Having nearly run out of money, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church early last year approached developer Randy Salvatore to step in and “bet” on the church by agreeing to a development deal that would provide the parish with a stream of monthly rental payments, according to Tuesday testimony from Salvatore.

But facing a demolition delay, Salvatore indicated that he might back out.

“Every month, I have to make a decision whether I’m going to write a check or not write a check,” Salvatore said. “To be frank, I’m at the tipping point.”

The hearing is in its fifth day of testimony in state Superior Court. A lawsuit filed in November by a preservationist group, Save Old Stamford, is preventing the church from demolishing a 136-year-old rectory on the 1.3-acre site where Salvatore wants to build a residential complex.

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9. What was your major in college?

Psychology and English

10. What book is on your nightstand?

“A Prayer for Owen Meany,” by John Irving

11. What is your favorite comfort food?

Roast chicken

12. How did you meet your spouse?

In Spanish 201 at the University of Alabama.

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As this debate moves toward conclusion, it is crucial that we remember why we’re trying to provide quality, affordable health care to Virginia’s families. In March 2009, the Episcopal Church published its position on health reform in a booklet titled “Promoting Health Care for All.” The booklet was circulated by the Episcopal Public Policy Network, and includes this quote from the Book of Common Prayer:

“Almighty and most merciful God, we remember before you all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us to forget: the homeless and the destitute, the old and the sick, and all who have none to care for them. Help us to heal those who are broken in body and spirit, and to turn their sorrow into joy. Grant this, Father, for the love of your Son, who for our sake became poor, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

But the Episcopal Church is not alone. In June 2009 other Christians have also declared that health reform was an urgent priority in a press release: “The health of our neighbors and the wholeness of the nation now require that all segments of our society join in finding a solution to this national challenge.”

Recently, the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia supported a resolution reiterating “the Gospel message of concern for others which extends to concern for their physical health as well as spiritual well being.”

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A new year, a new beginning — particularly for the congregation of Trinity Episcopal Church in Wetumpka.

As with many Episcopal churches, Trinity will welcome 2010 with an Epiphany service Wednesday. Not only does it mark the culmination of the Christmas celebration, but it is the first time in years that the small but growing church has had a service.

Since dedicating its lovely new nave and sanctuary, the church has seen an increase in attendance and the future is promising, said Trinity’s rector, the Rev. Ben Al­ford.

“This is a new beginning, and we are really excited about it,” Al­ford said. “And we decided that this was the year to start back (with the Epiphany service),” said Alford of the church that has quite a rich history since it was estab­lished in the fall of 1947 by handful of Episcopalians.

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When the roof leaks at St. James’s Episcopal Church, water seeps into the sacristy and soaks the organ case and baptistry.

“It’s baptism by rainfall here,’’ said the Rev. Holly Lyman Antolini, as she pointed out holes in walls, stained-glass windows that have buckled, and a parish hall that will have to be torn down and replaced.

Antolini would like to have repairs done. But St. James’s, a fixture in Porter Square for more than a century, is strapped for cash.

So imagine her delight when Oaktree Development, a Cambridge company that creates urban multifamily housing, came tapping at the church’s door a year ago, offering a financial lifeline.

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The Rev. David Moyer, the outspoken former Episcopal priest who unsuccessfully sued his bishop in 2008 for sacking him, has filed a malpractice lawsuit against the lawyer who represented him – often free – for many years in his battles with the diocese.

The suit, filed in Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, alleges that prominent Philadelphia litigator John Lewis and the firm of Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads failed to adequately represent Moyer in the unusual trial against Bishop Charles E. Bennison Jr. and then failed to file an appeal when the jury rejected their claim.

Moyer and the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont – where he serves as rector despite his ouster by the diocese in 2002 – are seeking millions of dollars in compensation for the legal costs of the trial and what they say is damage to Moyer’s and the parish’s reputations.

The lawsuit has sharply divided the Main Line parish, however, and angered some of Moyer’s conservative supporters around the diocese who supported his public challenges to liberal trends in the Episcopal Church.

