It’s hours before the first matinee, but the lobby of Crossroads Cinema is bustling.

Bridge of Hope’s service Dec. 20 is scheduled to begin in 15 minutes, and several attendees are serving double duty ”” playing the role of both congregant and church leader.

A bass player wearing a Christmas hat with antlers rushes in and out of theater No. 12, corralling musicians. A man disappears behind the snack counter to brew coffee. And a retiree with thick, pearl-colored locks wraps her arms around newcomers as they shake snow from their boots.

About 50 people attending exude a sense of calm. The opportunity to take a more active role in their worship life is one of the reasons many members joined the small church, a trend in the Cedar Valley and across the nation.

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The words:

O magnum mysterium, et admirable sacramentum, ut animalia viderent Dominum natum, jacentum in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Christum. Alleluia!

O great mystery, and wondrous sacrament, that animals should see the newborn Lord, lying in their manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb was worthy to bear the Lord Jesus Christ. Alleluia!

This is sung by the University of Santo Tomas Alumni Singers directed by Allan Diona Sims. My understanding is that this performance is in 2006 at the Hollywood Choir Festival, at the Hollywood United Methodist Church across from the Kodak Theater.

Hark, how all the welkin rings,
“Glory to the King of kings;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”

Joyful, all ye nations, rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
Universal nature say,
“Christ the Lord is born to-day!”

Christ, by highest Heaven ador’d,
Christ, the everlasting Lord:
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of a Virgin’s womb!

Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see,
Hail the incarnate deity!
Pleased as man with men to appear,
Jesus! Our Immanuel here!
Hail, the heavenly Prince of Peace!
Hail, the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.

Mild He lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth;
Born to give them second birth.

Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conquering seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.

Now display thy saving power,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp Thy image in its place.
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.

Let us Thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner Man:
O! to all thyself impart,
Form’d in each believing heart.

You can find the 1940 Episcopal Hymnal version here (the 5th stanza is missing). The 1982 Episcopal Hymnal only includes the first three verses (with modified language)–KSH

As a priest led prayers for a few dozen worshipers inside St. Joseph Chaldean Church here on Sunday, Iraqi police officers stood guard outside. They blocked the street to traffic and frisked those who entered for explosive belts.

At churches in Baghdad this week, Christians are being asked for identification to determine if they have names that security force members recognize as Christian. Some churches around the northern city of Mosul are digging in, surrounding their buildings with giant earthen berms to prevent car bombers from getting too close.

For Christians in Iraq, this will be a year of canceled holiday celebrations and of Christmas Masses spent under the protective watch of police officers and soldiers because of a spate of threats by extremist groups to bomb churches on Christmas Day.

“I’m very sad that we are not able to have our rituals for Christmas this year and not have a sermon, but we do not want any Christians to be harmed,” said Edward Poles, a Christian priest at Sa’a Church in Mosul, which was bombed last week, though no one was killed.

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When the Vatican recently announced the reception of Anglican communities into the Catholic Church it was a dream come true not only for Anglo-Catholics seeking their own pastoral provision, but also for many Roman Catholics with Anglican backgrounds.

Over the last thirty years there has been a quiet but steady trickle of Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church. In the American province of the worldwide Anglican Communion, “The Episcopal Church,” it began with alterations to the Book of Common Prayer in 1979 and increased with the ordination of female clergy, along with the widespread acceptance of homosexuality.

Springfield Missouri is home to about four Episcopalian parishes and two continuing Anglican parishes. There was one small Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) parish about ten years ago, but it was later disbanded and the chapel sold. That being said, there are currently no Anglican parishes within the city that are interested in entering the emerging Anglican Ordinariates within the Roman Catholic Church.

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One Sunday in February 2008, I faced a dilemma. After being cooped up all week with a sick 9-month-old baby, I was desperate to get out of my apartment. I wanted to go to church. But I didn’t want to expose other children in the church nursery to my son’s germs. So I decided to bring him into the pew with me and my husband””only to learn that my church had chosen that Lenten Sunday for a very solemn service, full of soft chants and contemplative silences. You can guess where this is going. My baby made joyful noises at inopportune moments. An usher asked us if we would take him out. My husband brought him home. I spent the rest of the service in tears.

We all recovered soon enough, but the experience got me thinking: Should children be in church? This turns out to be a major topic of discussion in a growing number of churches.

