In order to generate a pictorial chart of this parish, please go [url=http://www.episcopalchurch.org/109378_107383_ENG_HTM.htm]here[/url] and enter “Milwaukee” in the second line down under “Diocese.” Next please wait a moment and then click on “Church” and choose”St Paul’s, Oconomowoc” Then wait another moment and choose “View Church chart” under that line (the middle of the three choices).

Listen to it all (It begins with the reading of the gospel) [It is an MP3 file]. It occurred on the occasion of the Bishop’s confirmation visit yesterday to Saint Paul’s in Summerville, South Carolina.

Here is a quote to whet your appetite:

“What is astonishing to me I suppose is that we in the church make so little of the Ascension of our Lord.”

The question put to the Rev. Michael Barlowe is on the minds of many Utahns as they quiz four candidates for bishop:

“Where do you see the Episcopal Church in Utah in three years?”

Barlowe’s answer, given recently to a group of Episcopalians in Ogden, is both a joke about the state’s culture and a wish — and it is greeted with applause:

“I’m not the prophet,” he says. “But I would hope we’d be a much larger church.”

Indeed, growing the church is very much on the minds of Utah Episcopalians as they come to the end of an 18-month process of selecting a new bishop to replace the Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish, Utah’s 10th Episcopal bishop.

Read it all.

The theological differences that precipitated the exodus of Sellers’ congregation and others from the Episcopal Church are the root of the latest strife to affect the denomination. This new conflict, though, which has managed to unite groups that abandoned the denomination as far back as 1873, could mean serious trouble for the Episcopal Church, said Bill Leonard, dean and professor of church history at Wake Forest University Divinity School.

“It is very fascinating historically that the Anglican Communion in this country has decided to split over issues of sexuality, when they resisted schism over slavery, temperance, and fundamentalism and liberalism in the 1920s, those controversies that divided so many Protestant groups in North America,” he said.

“It took a long time, but now that it has started, it is moving along with a vengeance.”

In Pinellas, the squabble between the two churches continues over matters such as ownership of an early learning center and a bingo license. The Episcopal congregation wants its website and phone number back.

“It’s like a family breaking up,” said Jim DeLa, spokesman for the Episcopal Diocese.

Read it all.

All Saints Episcopal Church is a congregation of about 200 members; it’s a welcoming, diverse congregation. When the Rev. Tanya R. Wallace arrived to serve as rector in September, she decided it was “the perfect place” for her.

“They are such devoted, faithful people. It’s a joy to be working with them,” she said.

Wallace wanted “to be very intentional” about moving forward with the congregation in ways members wanted to function as a parish.

So she began the process of developing a five-year plan, convening a long-range planning committee and hosting a series of listening sessions to which all members of the 50-year-old church were invited to express their thoughts on “who we are as a congregation and where we’re going.”

There’s a mix of people in the parish, from the young families who are joining to the founding members who remain part of the church.

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Facing dwindling attendance over the past decade, the century-old St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Millis has suspended all services and activities, according to the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.

The move has left a preschool that has leased space in the lower level of the church for more than 30 years scrambling to find a new home, after being given two weeks notice.

“We were informed early about the suspension of the church,’’ said Stacey Giancioppo, director of Big Bird’s Nest Nursery School. “Immediately upon hearing the news we were faced with finding a new space. It’s not something we thought we’d have to do.’’

The church’s rector and a representative of the vestry did not return requests for comment, but an outgoing voice-mail message on the church’s phone bluntly states the loss. “As of April 25, 2010, all church services and church activities have been suspended,’’ says a woman’s voice, choked with emotion. “You can leave a message here but please understand it may not be answered right away.’’

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New signs will go up on the Episcopal Church on Highway 17 in Pawleys Island this summer: Christ the King, Waccamaw.

The church was formerly All Saints Waccamaw, but a settlement in a long-running lawsuit earlier this year led the Episcopal parish to give up the name.

“All Saints is such a dear name to many, a great name with meaning to a lot of people,” said Rick Bruce, senior warden of the Episcopal church vestry. “We wanted a name that would be meaningful in a different way.”

Read the whole thing.

While no one really knows if all dogs go to heaven, Calvary Episcopal Church is giving area pooches and their owners improved odds with a new monthly worship service.

The first Perfect Paws Pet Ministry takes place on Sunday, May 16, from 5 to 5:30 p.m., in the church’s Parish Hall.

After that, the church plans to hold the pet service on the third Sunday of every month, complete with communion for the humans who wish to partake and special blessings bestowed on pets and people alike. Dogs will get treats as part of the service.

Read it all.

A section of a bell tower has collapsed at a long-abandoned landmark church on the West Side.

The incident occurred on the same day that Buffalo’s inspections chief said he doubts the 117-year-old structure can be saved from the wrecking ball.

