemic.

That’s when the Rev. Dorothy Williams arrived and made a change. As a female pastor in the black church, she already had confronted plenty of discouragement. But as a crusader who believes the church should work to stop the spread of HIV in the African-American community, she faced straight-up resistance.

With some trepidation, the elders at Bray have embraced her mission. The church offers periodic HIV testing, and some who have tested positive have sought the pastor’s advice on treatment.

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On same-sex marriage and other gay rights issues, Jefferts Schori said she has been “stunned at how quickly public opinion has changed in the U.S.” though she cautioned that she doesn’t expect controversy over gay clergy in the Episcopal Church to fade. As more states legalize same-sex marriage, she said, conflicts in the church could become more frequent.

“We muddle through [controversial issues] in a very public way,” she said of the church that has just under two million members in the United States.

“I would guess that at [General] Convention, we would adopt a trial rite for blessing same-sex unions,” she said, referring to the annual meeting of the church’s governing body, which meets every three years. It will next meet in July in Indianapolis. Jefferts Schori said that no priest is required to bless any marriage, but that formal same-sex blessings could become optional.

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From here:

As bishops in the Australian Church we accept the weight of 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 and the 2004 General Synod resolutions 33, 59 and 61-64 as expressing the mind of this church on issues of human sexuality.

We undertake to uphold the position of our Church in regard to human sexuality as we ordain, license, authorise or appoint to ministries within our dioceses.

We understand that issues of sexuality are subject to ongoing conversation within our Church and we undertake to support these conversations, while seeking to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Harry Boer, a chaplain during World War II, spent the final days of that war among marines in the Pacific Theater. “The Second Division saw much action, with great losses,” he writes. “Yet I never met an enlisted man or an officer who doubted for a moment the outcome of the war. Nor did I ever meet a marine who asked why, if victory was so sure, we couldn’t have it immediately. It was just a question of slogging through till the enemy gave up.”

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You’ve written often about the importance of storytelling, even to the point of suggesting that first-year divinity students should read a diet entirely of fiction — Flannery O’Connor, the Russian novelists, Faulkner. Wonderful idea. How are people transformed by fiction?

I think that their imaginations are transformed. When you’re reading a novel, you’re following a plot and character development. The best writers leave a lot to your imagination. The task of a writer is to get participation from the reader, and you can’t do that by telling them everything. The Bible is that kind of literature. There’s very little explanation””almost no explanation, no definitions. And the writers of Scripture were also, as they were telling these stories, aware of all the other voices that were in the air””Moses, Isaiah, Daniel, Jesus, Paul.

Our school curriculum teaches you how to study. You learn facts. But they don’t do much to help you read in an imaginative way to help you enter the story. That’s what novelists do. So I think a basic immersion in fiction is almost a prerequisite to reading the Bible, to preaching sermons, to teaching classes. Poetry does the same thing, but it takes a different route to do it.

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This report envisions far more than a pastoral provision for same-sex couples. It represents an official turning point in the debate via an entirely new teaching about the nature and significance of marriage and the biological family, according to which not only procreation but male and female themselves are made optional and accidental ingredients. If such a redefinition of Christian marriage is accepted, it will represent a stunning victory for a Gnostic ”” and Pelagian ”” version of Christianity, that can only further damage the already fragile unity of our church.

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Now that the Anglican Covenant is dead in the water, those who seek to revise what it means to be the Church have no need to worry about the process set out in the fourth section of that document (assuming that they would have needed to worry if the Covenant was adopted anyway). Regardless, the drive for CWOB is a manifestation of commitment to an “autonomous ecclesiology” rather than “communion ecclesiology.”

Read it all and yes, follow all the links.

Deep inside the Charleston County jail, this program is trying to reach out to men who see crime as the answer. By bringing criminals and crime victims together, teacher Amy Barch hopes to show what happens on the other side of their deeds, brutality and triggers.

“They have the capacity to change and repair harm,” she said.

Whether Barch’s efforts are working is unclear, largely because her “Turning Leafs Project” is in its infancy. But anecdotal information suggests that progress is being made.