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Church leaders in the region voiced support yesterday for a decision handed down over the weekend by Episcopal Bishop M. Thomas Shaw that will allow church clergy in Eastern Massachusetts to officiate at the marriages of same-sex couples.

The bishop’s decision is a controversial one, handed down after the General Convention of the Episcopal Church provided new doctrine to bishops enabling them to make the change. But church leaders from Amesbury, West Newbury and Newburyport say allowing gay couples the same rights as everyone else to commit to one another is the right thing to do.

“I’m very proud of our church for doing the right thing once again,” said the Rev. Victoria Pretti of West Newbury’s All Saints Church of the ruling. “I think people understand there could be reactions ”” positive and negative ”” but the beauty and the joy of being Episcopalian is being a member of a church where people can differ in opinion and still love each other and worship with one another. I view it as a very good and positive thing.”

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Horace Clarence Boyer had a profound impact on gospel music over the past 50 years. He rose to fame in the late 1950s as one half of the Boyer Brothers. He later embarked on an equally important career in music education, becoming one of the first scholars to formally study African-American sacred music.

Boyer died in July at age 74. This month, teachers, students and fans honored him at a memorial service in Central Florida.

The Boyer Brothers hit the road before they were even teenagers. But James Boyer says that their father, a pastor, set some ground rules.

“As little brothers will do, you fight. And my father didn’t want us to fight each other,” James Boyer says. “So he gave us an ultimatum when we were 10 and 11. He said, ‘You cannot go anywhere to sing until you stop fighting a year.’ That was the longest year of my life, and after that, I never hit him again.”

Read the whole thing or listen to it all.

In July of this year, the 76th General Convention adopted resolution C056, “Liturgies for Blessings.” It allows that “bishops, particularly those in dioceses within civil jurisdictions where same-gender marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships are legal, may provide generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this church.”

Your bishops understand this to mean for us here in the Diocese of Massachusetts that the clergy of this diocese may, at their discretion, solemnize marriages for all eligible couples, beginning Advent I. Solemnization, in accordance with Massachusetts law, includes hearing the declaration of consent, pronouncing the marriage and signing the marriage certificate. This provision for generous pastoral response is an allowance and not a requirement; any member of the clergy may decline to solemnize any marriage.

While gender-specific language remains unchanged in the canons and The Book of Common Prayer, our provision of generous pastoral response means that same-gender couples can be married in our diocese. We request that our clergy follow as they ordinarily would the other canonical requirements for marriage and remarriage. And, because The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage in The Book of Common Prayer may not be used for marriages of same-gender couples, we ask that our priests seek out liturgical resources being developed and collected around the church. We also commend to you the October 2008 resource created by our New England dioceses, “Pastoral Resources for Province I Episcopal Clergy Ministering to Same-Gender Couples,” available at www.province1.org.

We have not arrived at this place in our common life easily or quickly. We have not done it alone. This decision comes after a long process of listening, prayer and discernment leading up to and continuing after General Convention’s action this past summer.

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Five years after same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, the local Episcopal bishop yesterday gave permission for priests in Eastern Massachusetts to officiate at same-sex weddings.

The decision by Bishop M. Thomas Shaw III was immediately welcomed by advocates of gay rights in the Episcopal Church, who have chafed at local rules that allowed priests to bless same-sex couples, but not sign the documents that would solemnize their marriages.

The decision is likely to exacerbate tensions in the Episcopal Church and the global denomination to which it belongs, the Anglican Communion, which has faced significant division in the wake of the election of an openly gay priest as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

“The time has come,’’ Shaw said in a telephone interview. “It’s time for us to offer to gay and lesbian people the same sacrament of fidelity that we offer to the heterosexual world.’’

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Popular Christmas carols are ‘nonsense’ and have turned the birth of Jesus Christ into a fairy story, according to a respected bishop.

In a new book on the festive period, The Right Reverend Nick Baines, the Bishop of Croydon, claims some of the nation’s favourite carols are ’embarrassing’ and ‘inaccurate’.

He says the songs encourage people to believe that the story of Christ’s birth is as fictitious as Father Christmas or a pantomime story.

Carol lovers, however, defended the traditional songs and say they help people to look beyond a ‘commercialised’ Christmas.

