Former congregants are returning after a divisive few years in the parish, and new congregants, mostly young families, are drawn in by the new priest, a bubbly 32-year-old mom who smiles easily, cracks jokes and is apt to talk about iPods or pop culture during sermons.

“I wasn’t very happy with the way things were and found myself going to the Whitman church,” said parishioner Suzanne O’Connor, who left the Bridgewater church for three years and returned shortly after [Natasha] Stewart arrived.

O’Connor says personality clashes between congregants and the former head priest were to blame and says most complaints stemmed from discomfort by parishioners who couldn’t afford to donate large sums of money to the church.

Since arriving about two and a half years ago in Bridgewater, Stewart says she has devoted great energy to welcoming all parishioners, regardless of social status and wealth.

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Three area Episcopal churches are spreading the word that they have merged to spread the Word.

Trinity Church of New Castle, The Church of the Redeemer of Hermitage and St. Clements of Greenville have combined their congregations, priests and resources to form St. Jude Episcopal Church.

The Rev. Canon Dennis Blauser, vicar and executive pastor, will lead a clergy team of priests and deacons for the new merger. Bishop Sean Rowe said the diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania is embracing the merger.

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Toward the end of the service, the Bishop led Prayers for the Closing of a Congregation. Part of that prayer was, “God of our beginnings and endings, we celebrate all we have shared as people of St. Peter’s Church and as people of this Diocese and we ask your blessing as we continue on our journey apart from this place.”

As many in the pews remembered their own celebrations at St. Peter’s, the Bishop prayed, “For the works of ministry that have taken place on the blessed ground and within these sacred walls; for the baptisms and professions of faith, for weddings and for burials; for prayers offered and bread and wine offered; for holy food partaken and for the life of this community of faith now closing, we offer prayer and praise to God.”

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The Very Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, dean and president of Episcopal Divinity School, and Mally Lloyd, canon to the Ordinary, married on Saturday at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Boston in front of nearly 400 guests. The Rt. Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, solemnized the marriage.

For orthodox Anglicans, the lesbian union was another act of defiance.

“This is another action of reckless disregard for the life of the Anglican Communion and the authority of the Bible by The Episcopal Church,” the Rt. Rev. David C. Anderson, president and CEO of the American Anglican Council, told The Christian Post. “They continue to ignore the Communion’s pleas for restraint and continue to go their own way.”

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By her own and others’ accounts, the Rev. Davette Turk has always had a thing for ruffling feathers.

“I believe in shaking things up,” said Turk, 75, of Jacksonville. “Jesus shook a lot of people up, and I believe in shaking people up for the sake of love.”

Today is the 25th anniversary of one major way in which Turk did just that: Becoming a priest in the Jacksonville-based Episcopal Diocese of Florida. That made her the state’s first female Episcopal priest, a fact that didn’t sit well with many.

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After 22 years at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Ventura, Pastor Jerome Kahler is hanging up his collar and looking to start a new life of gardening and furniture-making.

“I’ve got major garden work I never had enough time for, to raise vegetables and flowers,” said Kahler, 66, adding that he and wife Beth also plan to travel. He said he also likes to make Shaker-style chairs from kits and plans to do that as a hobby.

Kahler first came to St. Paul’s after the previous pastor, Robert E. Henry, was accused of child molestation and suddenly resigned. “It was a hell of a way to begin,” Kahler said. “There was the betrayal of the congregation, the betrayal of the sacred trust and betrayal of the clergy. This was the 1980s, and the issue of clergy misconduct was making the news.”

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Just how did Mary and Joseph make their famous trip to Bethlehem?

What did an innkeeper tell Mary and Joseph once they reached the city?

The Rev. Joe Alsay, rector of St. Augustine of Canterbury Episcopal Church, asked his congregation these and other questions during the Dec. 19 services at the Oklahoma City church, 14700 N May.

