Jamie Stutler grew up in a very traditional church background ”“ a formal worship experience typical among Episcopalians. Quiet and contemplative, he enjoys retreating with members of the Cistercian monastic order, taking walks, hiking and spending time outdoors.
Yet inspiration to start a contemporary service at St. Clement’s Episcopal in Canton, where he’s been the rector since 2004, came from a rather lively group: the 50-70 kids who attend Vacation Bible School each year.
According to [Don] Waring, the Episcopal bishop of New York permits rectors to exercise their own discretion in conferring religious blessings on same-sex couples who have been civilly married. Waring said he hasn’t performed such a ceremony because the situation hasn’t yet presented itself to him.
“We are still sort of in no-man’s land, trying to figure out what sort of blessings to provide, what language to use,” he said.
“We celebrate the passage of the marriage equality act and the equal rights for gay couples under the law in the civil sphere,” Waring added. “In the church sphere, we’re moving in step with the diocese of New York, which is: We’re all still trying to figure this out.”
I am up at Lake George visiting my Father for the 4th of July weekend. Worshipped this morning at Church of the Cross in Ticonderoga, New York. The vicar began the service by reading the previously posted pastoral letter by Bishop William Love–KSH.
Perhaps of interest–
November 14-16: Clergy Conference
The Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali will be the guest speaker at the upcoming Clergy Conference to be held at St. Christopher. Online registration will open soon. Additional details to follow.January 19-20: Mere Anglicanism
Mere Anglicanism will be held at St. Philip’s, Charleston. The theme is “The Once and Future Church.” Registration will be online starting September 1, and further details will be available at www.mereanglicanism.com.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s figures, Knoxville, the see city of the diocese, has grown in population from 173,890 in 2000 to 185,100 in 2009. This represents a population growth of approximately 6.45% in this time frame.
According to Episcopal Church statistics, the Diocese of East Tennessee went from Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 6,376 in 1998 to 5,649 in 2008. The finally released 2009 numbers shows a small further decline in ASA to 5645 in 2009. This represents an ASA decline of about 11.65 % over this eleven year period. Please note that if you go to the link toward the end of this sentence and enter “East Tennessee” as the name of the diocese and then “View Diocese Chart” underneath on the left you can see in pictorial form some of the data from 1999-2009.
Corporate-sized congregations with 351 or more in worship represent…._____% of Episcopal congregations.
Please note the reference is to those in worship. What % do you guess?
No looking, the answer comes later.
Several years ago, Christ Episcopal Church property warden Stanley Stanley was working on the gas furnace in the dirt basement when he felt a poke in the back.
He reached around and pulled a human femur out of the dirt, then a rib bone.
“I didn’t go digging around there anymore,” said Stanley, now retired at age 82.
The Hudson-based spokesman for a local clergy sex abuse survivors group has taken Dubuque Archbishop Jerome Hanus to task for his handling 24 years ago of a former Catholic monk, as recounted in a new Missouri lawsuit.
Hanus is not named as a defendant in that lawsuit.
In the suit, filed in Nodaway County, Mo., a plaintiff named as “John Doe 181” said he was sexually molested as a minor while at a choir camp in 1987 at Conception Abbey Inc., a Benedictine abbey in Missouri and the suit’s sole defendant, by a Father Bede Parry.
It may be the best-selling book of all time, but its battles, bloodletting, and “begats,” its many laws, rituals, and tribes, and those chewy names like Oholiab and Eliphelehu and “Joshbekashah son of Heman” don’t make for easy reading.
Yet when the rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Whitemarsh invited his congregants in January to join him in reading the Bible cover to cover in a year, the response surprised him.
“It’s taken on a life of its own,” the Rev. Marek Zabriskie said last week.
After just two years and four months, Columbia Hope Episcopal Church at 4603 John Garry Drive is closing because of lack of attendance. The church’s last worship service will be tomorrow. The Rev. Dan Smith, executive officer of the diocese, said about 40 to 50 people on average were coming to Sunday worship.
“To start a new church there has to be a significant growth pattern over a period of time” to keep it running, Smith said.
“Firstly, I’m deeply saddened by this,” he said. “I thought Columbia was a great location for another Episcopal church. ”¦ This one just never gained traction.”
The Rev. Canon Carol L. Wade, former canon precentor at the National Cathedral in Washington, will be the new dean and rector at Lexington’s historic Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral. She is the first woman to hold either position at the downtown church.