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I think of Martin Rinkart every thanksgiving; his gift of this hymn is simply stunning given the circumstances in which it was written. Read it all–KSH.

Protocols

1. These celebrations are understood to be a pastoral response to same-sex couples in our communities. The rite is to be part of a Celebration of Holy Eucharist.
2. The clergy involved must seek the Bishop’s support and written permission a minimum of sixty (60) days before the proposed celebration.
3. Matters pertaining to the use of facilities, ceremonial planning and local arrangements will be made with the approval of the Rector of the parish in which the celebration is to take place.
4. It is required that at least one member of the couple be a baptized member of a congregation in the Diocese of Huron.
5. Appropriate pastoral support and instruction must be given at the local level in order to prepare the couple for the celebration and their ongoing Christian life in relationship.
6. As with all liturgical celebrations of the church, these events will be entered into the Parish Register (Vestry Book).
7. Clergy from beyond the Diocese of Huron shall obtain permission from the Bishop of Huron and their own Bishop.
8. Any member of the clergy may decline to preside at these celebrations.

Read it all and follow all the links too.

After opening in a new location, The Cathedral of Christ the King, a local Charismatic church affiliated with the Anglican Church in North America, started playing a recording of church bells every half hour — every day — from morning to night. To neighbors, it was a rude shock interrupting the peace and quiet of the community. To the church, it was a way to worship God.

Inevitably the case ended up in court where the judge sided with the neighbors….

Read it all and there is a video link as well.

[/i] It’s just before 11:30 on a Sunday morning, and at a nondescript strip mall on Main Street in Hendersonville it’s about time for church.

In the parking lot, volunteers welcome latecomers with cups of free coffee. Inside a converted office suite turned worship space, a countdown clock on a video screen reaches zero, and the band breaks into song.

Within seconds, the Rev. Craig Groeshel appears on a video screen, beaming his satellite message to the crowd, because he is almost 500 miles away in Oklahoma.

Welcome to LifeChurch.tv ”” one of the biggest churches in America. [/i]

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The Vatican’s announcement this week that it will allow former Anglicans who join the Catholic Church to retain a collective identity, using many of their traditional prayers and hymns in their own specially designed dioceses, is an event with profound implications for both Anglican and Catholic life.

The decision, made to accommodate Anglicans upset with their church’s growing acceptance of homosexuality and of women clergy, is likely to transform ecumenical relations between the churches. It will also heighten the internal Catholic debate over the requirement of priestly celibacy (which is to be routinely waived for married Anglican clergy who convert under the new rules, extending an exception made on a limited basis till now).

Perhaps the most striking effect of the Vatican’s move is the likelihood that, within the next few years, Catholic priests around the world will be celebrating Mass in a form that draws largely from the Book of Common Prayer. This resonant text, in its many versions, has informed Anglican worship since shortly after King Henry VIII led the Church of England away from Rome nearly five centuries ago.

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Once again, the Sunday faithful have packed the cavernous sanctuary at Shepherd of the Hills Church in the San Fernando Valley, clapping and swaying for Jesus as a band rocks the hall.

“Come bless the Lord,” the worshipers sing. “Praise his name to the ends of the Earth.”

Most churches would be thrilled to fill their sanctuaries any day of the year.

Shepherd of the Hills, a nondenominational church in Porter Ranch, does it six times a weekend, attracting 8,000 people to its energetic services and offering a lesson about the growth of evangelical Christianity in California.

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Check it out.

David Hyde Pierce, the comedic actor best known for his role on the sitcom “Frasier,” presented one of his lesser known talents Sunday afternoon to a capacity congregation at the Bethesda Episcopal Church.

Pierce performed two works on the restored 1921 Skinner organ, which he and his three siblings donated the funds to rebuild. The organ has been renamed the Pierce Memorial Gallery Organ in honor of their parents, George and Laura Pierce.

“I hadn’t played organ in awhile,” Pierce said before the ceremony while standing next to the instrument, which is located upstairs in the gallery of the church. “But I live in New York City, so I practiced in some churches there to bone up.”