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St. George’s Anglican Church, a former Episcopal Church congregation which disaffiliated from its former denomination, has negotiated with the Diocese of New Jersey to retain its church buildings and tangible property with complete independence from The Episcopal Church (TEC). The congregation is now affiliated with the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) under Missionary Bishop Martyn Minns and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) under Archbishop Robert Duncan.

“We are extremely grateful that the congregation of St. George’s Anglican Church is able to retain its property. This is an incredible blessing and witness to others that Christians can resolve these matters amicably. We are also thankful that the church has been able to maintain a cordial relationship with the Diocese of New Jersey. I trust and pray that St. George’s Anglican Church will continue to serve the Lord through mission and ministry for many years to come,” said CANA Missionary Bishop Martyn Minns.

The final sale of St. George’s church property took place on Tuesday, November 23, 2010.

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Grief, anxiety and depression don’t take a holiday at this time of year.

In fact, they can weigh even more heavily, according to the Rev. Bill Van Oss, rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Duluth, which hosted its third annual “Blue Christmas” service on Sunday.

“We want to acknowledge that, for some people, Christmas and the holidays are a difficult time,” Van Oss said. “Not everyone has positive memories of the season.”

He pointed out that many people still are haunted by childhood experiences related to alcoholism, abuse or poverty in their lives.

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St. John’s Episcopal Church, at 4 Fountain Square in The Manor, is the oldest church in Larchmont. It was founded in 1891, the same year the Village of Larchmont was incorporated, and began as a little clubhouse on Horseshoe Harbor.

If you want to talk about its modern history, many people will direct you to Elaine Viebranz.

Viebranz, 84, has been a St. John’s member since 1953, when she and late husband, Al, moved to Larchmont. She was very active in the church, and Al wrote one of the two church histories.

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The Rev. William Melnyk, former rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Downingtown, resigned from the church in late 2004 amid investigations that he and his wife, the Rev. Glyn Ruppe-Melnyk, wrote two druidic ceremonies as suggestions for women’s liturgies. The druids were a Celtic sect that predates Christianity.

At the conclusion of the investigation, Bishop Charles E. Bennison declined to suspend the two priests from the church.

Ruppe-Melnyk still serves as the rector of St. Francis-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church in Willistown.

Melnyk said recently that Bishop Bennision agreed to reinstate him if Melnyk could agree to not write or speak about Celtic spirituality. Melnyk said he could not agree to those terms and that it became evident earlier this year that his reinstatement was not going to happen.

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Tucked away in the hardwood hammocks of the Middle Keys, tiny St. Columba Episcopal Church carries a hefty history.

President Harry S Truman worshiped there. Its 19 cut glass windows are on a national registry of historic arts. Parishioners have gone on missions to Honduras, Sudan and Madagascar. And though its summer congregation numbers only about 25, the church has helped thousands in the community.

So for its 50th anniversary, the small congregation thought big. They invited Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the elected leader of the Episcopal Church’s 2.4 million members in 16 countries and 110 dioceses.

Who knows if it was divine intervention, but she said yes.

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A landmark church in Northwest Gainesville might be torn down and replaced with a Walgreen’s.

St. Michael’s Episcopal Church was designed in the seventies by Nils M. Schweizer, a student of the famous architect Frank Loyd Wright.
And some members of the community are fighting to save what they consider a spiritual and architectural treasure.

St. Michael’s Episcopal Church is a mid-century modern building featuring a column-less design. It’s home to a congregation of about 100 people and the idea of it being torn down is very upsetting to some long time community and church members.

Susan Halbert has been a member of the church for 15 years. She said, “To tear down a beautiful church to put another drugstore was a real disappointment to me.”Bishop Samuel Johnson Howard of the Episcopal Diocese of Florida made the announcement last month that a contingent contract had been signed with Walgreen’s to sell the property.Halbert said, “It would be futile to speculate on why he made this decision, but for me personally it’s a devestating thing.” Some church members are struggling with the idea of losing the building they consider they’re spiritual home.