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On just another Sunday morning at St. David of Wales Episcopal Church, the Rev. Sara Fischer preaches about the season of Advent, the coming of Jesus Christ and what this holiday season really means.

“People who’ve been around me a long time know that I’m always saying this or that season or day is my favorite,” she says with a small laugh. “But really, truly, I love Advent. This is a season of new beginnings, of expectation and preparation for something wonderful.”

She might as well be talking about her own church.

A year and a half ago, St. David’s was dying. Sunday services were held in a small side chapel for a crowd you could count on your fingers. The older members””the Little Old Ladies, as they call themselves””were trying out other parishes. The priest, a part-timer fast approaching mandatory retirement, was doing his best to hang on, fearful that if he left, the diocese would sell the building.

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Two schools of thought are clanging together at Christ Episcopal Church in Pittsford over its church bells.

After complaints from neighbors that the bells, which sounded every hour, disrupted their sleep, church officials decided to silence the bells after 11 p.m. But some church members are upset that the church’s governing body decided to end that more than century-old tradition without discussions with parishioners and the community.

Church officials said they talked at length about the issue and felt their decision was appropriate.

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…true encouragement comes from honesty before God and self and the strength of purpose to serve in the face of disappointment or uncertainty. Or so it should. I know a young person who sneered at the faith of an Episcopalian ”“ a more conservative person ”“ who chose to leave TEC for another set of ecclesial structures. “You would do such a thing”, this young person said to him: “yours is the generation, after all, who invented no-fault divorce”. In fact, in this case, the complaint was less directed at a purported hypocrite, than at what he perceived to be the witness of an impotent God, unable to garner the sacrificial steadiness of His adherents. But either way, faith is scandalized by those who do not have the strength, nor certainly seek the strength, to stand in the face of upheaval.

I will come back to this at the close of my remarks: honesty need be neither angry, miserable, nor defeatist. It should be the seed for hope, because it is the first and necessary turn to God who alone saves.

What is the difficult thing to speak, honestly? It is this: the Episcopal Church, as it has been known through the past two centuries, is no more, in any substantive sense. TEC is simply no longer the church filled with even the strength of purpose we saw only 10 years ago ”“ yes, even then, a church with a good deal of vital diversity and disagreement; but a seeming sense of restraint over pressing these in ways that overwhelmed witness and mission. And as a result, even then, it was church that was growing in outreach and faith. That church, shimmering still with some of the vibrancy of love spent for the Gospel seen140 years before, even 90 years before, is now gone. And TEC will not survive in any real continuity with this past and its gifts.

This is something we must face. To be sure, I am not speaking here of this or that diocese or bishop or congregation or clergy person within TEC: there are many through whose service the Gospel shines bright and the witness of the Kingdom flourishes. I am speaking of an institution as a whole ”“ not even in terms of its legal corporation, but in terms of its character and Christian substance given flesh in the Spirit’s mission.

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I want to stress, please, that people in the comments interact with what Ephraim is arguing for and actually saying. Comments not doing so will be dispacted into the ether. Many thanks–KSH.

This Christmas, a new priest will be leading the mass at Christ Church in Hamilton. The Rev. Patrick Gray started his new job as Priest-in-Charge at Christ Church in Hamilton on Oct. 1. The former rector of Christ Church, Jurgen Liias, was called to the rector position at the Christ the Redeemer Anglican Church in Danvers.

Gray comes to Christ Church from seven years as associate rector of the Church of the Advent on Beacon Hill in Boston. Gray conveys the qualities of youth and energy, drawing people in with his smile and comfortable friendliness. His office, still in a state of transition, has the rare addition of a dove named Lovey-Dovey.

“She was in training to be a carrier pigeon,” explained Gray, “but she got lost and we adopted her.”

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A Statement from the Vestry of Christ Episcopal Church
Accokeek, Maryland
August 2009 (Made earlier but released now–KSH)

Christ Church was established in 1698 and has consistently sought to be faithful to the teachings of the Church catholic””as found in the Scriptures, the Creeds and the Book of Common Prayer””as this Church has received them.