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In many Roman Catholic churches across the country, lay people no longer receive wine at Communion, and some Catholic clergy have advised congregants not to shake hands or hug at the moment of the liturgy known as “the passing of the peace,” when parishioners typically greet someone in, and offer embodied signs of, the peace of Christ. In my own Episcopal parish, I was greeted by a neighbor last Sunday with an elbow bump. At a United Church of Christ congregation in the suburbs of Chicago, Communion servers now slice up bread into bite-sized bits before distributing Communion; they no longer offer congregants a loaf from which to tear a hunk of bread. In the interest of keeping fingers away from communion wine, communicants at All Saints’ Chapel in Sewanee, Tenn., are now instructed not to dip their Eucharistic bread into the cup but rather to sip the cup directly, since hands are often more infectious than mouths.

At Cornell University, the Episcopal chaplain, Clark West, has reminded worshippers that they will receive the fullness of the Eucharist if they receive only “one kind”””that is, the wafer and not the wine. “We have alcoholics among us for whom this has been the practice for years without any noticeably adverse effects,” quips Mr. West. To emphasize this, he has, on occasion, used a longer liturgical formula, which names the host as itself both “the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Less reverently, Mr. West has taken to calling the bottle of Purell hand sanitizer, which now sits prominently on the credence table, the post-modern lavabo. (A lavabo is the bowl a priest uses to wash his or her hands in the Eucharist.)

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Asked whether it absolves the critters of past or future sins, Rev. Brad Beale smiled.

“Maybe, in the eyes of the owner,” he said, explaining it may bring “the hope they won’t be quite so naughty the following year.”

He began the service by noting he might have to improvise depending on how the furrier occupants of the pews behaved.

But he and worshippers said it’s a fun time.

“It’s about environment for us, too — to remind us that we’re connected to the Creation, very connected,” said Beale.

“It’s a nice alternate service,” said Anne Clark.

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Iowa finds itself along with the dioceses of the five New England states where equal marriage is upheld in the forefront of the church’s conversation on marriage equality. Faith communities are deciding what this means to their traditions or what it does not. Many faith communities have long awaited the chance to celebrate civil marriage for same-gender couples. The Episcopal Church has been engaged with this for more than 30 years – almost alone among churches of the Catholic tradition. That Episcopal couples were among those cited in the Iowa State Supreme Court Ruling is significant.

Of course, we are not of one mind in this. Not all my own clergy or congregations agree with my position in celebrating this opportunity for same-gender couples. But is there not a beauty in this situation? Faith communities that cannot and will not welcome or embrace these marriages have that freedom in this state and nation, even while others that do coexist beside them peacefully and lawfully. When a bishop in Southern Africa learned of the Iowa ruling, he sent me a note asking me its implications. He was concerned that we might be seen as going against the constitution now if we disallowed such marriages. He found it rather admirable that there was no such pressure upon religious institutions, and that there was a specific exemption for religious institutions to pursue their consciences.

Marriage and its significance for all people is an essential value in our social life. For every faith community, marriage exists not only to protect but to reveal the deeper connection of God’s love for us. It is precisely as such that it is as important an institution to same-gender couples as it is to heterosexual couples in those same faith communities.

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A year ago, the cathedral began providing communion bread blessed by a male priest for use when a woman was taking a service.

The concession was introduced after a female canon was appointed to the cathedral staff.

Now the cathedral has apologised for any hurt caused by that decision, but it has also acknowledged that the ordination of women priests still caused “sorrow and pain” to some Anglicans, and said it would continue to provide Sunday services taken by a male priest.

As many churches creak under the pressure to reform in line with contemporary life, modernisers and traditionalists in many of them are increasingly feeling that they have more in common with like-minded people in other denominations.

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(ACNS) The International Anglican Liturgical Consultation met August 3-8 at the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Auckland, in the Anglican Church of Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia. We are grateful to the Local Arrangements Committee, the Right Reverend Winston Halapua and the Right Reverend Kito Pikaahu, the Right Reverend George Connor, Mrs. Heather Skilling and the Very Reverend Ross Bay who shaped the conference and tended to our travel and practical needs with care.

The gathering comprised Anglicans from fourteen of the Provinces of the Anglican Communion. Particular welcome was given to the first representatives from the Anglican Church in Korea and the Church of North India. Due to unforeseen difficulties regarding travel and visa matters, several of our members were unable to be with us. We upheld them in our prayers, as we prayed for the Churches of the Communion and for our ecumenical friends.

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When introducing a new service these days, most churches seem to go the rock ”˜n’ roll route ”” something new to bring in a younger crowd.

