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Fearful that the nation is locked in a spiral of violence and discord, many Americans took what refuge they could in church on Sunday. In tiny storefronts and suburban megachurches, worshipers mourned the deaths of five Dallas police officers at the hands of an African-American sniper who was aiming to kill white officers at a demonstration against police violence. They also grieved for two African-American men killed in shootings by the police in Baton Rouge, La., and Minnesota.

Some prayed for the souls of the men who pulled the triggers. Some thanked God for the sacrifices the police made daily to protect their cities. Some thanked God for the technology that allowed the world to see controversial acts of police violence toward African-Americans.

At St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan spoke of a country “worried, frustrated and fatigued over senseless violence.”

“From Minnesota to Louisiana and Texas, one nation under God examines its soul,” he said. “Sadness and heaviness is especially present in our African-American and law enforcement communities.”

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One of the hallmarks of the Anglican Ordinariates is the enthusiasm and involvement of the laypeople. Although the institution was devised and established by Rome, the influence and initiative has been from the grass roots.
I spoke to Shane Schaetzel, a layman in Missouri who heard about the new Ordinariates and who saw them as a great opportunity and got busy establishing a local Anglican style Catholic community.
Longenecker_ Shane, what is your own family faith background?
Schaetzel: My father comes from a long line of Lutherans, my mother comes from the Southern Baptist tradition of the Appalachian Mountains in Western Tennessee. So I was baptized in the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, but raised in the American Baptist Church.
At the age of 20 I started attending an Evangelical Church called Calvary Chapel. There I met my wife, a former Methodist, and trained for ministry.

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“He was a champion of the faith; a tireless churchman””whose principled wisdom, sagacious humor and razor wit were legendary and widely loved by the casual acquaintance as well as by his family and longtime friends,” said the Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence, 14th Bishop of South Carolina. “His warm and steadfast counsel, which was sought by thousands around the larger Anglican world, will be deeply missed even as his aphorisms will be long remembered.”

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On the one-year anniversary of the shooting deaths of nine members of Emanuel AME Church an Ecumenical Service was held at TD Arena in Charleston, SC.

Check out the pictures from the event.

Led by Norris, audience reads the names of the nine #EmanuelAME victims aloud: pic.twitter.com/cWuVXyf1eq

— Deanna Pan (@DDpan) June 17, 2016

…without any element of hyperbole, or attempt to flatter, there is nevertheless a need at 50 to consider what has been and to envisage what should be.

Pope Paul VI, on 23 March 1966, took as his text, “forgetting what is behind, I press on towards the upward call of Jesus Christ.”

Of course the apostle did not do anything so simplistically crass as to forget. His epistles are full of what is behind: of sin and deliverance, of past failures set right, and of how God had called and equipped him.

We have to see the statement in its context of the athlete whose only goal is the finishing line, whose only desire is to have used every resource of wit and courage and strength at the moment of crossing that line.”¯

Because to look back is always to begin to lose.

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The Erebus Ensemble live at St John’s, Smith Square, London

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
On earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
Amen.

Leader: Let us give thanks to God for the land of our birth with all its chartered liberties. For all the wonder of our country’s story:

PEOPLE: WE GIVE YOU THANKS, O GOD.

Leader: For leaders in nation and state, and for those who in days past and in these present times have labored for the commonwealth:

PEOPLE: WE GIVE YOU THANKS, O GOD.

Leader: For those who in all times and places have been true and brave, and in the world’s common ways have lived upright lives and ministered to their fellows:

PEOPLE: WE GIVE YOU THANKS, O GOD.

Leader: For those who served their country in its hour of need, and especially for those who gave even their lives in that service:

PEOPLE: WE GIVE YOU THANKS, O GOD.

Leader: O almighty God and most merciful Father, as we remember these your servants, remembering with gratitude their courage and strength, we hold before you those who mourn them. Look upon your bereaved servants with your mercy. As this day brings them memories of those they have lost awhile, may it also bring your consolation and the assurance that their loved ones are alive now and forever in your living presence.

Choirs may be the ultimate training ground for hopeful boy bands and ensembles. Choristers””who in British and American cathedral choirs usually range from eight to 13, with continental choirs retaining their singers until the age of 19””typically rehearse together daily, making their decision to team up in ensembles of their own making less risky. They form an immediate talent pool of skilled musicians who enjoy making music together, and know one another’s musical likes and personalities. “[British cathedral] choirs are an ideal place for future bandmates to grow up in,” says Simon Kirk, director of music at St John’s College School, which educates the boy choristers of St John’s College Chapel in Cambridge. “You work as part of a professional team that tours and records. From the age of nine to ten, the boys work as professional musicians.”

When Barnaby Smith graduated from Westminster Abbey Choir School at 13, he already knew that he wanted to keep singing with some of his fellow choristers. Several years later, four of them formed the acapella ensemble Voces8, which has since won numerous competitions and is now the singers’ full-time occupation. “A small ensemble is like a family,” Mr Smith explains. “Having sung in a boys’ choir was vital. Choir school is a very professional environment where boys depend on one another. It’s not something you do on your own.”