We reaffirm our commitment to the teaching of human sexuality as revealed in the Holy Scriptures and affirmed by the Church catholic: sexual intimacy is a gift and mystery which God has designed to be expressed solely in the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman. All are called to chastity; some are called to celibacy. Consequently, all who are ordained are likewise called to live according to
these standards. We also reaffirm our commitment to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed to Accokeek and the whole world.

Therefore, we reject resolutions D025 and C056 of General Convention 2009. Whether prescriptive or descriptive, they will not repair the broken bridges in the Anglican Communion, whose fabric is torn at its deepest level. They demonstrate an unwillingness to observe two of the moratoria which all four Instruments of Unity have asked for. They violate the explicit teaching of the Communion regarding human sexuality, especially as expressed in the 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution 1.10. They ignore the consensus of Christians throughout all time. They stand in contradiction to the explicit teaching of Scripture regarding human sexuality. And in particular, C056 violates the Episcopal Church’s own canons concerning the Covenant of Marriage. Therefore, we repudiate these resolutions and dissociate ourselves from them and their consequences.

We emphasize that we believe we are upholding the teaching of human sexuality which God has revealed. This teaching is entirely harmonious with the proclamation of the good news of God in Jesus Christ: that God’s love for all people””whether male or female, rich or poor, gay or straight””is ferociously manifest in Jesus’ cross and resurrection.

Lastly, we commend the work, at various levels within the Communion, on the Anglican Covenant and welcome the opportunity to review, study and sign its final draft.

It features an Episcopal parish toward the end–good for them. Watch it all.

For five years, members of Saint Anthony of Padua in Hackensack, a church in the liberal Episcopal Diocese of Newark, have sought spiritual guidance from a bishop in a socially conservative diocese in South Carolina.

The reason? They oppose the liberal tendencies of the Newark diocese and their national church, which in 2003 seated an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire over conservative opposition. The following year, St. Anthony’s began periodically hosting Bishop William J. Skilton from Charleston, S.C.

The arrangement helps explain why parish members probably will not accept the Vatican’s special offer, made last month, to allow dissatisfied Episcopalians and Anglicans to convert to Catholicism, said the Rev. Brian Laffler, the pastor. The Episcopal Church USA, with 2.1 million members, is part of the 77 million-member worldwide Anglican Communion.

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One by one, each woman stood up and shared a memory from her days at the Mary Warren Free Institute, a tiny Episcopal all-girls school connected to the Church of the Holy Cross on Eighth Street.

But soon after some of the women began talking on Sunday, the last day of the church’s opening, tears choked their words and they had to sit down.

“My heart will always be here,” said an emotional Mildred Shea of Averill Park, who graduated from Mary Warren in 1949 and was subsequently married in the church and had her four children baptized there.

Shea and about 50 others attended the last service Sunday afternoon at Church of the Holy Cross, which decided to close after congregants there dwindled to about a dozen.

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Can we talk, here? I mean, just you and me? No blame; no shame? Let me start the conversation (right now it’s a monologue but I hope you’ll join in, right?). Here are the facts: three out of four of our finest entrepreneurial leaders in charge of a failed “start” eventually leave the Episcopal Church, after leaving the ministry. Do you understand the significance of that well-documented statistic? It means that, while we say we want to learn from our failures, we don’t quite know what to do with the very person who needs to lead the inquiry! It means that, while we love it when industry leaders advise us to “fail early and fail often” to discover what works, we’re still a little scared when it comes to shamelessly and blamelessly working through our own failures in order to discover what works. It also means that, while we get awfully passionate about recycling tuna cans and paper towel rolls, we don’t know how to “recycle” our own best leaders. We let them wander off stage to fend for themselves without even thinking to ask, “How can we help you find your next post in our church?” or, “How do we learn from this venture so that we do better the next time?”

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Yet another commission reports that TEC is in steep decline. We are helped to digest this news with the sweetener that there are good things going on as we decline! So what happened to us?

The extraordinary thing about all this is our fairly sudden and dramatic collapse. The late fifties were a time of growth in numbers, income and “membership” both in England and the US. Over 3 million people in the US identified themselves as Episcopalians. New church plants were on the rise and special shorter courses were established in seminaries to train older men for ordination. For the CofE, things were better than at any time since Victoria died.