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Amidst the debris of postmodernism (a movement that has basically run its course) stands a great ambivalence about the nature of truth. The great intellectual transformation of recent decades produced a generation that is not hostile to all claims of truth, but is highly selective about what kinds of truth it is willing to receive.

The current intellectual climate accepts truth as being true in some objective sense only when dealing with claims of truth that come from disciplines like math or science. They accept objective truth when it comes to gravity or physiology, but not when it comes to morality or meaning.

One result of this is that we can often be heard as meaning less than we intend. When we present the gospel, it can easily be heard as a matter of our own personal reality that is, in the end, free from any claim upon others….

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Not everyone had the capacity of the willingness to suffer through the audio, and now through the kindness of some very hard working individuals you can read a transcript if you are interested.

You may find part one there and part two is here.

We don’t yet know where the stay-home generation will make their church homes. When the economy improves they may hit the road. But I wonder if something has changed for good during the Great Recession. Diminished economic opportunities might have taught a generation of young adults that they cannot depend on money to make them happy. Even in a better economy your job probably won’t last long; the company may not be able to afford you, or you may soon be looking for something else to improve your meager earnings. Organizational loyalty, up and down the corporate ladder, has collapsed.

It would be easy to follow the lead of Todd and Victoria Buchholz and blame Facebook and laziness for younger Americans’ unwillingness to drop everything and move to North Dakota. But I would hope other factors, chiefly love of neighbor and family, are at work. The grass is not always greener in the Peace Garden State. Your sins will follow you even to the Canadian border. It’s challenging but rewarding to stay home and learn to love the family, church, and neighbors who have known you since youth.

Americans may take the restless pursuit of prosperity at any cost for granted, but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable in God’s eyes. the national narrative that celebrates the free-ranging individual fosters sinful discontent….

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For Gene Edward Veith Jr., provost and professor of literature at Patrick Henry College, Martin Luther’s doctrine of vocation undergirds a truly Christian theology of the family. Vocation, as he describes it, is “the way God works through human beings.” In his latest book, Family Vocation: God’s Calling in Marriage, Parenting, and Childhood (Crossway), Veith looks to Luther’s ideals of loving and serving our neighbor, and to his view of the family as a “holy order” unto itself. Coauthored with daughter Mary J. Moerbe, a deaconess in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the book applies Luther’s understanding to the various family vocations (marriage, parenthood, and childhood) and the “offices” within those vocations (husband, wife, father, mother, and child). Author and Her.meneutics blog contributor Caryn Rivadeneira spoke with father and daughter about Luther’s vision of family life….

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The German Church’s accommodation of the Nazi regime reveals an appalling failure of basic Christian preaching and teaching. In [Edmund] Schlink’s understanding the failure of the churches was not so much caused by the persecution as revealed by it. “The forces outside the church showed up what was real in the life of these churches, and what was only an empty shell” (p. 100).

By God’s grace an astonishing renewal of the Church occurred as well. “The renewal began when the Church recognized the enemy’s attack as the hand of God ”¦ and when resistance to injustice became at the same time an act of repentance and of submission to the mighty hand of God” (p. 100). As the contrast with anti-Christian propaganda became more intense “the Church’s ears were re-opened to the Word of God. ”¦ But at the same time God’s Word challenged us, questioned the reality of our own religion, and forced us to recognize God simply and solely in His Word….”

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At the General Convention in 2009, the General Convention tasked the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music with developing theological and liturgical resources for the blessing of same sex couples. These liturgical resources will be presented to the 2012 General Convention and voted on for trial use by the Church. If approved for trial use, what would that mean for the Diocese of Georgia?

Bishop Benhase cannot support the current version of the proposed trial rite because he does not believe it is sufficiently distinguished from the rite of marriage found in the Book of Common Prayer. There may be, however, a provision in whatever resolution is approved that would allow alternative rites from the one proposed to also be authorized. If that happens, then there is a good possibility that a rite of blessing may be available that meets the Bishop’s criteria.