Though top-level choirs are fertile band-making territory, establishing an ensemble can be awkward if it takes place while the boys are still choir members. “You decide who you get along with,” explains Louis Weise, a 17-year-old member of the St Thomas Choir in Leipzig. “If you’re going to do additional rehearsals together and also try to make money together, you really have to get along.”

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Almighty and everliving God, whose servant Thomas Cranmer, with others, did restore the language of the people in the prayers of thy Church: Make us always thankful for this heritage; and help us so to pray in the Spirit and with the understanding, that we may worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

#OnThisDay in 1536, King Henry VIII orders English-language Bibles be placed in every church.
🎨The Great Bible, 1539 pic.twitter.com/Glr0GNm8EM

— Bibliophilia (@Libroantiguo) May 6, 2016

It’s so easy to take things for granted, but what we learned is that people certainly want to be thankful for the people and things that they hold especially dear. What a place of worship or a Christian community can do is provide space and time for people to be able to do that in the midst of their busy lives. Thankfulness and gratitude are at the heart of generosity, which is a response to knowing the love of God.

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It is not often that the Church of Ireland has a best seller but such was the demand for Bishop Harold Miller’s guide to the Book of Common Prayer, The Desire of Our Soul, that it sold out. And such has been the continuing demand for it that a reprint has been necessary. The reprint, with an attractive new cover, has just been released and is available from The Book Well online Christian bookshop.

The book is a companion to the Book of Common Prayer 2004. In this guide, Bishop Miller leads the reader through the different services in the Prayer Book, especially the ones newly introduced in 2004. He enables the reader to understand something of the meaning of the liturgies, the reason why they are as they are, and the way in which they can provide the people of God with words which can deepen both public and personal devotion.

The publication also includes a series of charts laying out the structure of many of the services, and a set of questions at the end of each chapter which m

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[h/t Pat Dague]

Sing joyfully to God our strength; sing loud unto the God of Jacob!
Take the song, bring forth the timbrel, the pleasant harp, and the viol.
Blow the trumpet in the new moon, even in the time appointed, and at our feast day.
For this is a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob. Psalm 81:1-4

The Anglican Church in North America desperately needs to experience an evangelical awakening. It needs to discover the Bible and the gospel of grace and commit itself wholeheartedly to the fulfillment of the Great Commission. It is not going to move forward by looking backward to an imaginary golden age of the supposedly undivided Church. We are living in the twenty-first century, not the eleventh. We are living in what is being called the post-Christian era, not the early High Middle Ages.

The Anglican Church at its best is a church of the Bible. It is a church that fully accepts the plenary authority of the Scriptures in matters of faith and practice. It is a church that recognizes the power of God’s Word to transform lives. It is a church whose confession of faith””the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion””grounded in the Holy Scriptures and is recognized as authoritative for Anglicans.

The Anglican Church at its best is a church of the gospel. It is a church that cannot hold back from telling people in every walk of life what God has done for them through his Son Jesus Christ. It is a church that proclaims the good news not only in word and deed but also in sacramental signs, in the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

The Anglican Church is at its best a church of the Reformation

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You can easily begin a deep theological and liturgical debate across ecumenical lines with one simple question: how should the Celebrant be oriented in the Eucharist? Maybe it’s based on the fact that I am an Anglican, but this simple question has churned up many strong feelings and convictions.

My main goal, here, is to provide some fodder for thinking about our Eucharistic orientation. Perhaps we (those who are the inheritors of the Reformation(s)) have gotten it wrong”¦

For the children of the Reformation(s) the answer is clear: the priest (if you have one) should face the people. This is known as versus populum and it supposedly encourages or facilitates corporate worship around a common table. The logic continues that only when gathered around a common table can any sense of “clericalism” or medieval superstition be avoided.

The other tradition is known as ad orientem. In this celebration of the Eucharist the priest faces the altar, i.e. East, and has back turned to the people. I want to unpack the thinking behind this in a bit…

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Program and Speakers here

Listen to it all and you can read more about it, including finding the lyrics, at Lent and Beyond.

What is your vision for the global 21st-century church?

That we would be hungry for the presence of God in our midst and that we would be more united. When the Word says that when we’re united, there’s a blessing. There is a dying to self that happens when you want unity. A lot of people feel that that is too hard, so I would pray that we become better at that. I would pray that there is another great awakening and revival, and that we get passionate about people getting saved. It’s only Jesus that can do that.

As his representatives, I hope we have a great revelation of who we are in Christ. You don’t need a platform, and you don’t need a microphone. You just need to go and preach Jesus wherever you find yourself.

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Watch and listen to it all from the original writers of the song.

If I had a Son in Court, or married a daughter into a plentifull Fortune, I were satisfied for that son or that daughter. Shall I not be so, when the King of Heaven hath taken that sone to himselfe, and married himselfe to that daughter, for ever? I spend none of my Faith, I exercise none of my Hope, in this, that I shall have my dead raised to life againe. This is the faith that sustains me, when I lose by the death of others, and we, are now all in one Church, and at the resurrection, shall be all in one Quire.

–John Donne (1572-1631) [my emphasis]

Take the time to listen to it all from the Oxford Philomusica.

Listen to it all. You may find the words below (Note especially the third stanza):
Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood;
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six winged seraph,
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Lord Most High!