Wade will assume her new duties in September. Her selection was announced at both worship services at Christ Church on Sunday.
“I am overjoyed,” Wade said in a telephone interview. “I cannot tell you how much I look forward to partnering with the wonderfully gifted people at the cathedral and working with the diocese, the people of Lexington and beyond.
A Las Vegas Episcopal priest resigned from his duties at his church Thursday after his name surfaced in a lawsuit alleging a Missouri monastery covered up sexual abuse by him.
The lawsuit, filed in Missouri by a former choir boy, alleged the Roman Catholic monastery, Conception Abbey, kept secret the boy’s 1987 sexual assault by Bede Parry, then a Catholic priest who directed the choir.
Parry, 69, who was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, had been serving as the organist and choir director at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Las Vegas since 2000.
Joe Smith, Trinity’s senior warden since January, said a recent assessment of the congregation, involving an outside consultant, looked at the strengths and weaknesses of the church. About 40 people were interviewed, he said. They included current and former members, and of varying ages. One component Trinity looked at was membership.
“The demographic most people are interested in is the 20-40 year olds with children. … and not just that group but (recruiting) new members across the board,” he said.
A result was that [Rich] Martindale resigned.
“For the last several months, the Vestry, the Wardens and I have been working and praying very hard to discern how best to meet the needs of the Parish and do the work we have been given to do in the name of Christ,” the letter [to the parish from the Rev. Rich Martindale] begins.
“At times, that discernment has been exhilarating; other times it has felt like a struggle.
“After consultation with the Bishop of Atlanta, the Wardens, and of course, my dear wife, my own portion of that discernment has led me to understand that the time has come for me to conclude my ministry to and with my friends at Trinity.”
The café was started after Hurricane Katrina to feed those without kitchens, said the Rev. Jim Quigley, pastor of St. George’s.
Soon, it was serving up to 10,000 meals a year ”” mostly on Thursday and Friday nights ”” but as funding dried up, the church cut back to one day a week.
Quigley said St. George’s opted to make that meal breakfast, to give those in need a hearty start to their day.
“No one leaves hungry,” he said. “They can stay for seconds as well, and we treat everyone with dignity and respect.”
The Rev. George D. Young III, bishop-elect of the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee…said he was delighted at the vitality of the diocese, which includes Chattanooga, when he first read its profile before applying for the position a year ago.
“What struck me,” he said, “was a sense of it being a very healthy diocese. Good things were happening. I didn’t personally know Bishop [Charles G.] vonRosenberg, but I knew he was well-respected.”
Young said parishioners will find he is measured in tone and deliberative in decision-making.
Some church members believe the number of members who leave ultimately will be much higher. The official membership at Trinity sits at about 1,500, and Jensen said the average Sunday attendance was about 350.
“I think history will tell whether it was a good decision or a bad decision,” [Bishop Larry] Benfield said. “We’ll have to look to the future to see.”
Benfield did acknowledge his surprise upon hearing of the vestry’s vote.
St. Luke’s Church will make a pilgrimage from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism without leaving its historic location at 53rd Street and Annapolis Road in Bladensburg, Md.
The Rev. Mark Lewis, rector of St. Luke’s since 2006, praises the Rt. Rev. John B. Chane, Bishop of Washington, for the arrangement, in which St. Luke’s will lease the facilities from the Diocese of Washington and has an option to buy the property.
“We have a relationship that is mutually respectful,” Lewis said in an interview with The Living Church. He appreciates where I am theologically, and I know he appreciates the parish.”
Read it all.”>Read it all.
Jesus is not departing “up to” some higher but other floor in the universe, but to his God and Father upon whom the very existence of the universe depends, and in whom we all “live and move and have our being.” The Ascension is not an abandonment but the beginning of a new and more intimate nearness ”“ his continuing, ubiquitous, always-available presence with us and for us, not to a different and distant point within the universe, but transcending and filling all things. He is Ascended from one particular place to the heavenly, the divine places, far above all rule and dominion and power, as St. Paul says in our epistle, so that he now fills all in all ”“ not an abandonment, but a new and available nearness.
A few weeks ago, we had the privilege of hosting here at St. Michael’s two very hungry men for God: Onesphore Manirakiza and the Rev. Richard Jones. Onesphore, a native of Burundi, Africa, trained as a lawyer before laying it all down in pursuit of his dream to be part of the transformation of Burundi. He is one of the brightest and most influential leaders there, having founded Harvest for Christ ministries. He is fearless, bold, anointed and fruitful. In addition to pioneering evangelism, he is reaching out to the poorest of the poor, the pygmy Batwa, and seeing phenomenal results. Onesphore was here for a conference and much needed rest.