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You are encouraged to continue reading it and commenting on it over here.

Illuminating God’s message of grace in popular culture, including in television shows like “Downton Abbey” and others like “Friday Night Lights” and “Parenthood,” is the cornerstone of Mockingbird, which strives to connect Christianity with everyday life.

Through mbird.com, contributors, including Zahl, analyze film, music, television, literature, social science and humor, dissecting the contents through a Christian understanding.

“We are not trying to cover popular culture,” said Zahl. “But we are trying to reach people through both conscious and unconscious parallels in good art.”

Read it all and do go check out the website.

For if I could please myself”¦I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee could be brought me about eleven, so much the better. A step or so out of doors for a pint of beer would not do quite so well; for a man does not want to drink alone and if you meet a friend in the taproom the break is likely to be extended beyond its ten minutes. At one precisely lunch should be on the table; and by two at the latest I would be on the road. Not, except at rare intervals, with a friend. Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them.

The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four. Tea should be taken in solitude”¦for eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably. At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies, there is no reasons why you should ever be in bed later than eleven. But when is a man to write his letters? You forget that I am describing the happy life I led with Kirk or the ideal life I would live now if I could. And it is an essential of the happy life that a man would have almost no mail and never dread the postman’s knock.

Such is my ideal, and such the (almost) was the reality of “settled, calm, Epicurean life.” It is no doubt for my own good that I have been so generally prevented from leading it, for it is a life almost entirely selfish. Selfish, not self-centered: for in such a life my mind would be directed toward a thousand things, not one of which is myself. The distinction is not unimportant. One of the happiest men and most pleasing companions I have ever known was intensely selfish. On the other hand I have known people capable of real sacrifice whose lives were nevertheless a misery to themselves and to others, because self-concern and self-pity filled all their thoughts. Either condition will destroy the soul in the end. But till the end, give me the man who takes the best of everything (even at my expense) and then talks of other things, rather than the man who serves me and talks of himself, and whose very kindnesses are a continual reproach, a continual demand for pity, gratitude, and admiration.

–C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (Harcourt Brace, 1956), pp.141-144

1 Corinthians 5 is perhaps the clearest place that the Bible speaks to the need of discipline. The Corinthian church is proud of the sexually immoral behaviour of someone who professed to know and follow Christ. The church is told that some form of discipline is necessary both for the sake of the rebellious person (1 Cor 5:5) and also to protect the whole church from accepting, and ultimately engaging in the same kind of sinful behaviour (1 Cor 5:6)….

Reflecting on this and other passages, I often ask myself the question: Have we gone soft on church discipline? Immorality and other sin is a reality in our churches. Sometimes there is repentance. Other times there is not. And yet, it seems that church discipline is rarely exercised, if at all. Here are 4 reasons why I suspect we don’t do well in this area….

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The Archbishop of Canterbury signalled a fresh push to dissuade traditionalist Anglicans from defecting to the Roman Catholic Church as he joined the Pope in stressing moves to bring the two churches together.

Rowan Williams used a joint prayer service in Rome to call for a renewed drive to “restore full sacramental communion” between the Anglican and Catholic churches.

Dr Williams and Pope Benedict XVI prayed and lit candles together at the Chapel of St Gregory the Great, in a service highlighting 1,400 years of links between the church in England and Rome.

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From here:

Since it is only through the external means ordained by Him that God has promised to communicate the grace and salvation purchased by Christ, the Christian Church must not remain at home with the means of grace entrusted to it, but go into the whole world with the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments, Matt. 28:19, 20; Mark 16:15, 16. For the same reason also the churches at home should never forget that there is no other way of winning souls for the Church and keeping them with it than the faithful and diligent use of the divinely ordained means of grace. Whatever activities do not either directly apply the Word of God or subserve such application we condemn as “new methods,” unchurchly activities, which do not build, but harm the Church (my emphasis).