James Comerford told city lawmakers earlier today that it was against his “better judgment” to take steps to save the steeple of the former St. Mary’s on-the-Hill Episcopal Church, because he didn’t believe the structure is sufficiently stable.

Read it all.

The Diocese of Southwest Florida has acted on its responsibilities by taking steps to better control the buildings, grounds and mission of one of its member congregations, St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Largo.

This is in response to a Sept. 13, 2009 decision by some members of the congregation, led by Ed Sellers, their former Episcopal priest, to sever their relationship with The Episcopal Church and affiliate with the Anglican Church in North America.

Since that decision, Sellers and his congregation have been allowed to continue to worship at St. Dunstan’s property, which is wholly owned by the Diocese of Southwest Florida, while Bishop Dabney Smith conferred with chancellors and the elected leadership of the diocese, including the Standing Committee and the Diocesan Council.

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A local Episcopal church announced Sunday that it has indefinitely suspended all worship services and day-to-day operations due to financial problems attributed in part to declining numbers.

St. Paul’s Church at 903 Main St. will no longer hold Sunday services or Sunday school. The church’s officials and congregation are currently in talks with the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts to determine what to do next.

“St. Paul’s is facing some financial challenges as well as congregational challenges,” said Tracey Sukraw, director of communication for the diocese. “So worship services as well as day-to-day operations have been suspended.”

Sukraw said one problem is that congregants are divided over how to solve the financial problems.

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With just a dozen regular Sunday worshippers, the people of Holy Apostles Episcopal Church in Perry were in no position to afford a full-time priest.

But they didn’t intend to shut down their 170-year-old rural parish, either.

So the congregation looked within its own pews and found a willing candidate for the priesthood.

And he comes cheap, too.

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The rector of Christ Church Grosse Pointe has been temporarily removed from his position because of a “serious allegation” that wasn’t specified, congregants learned this morning.

Rev. Brad Whitaker has run the prominent Episcopal church since 2002.

A representative of the Episcopal Bishop of Michigan addressed worshippers at the 9 a.m. service, followed by remarks by vestry senior warden Libby Candler.

Two calls placed to the home phone number listed for Whitaker the rector were hung up.

Read it all.

Parishioners at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church received a welcome surprise on Easter Sunday, a surprise that helped them put their 100-year-old church’s history in perspective.

Suddenly adorning a courtyard leading to the sanctuary they found beautiful stained-glass windows dating back to about 1890.

The windows, commissioned in memory of George Kelly Dunlop, the Episcopal Bishop for Arizona and New Mexico, had been featured in the original Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix, but they didn’t fit when the new church moved to its present location.

Read it all.

Death is eternal, but burial is not.

That is what relatives of 46 former worshippers of Christ Church on the Green are learning after a decision by the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut to remove cremated remains from a memorial garden on the church grounds. The historic chapel was put up for sale last year after half its membership broke away in late 2007 over the national church’s stance on homosexuality and other issues.

“You have a situation here, where, by virtue of a sale, the diocese will no longer be responsible for the land, its use, or any care of anything in it,” said the Rev. Stanley Kemmerer, priest-in-charge. “It’s really an effort to be pastoral.”

Read it all.

The First Amendment prohibits any “law respecting an establishment of religion,” and in recent years the Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause cases have focused on religiously themed public displays. Yet the court has failed to develop clear rules for deciding such cases, ensuring further litigation. There is something picayune about these disputes, over courthouse Ten Commandments displays or school-yard crèches. In this term’s Establishment Clause case, Salazar v. Bruno, for instance, the justices will soon decide whether an eight-foot cruciform war memorial in a park in the Mojave Desert violates the Constitution.

All the while, the court has never come to grips with the existence of a literal established church on a hill just across town””the National Cathedral. Although the Cathedral helps put issues like those in Salazar in proper perspective, it seems the court can’t see the Cathedral for the crosses.

The Cathedral’s parent body, the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation, was “constituted” by an act of Congress in 1893, and the cornerstone was laid in the presence of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907. The charter Congress issued on the Feast of the Epiphany called on the Foundation to “establish”¦within the District of Columbia a cathedral . . . for the promotion of religion” and other worthwhile causes.

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Something more than 1,600 years ago while instructing catechumens who hoped to be baptized at the Easter Vigil, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, looked at them and said, “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.”

Today, Good Friday, we pass by the dragon, and it is necessary that we take a good hard look as we do so.

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Four or five Sundays in 2005, his own atheism notwithstanding, Dale McGowan took his family into the neo-Gothic grandeur of St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis on a kind of skeptic’s field trip.

Mr. McGowan went because he wanted his three young children to have “religious literacy.” He went because his mother-in-law, Barbara Maples, belonged to the congregation. He went because, as a college professor with a fondness for weekend sweatpants, church gave him the rare chance to wear the ties she invariably gave him for his birthday.