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Among some of the reasons for this failure to keep and recruit younger people, I would list the following:

1. The abandonment in the early 70’s of a National Curriculum for Church Schools.
2. The failure to have a unified teaching and age for confirmation, and the lack of emphasis by our bishops of the place on confirmation.
3. The moment toward ordination to an older and older age, along with making ordination almost exclusively a “second career” track for people.

These two reasons are closely related because it is younger leaders who have the best chance of reaching their own generation for Christ.

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Founded in 1973, St. Bartholomew’s began as a group of worshippers under the guidance of the Rev. Harold Hopkins. For the first two years, St. Bart’s borrowed space in other local churches and schools. 1976, it had its first permanent home in a converted building on Route 1 in Yarmouth. From the beginning, St. Bart’s cultivated a hands-on, everyone-involved parish family. After the Rev. Hopkins left to become bishop of North Dakota, the congregation was ready for a full-time vicar and called the Rev. Gil Birney in 1983.

Under the Rev. Birney’s leadership, St. Bart’s flourished, eventually gaining parish status. In 1988, members built the timber-framed building — complete with a vaulted sanctuary ceiling — in a wooded setting along Gilman Road that remains their home.

In 2007, St. Bart’s welcomed its current rector, the Rev. Nina Pooley, previously associate chaplain of St. Paul’s School in Brooklandville, Md.

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During a recent visitation at Trinity, Houston, the Rt. Rev. Andy Doyle confronted the vestry for continued attempts by some to undermine the rector’s authority. The congregation worked with a mediator during the spring and summer to address dissention between the rector, staff and parishioners.

The bishop assured the rector, the Rev. Hannah Atkins, of his support noting her commitment to follow recommendations of the mediator, along with numerous lay leaders who were “setting about the corrective measures called for.” Bishop Doyle said however, he was “saddened” by the continued destructive behavior of some and promised to remove current or future vestry members unwilling to work with the rector in good faith.

Read it all and please note there are two accompanying documents that also should be considered.

Read it all–pages 3 and 4 once you download the pdf.

After 15 months of sharing a priest, a music minister and parish administrator, as well as alternating weekend services between the city and Adams, the members of St. John’s Episcopal Church in North Adams and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Adams have voted to consolidate the two entities into a single congregation — All Saints Episcopal Church.

The new congregation will continue to alternate its weekend Mass services between the two church buildings, with hopes of eventually building a new, smaller church, senior wardens Susan Walker and JoAnn Gagne said in an interview on Monday.

“We’ve been headed in this direction for some time,” Walker, of North Adams, said. “The decision to consolidate has mostly been driven by the financial crisis of 2008, which has negatively impacted all of the churches in this area. We were trying to figure out a way to survive, when the idea of consolidating was first posed about 112 years ago. Neither church is very big, so it made sense to explore the idea. We’ve received a lot of support from our diocese — the Dioceses of the Western Massachusetts Protestant Episcopal Church.”

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Like six others before it in the last eight years, a grand Brockton church built by immigrants and shoe industrialists in the city’s heyday will close Sunday, its expenses too high and its buildings too difficult to maintain for its shrinking congregation.

The closing of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church follows those of several other once-prominent area churches, including the 156-year-old Elmwood New Church in East Bridgewater, which faces demolition because of its decrepit condition.

In Brockton, the recent closings began in 2002 with Our Lady of Ostrobrama; most recently, St. Casimir Church, a 110-year-old Lithuanian parish, shut down in 2008.

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At one end of the 20-foot rope is Tessa Lightfoot, a 13-year-old American teenager topping the scales at 90 pounds. At the other, directly above her head, is a British-made bronze bell weighing more than a quarter of a ton.

Together, they make beautiful . . . silence.

Tessa heaves gamely up and down on the rope as the 627-pound bell, swinging madly through 360 degrees of arc, makes not so much as a ding. During ringing class in the bell tower of Washington National Cathedral, the clappers are stopped as a courtesy to nearby residents.