The problem is quite simply that, given the reality physicians confront on a daily basis, they know what their patients know but do not want to acknowledge – that is, when it is all said and done we are all going to die. Patients, however, often do not or cannot acknowledge that reality and as a result subject physicians to expectations that cannot be met.

The tension between what the patient expects and what the physician can do is complicated by the recognition that at least one aspect of the therapy a physician represents is the trust the patient has in the physician. If the physician seems to be in doubt about what is wrong with the patient, even more what might be an appropriate intervention, patients can feel betrayed making it even more difficult for the physician to speak truthfully to their patients….

The body sets a norm for medicine because the body is classically understood as the artist of its own healing. Medicine is, therefore, best understood as an ongoing tradition of wisdom and practices through which physicians acquire the responsibility to remember, learn and pass on the skills of learning to live with a body that is destined to death….

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A New Jersey church – already a bit different in that its three congregations gather weekly at two hotels and a middle school – put a new spin on the collection plate Sunday by having congregants take cash-filled envelopes from the plate in hopes that the money will be put to charitable use.

“People are cynical about religion and expect to come to church and be shaken down, but really, it’s all God’s money,” Liquid Church pastor Tim Lucas said prior to Sunday services. “Every bill in the U.S. economy says ‘In God we trust,’ and we’re going to put that to the test.”

Read it all. Please note that I know churches here both in the Diocese and in the area who have done this; and they have been blessed–KSH.

The first suffering of Christ we must experience is the call sundering our ties to this world. This is the death of the old human being in the encounter with Jesus Christ. Whoever enters discipleship enters Jesus’ death, and puts his or her own life into death; this has been so from the beginning. The cross is not the horrible end of a pious, happy life, but stands rather at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ. Every call of Christ leads to death. Whether with the first disciples we leave home and occupation in order to follow him, or whether with Luther we leave the monastery to enter a secular profession, in either case the one death awaits us, namely death in Jesus Christ, the dying away of our old form of being human in Jesus’ call.
”¦.Those who are not prepared to take up the cross, those who are not prepared to give their life to suffering and rejection by others, lose community with Christ and are not disciples. But those who lose their life in discipleship, in bearing the cross, will find it again in discipleship itself, in the community of the cross with Christ. The opposite of discipleship is to be ashamed of Christ, of the cross, and to take offense at the cross. Discipleship is commitment to the suffering Christ.

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditations on the Cross (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1998 [trans Douglas Stott]), pp. 14,16

There are [many].. reasons why I, as your bishop, am moved to reflect upon marriage in a manner which emphasizes its importance as a fruitful institution so necessary for the life of society and the world. It is troubling that far too many people do not understand what it means to say that marriage””both as a natural institution and a Christian sacrament””is a blessing and gift from God. We observe, for example, that some people esteem marriage as an ideal but can be reluctant to make the actual commitment necessary to enter and sustain it. Some choose instead to live in cohabiting relationships that may or may not lead to marriage and can be detrimental to the well-being of themselves and of the children who may be born of this union. In addition, the incidence of divorce remains high. A nationally-respected research center indicates that the divorce rate of women in Maine is 25 percent higher than the national average. The same research indicates that the divorce rate of men in Maine is 33 percent higher than the national average.With the advent of no-fault divorce, the social sanctions and legal barriers to ending one”˜s marriage have all but disappeared. The tragic effects of divorce on children, families and the community are on the increase. Even within marriage, a couple does not always accept their responsibility to serve life by being open to children. For some, children are seen no longer as integral to a marriage but merely as an option, that is, a choice to accept or reject. This lack of understanding fails to recognize the purposes of marriage as being both unitive and procreative.8 There is a loss of belief in the value of those purposes when couples readily treat as separate choices the decisions to get married and to have children. This indicates the fairly prevalent view that children are seen not as integral to a marriage but as optional. When children are viewed in this way, there can be damaging consequences not only for them but also for the marriage itself. Continually, we hear it said that marriage is basically a private matter with little relation to the common good, relegated mostly to achieving personal satisfaction and fulfillment.

Read it all (22 page pdf).