Something else began to strike Mr. McGowan on those visits. He listened to the vicar preach about ministering to the poor, and he learned that the cathedral helped to sponsor a weekly dinner for the homeless. Most importantly, he watched as the collection plate moved through the pews and as his mother-in-law, who volunteered at those dinners, dropped in her offering.

All those details added up to a nonbeliever’s revelation. The theology and the voluntarism and the philanthropy, Mr. McGowan came to realize, were part of a greater whole, a commitment to charity as part of religious practice. And on that practice, this atheist felt lacking. To put it in church slang, he was convicted.

Rather than adopt faith, however, Mr. McGowan set out to emulate it, or at least its culture of giving. He set out to, in effect, create the atheist’s collection plate….

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One of Manhattan’s most illustrious Episcopal congregations, Saint Thomas Church is best known for its glorious liturgical music and the stunning architecture of its 1913 church building, in French High Gothic style, on Fifth Avenue at Fifty-Third Street. The church’s choir of men and boys, modeled on that of King’s College, Cambridge, is made up of boys who attend the residential Saint Thomas Choir School and professional adult singers. On Sunday, March 28””Palm Sunday””the musical highlight was Orlandus Lassus’ exquisite Tristis est anima mea, which was sung as the offertory motet.

Because it was Palm Sunday, the 11 a.m. service differed from the norm. It began with an elaborate procession that included children; a gospel reading; and the blessing of palms. And, as the rector, Fr. Andrew Mead, noted in his sermon, the Solemn Eucharist of the Passion that followed omitted the usual bidding prayers””that is, the prayers of intercession””and ended in silence. The purpose of the silence was to signify our need to contemplate Christ’s Passion as Holy Week began.

Fr. Mead’s sermon was shorter than usual because of the unusual length of the service, but his message was as rich in traditional doctrine and practical spirituality as his sermons always are….

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For 25 years, the Rev. Deborah Jackson guided insurers in competing for the hearts and minds of people looking to protect the financial security of their loved ones.

Then she decided that she wanted to guide people toward assuring themselves more fruitful lives.

“I enjoyed doing marketing research,” said Jackson, who spent more than two decades at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida. “But for years, when I was still in the insurance industry, I felt that still, small voice from God saying, ‘Do more to make a difference.’ ”

In 2007, Jackson got a chance to heed that voice – in a big way.

She earned a master of divinity degree from The University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., and began her ministry at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Jacksonville – the cathedral for the Episcopal Diocese of Northeast Florida.

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Our Bishop will be The Rt. Rev’d John Guernsey. Bishop Guernsey is the long-time Rector of All Saints Church in Dale City, Virginia and will be well known to several within St. Andrew’s. I have known +John for over 20 years, dating back to my time at Virginia Seminary. You will discover that he shares many of the priorities that we have as a parish; from our commitment to missions (the Bishop is the Chairman of the Board for SOMA ”“ a well known mission agency) to our passion to see every member equipped for ministry with both Word and Spirit. I have made arrangements for Bishop Guernsey to visit and preach at the Wednesday night service, 28 April 2010, followed by a time of healing prayer led by the Bishop. Please make plans to attend.

Lastly, the departure of this parish from the Diocese of South Carolina was not hastily made nor was it an easy decision. Indeed, this struggle has extended well beyond the past decade costing this parish one well-beloved Rector. Any sense of sadness over our separation is tempered by our joyful sense of the Lord’s forward-looking call upon our lives; by our common love for our Lord and by the common knowledge that our difficulty lay with the spiritual headship of the National Church, of which the Diocese of South Carolina remains, and intends to remain, a part, and not with the Bishop of South Carolina. And so, I must say “thank you” to Bishop Lawrence. From the day I met +Mark in the candidacy process I have spoken with him often about St. Andrew’s costly efforts to remain faithful to the gospel in the midst of the Episcopal Church’s increasing abandonment of the faith as revealed through Scripture and Tradition. These conversations have continued throughout +Mark’s episcopacy and have grown to include the Vestry of St. Andrew’s as well as the Standing Committee of the Diocese of South Carolina. I have found in Bishop Lawrence a friend and co-laborer in the ministry of the Gospel. We share a mutual desire to maintain our fraternal relationship and have committed to one another that St. Andrew’s and the Diocese of South Carolina will continue to partner in Gospel ministry as opportunity and circumstance permit. Please remember to pray for the Diocese of South Carolina as we desire nothing less than God’s best for them.

Read it all.

Some very encouraging news indeed– Read it all.

Since Oaktree Development, the co-developer of the St. James property, does not anticipate starting construction until after the 2009-2010 school year, the Kesher School will have until then to relocate to between 4,000 and 5,000 square feet of space that can accommodate up to eight classrooms and a common area.