To say that Trinity Episcopal Church went in another direction might be a bit of an understatement.

When the church decided to add a new service in fall 2006, instead of looking forward, it looked back.

Way back. As in the fourth century.

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Twelve people stood in a circle in a tower high above Wall Street. Eyes flitted from side to side, watching, concentrating, as arms rose and fell to a cascading cacophony of bells, bells, bells. One shook her head in disgust over missing a beat.

“This is all,” said Dale Winter, the conductor, using the technical phrase to close out a sequence of rings. The clanging inside Trinity Church’s 280-foot bell tower fell silent.

Trinity this week is the focus of the American bell-ringing world. The North American Guild of Change Ringers is holding its annual meeting at the church, which in New York fashion is promoting a mini-festival of classes, ringing performances and private sessions, including a 24-hour marathon beginning at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday (which will take place behind sound-baffling shutters and only if the church can find enough ringers). Public sessions are scheduled for noon and 4 p.m. on Saturday, along with the normal ringing before and after services on Sunday morning.

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We make a leap now of just a hundred years. From 1689 we pass to 1789, and find ourselves in the city of Philadelphia, at a convention assembled for the purpose of framing a constitution and setting forth a liturgy for a body of Christians destined to be known as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. During the interval between the issue of the Declaration of Independence and the Ratification of the Constitution of the United States, the people in this country who had been brought up in the communion of the Church of England found themselves ecclesiastically in a very delicate position indeed. As colonists they had been canonically under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, a somewhat remote diocesan. But with this Episcopal bond broken and no new one formed, they seemed to be in a peculiar sense adrift. It does not fall to me to narrate the steps that led to the final establishment of the episcopacy upon a sure foundation, nor yet to trace the process through which the Church’s legislative system came gradually to its completion. Our interest is a liturgical one, and our subject matter the evolution of the Prayer Book. I say nothing, therefore, of other matters that were debated in the Convention of 1789, but shall propose instead that we confine ourselves to what was said and done about the Prayer Book. In order, however, fully to appreciate the situation we must go back a little. In a half-formal and half­informal fashion there had come into existence, four years before this Convention of 1789 assembled, an American Liturgy now known by the name of The Proposed Book. It had been compiled on the basis of the English Prayer Book by a Committee of three eminent clergymen, Dr. White of Pennsylvania, Dr. William Smith of Maryland, and Dr. Wharton of Delaware. Precisely what measure of acceptance this book enjoyed, or to what extent it came actually into use, are difficult, perhaps hopeless questions.

–William Reed Huntington, A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer

In the creed commonly called the Apostles creed, one clause is omitted; as being of uncertain meaning and the articles of religion have been reduced in number; yet it is humbly conceived that the doctrines of the church of England are preserved entire, as being judged perfectly agreeable to the gospel.

It is far from the intention of this Church to depart from the Church of England, any further than local circumstances require, or to deviate in anything essential to the true meaning of the thirty-nine articles; although a number of them be abridged by some variations in the mode of expression and the omission of such articles as were more evidently adapted to the times when they were first framed, and to the political constitution of England.

And now, this important work being brought to a conclusion, it is hoped the whole will be received and examined by every true member of our church, and every sincere christian with a meek, candid and charitable frame of mind; without prejudice or pre-possessions; seriously considering what christianity is, and what the truths of the gospel are; and earnestly beseeching Almighty God to accompany with his blessing every endeavor for promulgating them to mankind in the clearest, plainest, most affecting and majestic manner, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour.

–The preface of the Proposed 1786 Book of Common Prayer

This is a paraphrase, she was speaking very fast:

1.SCLM in consultation with HOB theological committee”¦collect and create liturgies for presentation at the next general convention

2. That the SCLM devise an open process for its work in this matter seeking input from all interested diocese and individual throughout the Anglican communion”¦

3. Further”¦that resolved, that”¦all bishops noting particularly those within diocese within civil jurisdiction where civil unions and marriages are legal may provide pastoral response”

4. Honoring the theological diversity no bishop or clergy shall be required or compelled to participate in any liturgy or pastoral response

5…missed it

Question called

Bishops: All vote yes”¦.

Henry: I would like to make a minority report on the third resolve”¦if I can do that I will vote yes.

6 yes to 0 no

House of Deputies

1 no vote and 26 yes

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