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Members of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church recently received a letter from their priest, the Rev. Robin Smith, confirming that one of the community’s first churches will close following services on Christmas Eve.

The church was established in 1833, with a cornerstone laid in 1832, by the Rev. William Narcissus Lyster, an Irishman who had emigrated to America, who is said to have named the Irish Hills because they reminded him of his homeland. lyster was invited to the settlement by Musgrove Evans, J.W. Brown, and George Spofford and founded the first Episcopal Church west of the Alleghenies. The church will close its doors after marking just over 177 years in the Tecumseh community.

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The latest twist involves the man who was pastor of St. John’s in the run-up to the schism.

[The] Rev. Daniel H. Martins, St. John’s pastor for 13 years, has become a bishop-elect in the Diocese of Springfield, Ill. – but in the original denomination.

The denomination St. John’s decided to leave while Martins led it.

Some Episcopalians feel betrayed.

“I’m very surprised that he’s turned around and has decided to go back to the Episcopal Church,” said Al Lingo, “because he was a very, very avid opponent, and he led St. John’s parishioners away from the Episcopal Church. And I’m sure it’s a great, great surprise to the people of St. John’s.”

The original Diocese of San Joaquin has taken the unusual step of informing Springfield that Martins is a schismatic in sheep’s clothing and should not be bishop….

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According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s figures, Utah has grown in population from 2,233,169 in 2000 to 2,784,572 in 2009. This represents a population growth of approximately 24.69%.

According to Episcopal Church statistics, the Diocese of Utah went from Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 1924 in 1998 to 1612 in 2008. This represents an ASA decline of about 16% over this ten year period. Please note that if you go to the link toward the end of this sentence and enter “Utah” 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 2009 which shows a slight increase in ASA from 2008-2009. The hard numbers for these new 2009 numbers are not yet available so far as I am aware.

The Diocese of Utah’s website may be found here.

The doors of the historic Trinity Episcopal Cathedral will open once more Sunday for worship following a three-year, $7 million restoration project of the downtown church.

There will be no splashy dedication ceremony of the Gothic church that has anchored a city block next door to the State House since 1847. The cathedral will simply begin its new fall worship schedule with four Sunday services, including a new 4 p.m. choral evensong and Eucharist, said Doak Wolfe, Trinity’s director of communications and associate for liturgy and music.

Morning services will be at 8, 9 and 11:15 a.m., with the Rev. Charles M. Davis Jr., acting dean of the cathedral, presiding. The Rev. Robert G. Riegel will preach at the 9 and 11:15 services.
“There is no big celebration planned,” said Wolfe. “We are just going to live into this reopening of the cathedral.”

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Mount Calvary Church, a small Episcopal parish in Baltimore, voted Oct. 24 to leave the Episcopal community and become an Anglican-use parish within the Roman Catholic Church. The 168-year-old church became the first Episcopal parish in Maryland to vote to sever ties with the Episcopal Church.

Of the 45 eligible voters, 28 were present for the meeting ”“ casting ballots on a resolution to separate from the Episcopal Church and another to become an Anglican-use parish. The first resolution passed with 24 votes in favor, two against and two abstentions. The second resolution also passed, with 24 votes in favor, three against and one abstention.

“I don’t agree with a lot of what is happening in the Episcopal Church with their practices and the way their doctrine is,” said 27-year-old Abigail Davis, a parishioner who voted in favor of both resolutions. Like many other parishioners, Davis was particularly troubled by the Episcopal Church’s ordination of women and what she considers its acceptance of homosexuality.

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Mount Calvary Episcopal Church in Baltimore on Sunday became the first congregation in Maryland to vote to break ties with the Episcopal Church and take steps to join the Roman Catholic Church.

The small Anglo Catholic parish at Madison Avenue and Eutaw Street was feeling increasingly alienated from the Episcopal Church as it accepted priests who did not believe in what most of the congregation saw as the foundations of the faith, according to Warren Tanghe, a former Episcopal priest who is now attending St. Mary’s Seminary in Roland Park and preparing for ordination in the Catholic church. Tanghe knows members of the parish, where he has assisted in the past, and said they also were uncomfortable when the church began ordaining women, gays and lesbians.