Esterson said they have been looking at sites in Cambridge and Somerville, specifically near bus routes for student accessibility, and more importantly, a location with natural light.

“The program deserves a better space,” he said. “Church basements are cheap, but there are none left in Cambridge.”

For the last several months, Beth Rubenstein, assistant city manager for Community Development, said Oaktree and church representatives have been seeking the necessary permits and approvals to build housing and additional office and program space at the site of the former Cambridge Car Wash and the historic church property at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Beech Street.

The city’s Planning Board has approved a special permit to build. The Historical Commission has approved the project “in principle” with a number of conditions. A hearing has been scheduled for April 1.

“We are still not completely happy with the details,” said Historical Commission Executive Director Charles Sullivan.

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St. Mark’s Episcopal Church will shut its doors forever in May, bringing to a close a 180-year run of ministering in Warren.

Church officials got word from the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island about two weeks ago that poor finances were behind the diocese’s decision to shutter the church following final services on Sunday, May 2.

While not necessarily surprising, the news was sad, said the church’s pastor.

“We knew in the beginning of the year that we couldn’t pay our bills,” the Rev. James Verber said. “We’re small, we have a lot of retired people, and they don’t have the funds to pay the bills. The diocese made a financial decision.”

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Rather wonderfully the Catholic church came to the rescue offering the abandoned congregation a place in which to worship. That congregation has since doubled, a clear sign of God’s blessing, wheras the church that remained has dwindled and died. Now for the really revealing part of this very shoddy episode”¦.

”¦having claimed that those leaving were not able to uphold the desires of the church founders the Diocese of New York has spitefully sold the building, at a third of the cost the congregation were offering, to the Muslims! How truly shameful that the Episcopal authorities were so full of hatred and malice that they could stoop to such depths.

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Members of Mother Grove Goddess Temple will celebrate at 7 p.m. Saturday with A Breath of Appalachian Spring: A Ritual in Celebration of the Spring Equinox, in the parish hall of the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls in Biltmore Village.

Saturday’s event is open to all faith traditions, said Byron Ballard, wiccan priestess and a member of the temple. Mother Grove “isn’t a wiccan group, though some of us are wiccans,” she said.

“Mother Grove is an outgrowth of the work of several people in the goddess/earth religions community,” Ballard said. “Its goal is to create a permanent sanctuary, where people of all faith traditions may openly and safely celebrate the divine feminine, the goddess.”

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This was an accident waiting to happen. In a way it is almost surprising that it took seven years from the ordination of Gene Robinson, a partnered gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire, for a second such incident to occur. That event has been seen as tearing the fabric of the Anglican Communion, which has been held together in little more than name ever since. Is this the final nail in the coffin? Will the Anglican Communion be torn apart by intractable divisions?

The fourth Anglican Global South to South Encounter is set to take place in Singapore, April 19-23. The current situation in the Episcopal Church is not their principal focus. Yet they represent the large and growing majority of Anglicans in the world, and the primates (archbishops) and others who will be present are unequivocally committed to Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth conference of bishops, which remains the official position of the Anglican Communion….

Many of the provinces (national church bodies) represented at this Global South encounter are already out of communion with the Episcopal Church or in “impaired communion”. Please pray for these godly brothers and sisters as they prepare for this important gathering.

Pray also for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and also for the godly bishops who still remain in the Episcopal Church, such as our own Visitor Bishop, Russell Jacobus of the Diocese of Fond du Lac. And let us believe that the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead is more than able to bring light into this dark turn of events, to bring good out of evil, and breathe life into a culture of death.

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See one answer from Saint Stephen’s, Edina, Minnesota.

The Rev. Alistair Begg’s theological interpretation of the Gospel of John, (Messages of faith, Saturday) has been sadly all too pervasive in Christianity for centuries. To continue to read this Gospel, or any of the Biblical canon, in such a superficial manner that it leads the reader to believe that “those who claim to know and honor God, but deny the truth of the deity of Christ, are deluded and dangerous” is to perpetuate a serious untruth about the essential nature of Jesus and his message. This untruth has resulted in a host of egregious behaviors by Christians toward others, including virulent anti-Semitism over the last two millennia.

Read it all.

The Rev. Alistair Begg’s theological interpretation of the Gospel of John, (Messages of faith, Saturday) has been sadly all too pervasive in Christianity for centuries. To continue to read this Gospel, or any of the Biblical canon, in such a superficial manner that it leads the reader to believe that “those who claim to know and honor God, but deny the truth of the deity of Christ, are deluded and dangerous” is to perpetuate a serious untruth about the essential nature of Jesus and his message. This untruth has resulted in a host of egregious behaviors by Christians toward others, including virulent anti-Semitism over the last two millennia.

Read it all.