The Rev. Richard Jones was here earlier this month for some rest from his role as Rector of St. John’s Anglican Church near Liverpool, England. Richard is doing some amazing beyond the box ministry in Liverpool and I am convinced we will be reading some of his future works at a later date!
Having spent a good amount of time with both of them while they were here. I was completely inspired to see such hungry entrepreneurs for the Gospel!…
Parishioners from local churches set out Sunday for a mission trip to Alabama.
Four of the eight churches in the Piedmont Convocation of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina were represented by 26 people. They will help assist areas ravaged by tornadoes that claimed lives and destroyed structures in April.
Parishioners will clear debris and do construction work during the week-long mission trip, said the Rev. Fergie Horvath. She coordinates outreach in the Convocation and is a deacon at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church.
Flash back a few years and you may remember all of those big headlines about the controversial decision by Pope Benedict XVI to park Vatican tanks on the lawn of Canterbury Cathedral and, thus, begin an ecclesiastical invasion of England….
In reality, Benedict had responded to more than a decade of appeals for help from many, not all, of the long-suffering Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England and elsewhere in the Anglican Communion. The idea of a large group of Anglicans swimming the Tiber has been around for a long time…and everyone involved knew that, other than most of the mainstream journalists who covered the story….
One of Lodi’s older and more active churches is encountering some major financial issues.
For a few months this year, officials at St. John’s Episcopal Church weren’t sure whether they could make their mortgage payment for the church on Lower Sacramento Road.
Thanks to a generous congregation, the church came up with about $43,000, which will more than cover the current $27,059 mortgage payment due to the Bank of Stockton and $6,817 in current interest.
…after almost 27 years of service to the church, and the Santa Clarita Valley, [the Rev. Canon Lynn] Jay will hold her last sermon July 31.
Her work with countless local charities ”” some she’s played pivotal roles in, such as the SCV Emergency Winter Shelter and the SCV Food Pantry ”” will likely leave a lasting mark in the community long after she steps down.
But perhaps just as memorable for parishioners is her quick wit and unique passion. Jay said she’ll stop a sermon mid-hymn to playfully chide a more impassioned verse from the choir. Sometimes, it’s something to the effect of, “Hey, if we can get two more good verses, I won’t make you guys sing the third,” she said.
The Rev. J. Scott Barker was walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain ”” a historic pilgrimage route ”” about a year ago when he had an epiphany.
On his pilgrimage to the site where St. James the Apostle is said to be buried, Barker, the rector of Christ Church in the Village of Warwick, realized he aspired to be a bishop with the Episcopal Church.
Little did he know that a year later, he’d be tapped as bishop of the Nebraska Diocese.
A 2012-2014 strategic plan for Washington National Cathedral will help place the cathedral on a firmer financial footing, the cathedral’s dean, the Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, said June 5. He said the strategic plan, which includes both short- and long-term objectives, precedes a capital campaign, which will kick off shortly.
Speaking at the cathedral during a participatory town hall meeting, Lloyd said the challenge “that has haunted the cathedral from the beginning” is how it can prevent “monetary asphyxiation” (a phrase used by the cathedral’s late dean Francis Sayre) and sustain itself.
Strengthening the cathedral’s endowment is essential to avoid “endlessly having to chase that money,” the dean said. “We know the need is great,” he said. “We need a $400 million endowment to be sustainable for the ages; this is a first step.” (The current endowment is about $51 million.)
After a period of deep discernment, the rector and parishioners of St. Luke’s Episcopal parish in Bladensburg, Maryland have decided to seek entry into the Roman Catholic Church through a new structure approved by Pope Benedict XVI called an ordinariate. Saint Luke’s is the first church in the Washington metropolitan area to take this step.
The transition is being made with the prayerful support of Bishop John Bryson Chane of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Catholic Archbishop of Washington.
“We welcome the St. Luke community warmly into our family of faith. The proposed ordinariate provides a path to unity, one that recognizes our shared beliefs on matters of faith while also recognizing and respecting the liturgical heritage of the Anglican Church,” Cardinal Wuerl said. “We also recognize the openness of the community to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in their faith journey.”