The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland issued a statement Monday about the vote, but both the bishop and the rector, the Rev. Jason Catania, declined to be interviewed. A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Sean Caine, said the Catholic Church would welcome the congregation.

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Another challenge on the horizon is demographic in nature. The Diocese of Indianapolis is typical of TEC, (and the other mainlines churches) in that most of our members belong to large parishes, while most of our parishes have fewer than 100 people worshiping on an average Sunday. In some dioceses these parishes need to look for part-time clergy, and a growing number of new priests need to be tentmakers ”“ earning some part of their living in secular work. Clergy are not as mobile as in the past, and often cannot move to new positions unless there is work available for a spouse or partner as well. As this trend continues, dioceses and seminaries will need to collaborate in providing a variety of ways to educate and form all our members for ministries.

TEC has been struggling over forty years to live out our conviction that the mission of the church depends on all our members; as the catechism says, “the ministers of the church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.” Each order of ministry has its designated area of responsibility ”“ but there is a good deal of overlap, which is probably a good thing. Unless we are all working together to proclaim the Good News, to make the kingdom Jesus preached a reality, the mission of the church cannot be fully realized.

We have given a good deal of energy and attention to describing and defining the ministries of bishops and priests ”“ after all, much of our ministry is so public ”“ so ”˜up front’ and visible. We have done less well in acknowledging lay persons as the ”˜front line’ in proclaiming Christ and his kingdom in the world, and deacons as the iconic connection between our worship and our daily lives. It’s a special joy to celebrate the ordination of a deacon at our convention Eucharist, affirming the vital role of deacons among us.

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Wrestling with dramatic changes in how Americans practice their faith, many clergy members are willing to wait months to get guidance from Gallagher or someone like him. These consultants have become a small industry, roaming the country to challenge the definition of “church.”

When they work with congregations, they put everything on the table ¿ including whether the pastor and the church building are even necessary. Perhaps worshippers could meet in a movie theater instead. Or consider sharing a pastor with some other church. Or ditch their Sunday morning services for a time more people would find convenient.

Consultants routinely press their clients to stop being so fixated on their real estate, routines and rules. They argue that there are plenty of people who don’t have any interest in sitting in pews and listening to sermons. The challenge is to come up with a way to engage them.

“The role of the church and the clergy is dying, but I think it needs to,” says Tom Brackett, another minister-consultant who works on church development for the Episcopal Church. “The church doesn’t have a mission. We are part of God’s mission.”

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Mission churches operate under the auspices of the bishop of the diocese and, rather than a rector, they have a vicar.

After a church gains at least 50 families and establishes a sound financial base, it can gain its own autonomy within the diocese.

[Jim] Hedman made the convention sweet for church members by giving Bishop Dabney Smith a jar of M&M’s candies when he walked in.

“I sometimes abbreviate our church name in my emails as St. M&M,” said Hedman, who began to realize there was a preaching moment there when he got the chance to make a short speech at the convention.

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Two clergymen have gone where few politicians have dared to tread: placing a friendly wager on the outcome of baseball’s American League Championship Series.

The Texas Rangers are battling the New York Yankees in the best-of-seven series, which now returns to Arlington after the Yankees won 7-2 Wednesday in New York. Texas, however, holds a 3-2 edge, with the winner advancing to the World Series.

Rector Jim Burns of Church of Heavenly Rest in New York City and Rector Luke Back of Church of Heavenly Rest deep in the heart of Texas have a bet on the outcome. The wager was food, of course.

Back offered tenderloins from Perini Ranch Steak House if the Yankees win. Burns came up with an equally unique New York offering.

“If Texas wins, I will be sending Luke a NY Nosh basket,” said Burns. “That is what we call the treats of bagels, lox and other Yankee munchies.”

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