I do not for a moment believe that suddenly in the sixties people became less religious or religiously inclined. I do believe that Anglicanism lost its nerve. I do believe that we began to produce a leadership, lay and ordained, that assumed that the voices heard in academia and among the “culture-vultures” reflected the thoughts of most people. Yet the “intelligentsia” of that day ”“ I am not speaking of truly educated people ”“ no more reflected the feelings and thoughts of every day people then than they do now.

We went for a ride with “right thinking” people and still not cannot get it into our heads that these people, what ever their social or political ideals, are a vocal minority.

The vast majority of people were left out of this small company of the self-obsessed.

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Finally, I mustered up the strength to walk into my local Episcopal church on a Sunday. Before I made my trip, I researched the liturgy online so I wouldn’t look like a fool.

It was love at first sight ”“ the beauty of the church, and sounds, too, since I loved the sermon, the prayers and the hymns. Most of all, I loved the people in this small parish. I felt very welcome and sensed that they were very accepting. The stereotypes I had of “church people” were shattered. I used to believe people who went to church were judgmental, humorless, rigid and had nothing in common with me. How wrong I had been.

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The only Episcopal church in Galion closed last month, after being a place of worship for more than 130 years.

During the past decade, the congregation at 130 W. Walnut St., stayed at less than 10, mostly seniors citizens. The handful of members asked the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio to allow the parish to close.

The Rev. Brad Purdom said an Episcopal church is created or closed by a vote at the annual convention. At this year’s convention in Cleveland, the Diocese voted Saturday to allow Grace Episcopal to close.

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Congratulations to them–go and check out the picture.

During the discussion, panelists recounted how the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Miami would outcast black Episcopalians.

“I remember when we couldn’t walk by Trinity church,” said Gay Outler, referring to the then all-white Episcopal cathedral.

Outler, chair of the anti-racism commission said the oral history project will preserve what happened in the past and serve as a catalyst for continued dialogue on how to improve race relations in the church and society.

Many churches are in different stages of archiving and documenting their oral history.

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For what may be the first time in nearly two centuries, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church will visit St. Stephen’s Pro-Cathedral Wednesday, spending time at outreach ministries in the afternoon and giving a sermon at an evening service followed by a brief reception and a question-and-answer session.

“We have gone through our archives, and this is the fist time we can find that a presiding bishop has visited St. Stephen’s in about 190 years,” said St. Stephen’s pastor, the Rev. Daniel Gunn. “The last one here was Bishop William White, who consecrated the first St. Stephen’s.” According to the Episcopal Church Web site, White was the first Presiding Bishop, in 1789.

The presiding bishop is “chief pastor” for the Episcopal Church’s 110 dioceses in 16 countries, elected to a nine-year term by the bishops and lay and clergy deputies, according Bill Lewellis, communications minister for the Diocese of Bethlehem, which includes St. Stephen’s. Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori was elected in 2006, the first woman to hold the office, and this is her first visit to this diocese, Lewellis said. She will also be in Bethlehem Monday, Lebanon Tuesday and Scranton Thursday.

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The Rt. Rev. James M. Adams Jr. says he has a ready answer when people ask why he would return to parish ministry after only seven years as a bishop.

“If you’ve ever been a bishop, you would know,” he said.

“In 20 some-odd years as a parish priest, I never missed a day of God’s joy,” he said. “Being a bishop today is not what it once was. It’s more of being an administrator.”

Still, Bishop Adams, who has served the Diocese of Western Kansas since 2002, also speaks with clear affection for the Episcopalians he will leave behind in March 2010, when he moves to Lecanto, Fla.

“I have a lot of respect for these people. They have endured and survived every situation that has come their way,” he said. “They have survived, despite everything that has happened in the church, everything that has happened in the economy and everything that has happened in the world. That says a lot about them and their love of their Lord.”

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The Vatican’s invitation to disaffected Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church sends a “terrible message” to gays and women, a local Episcopal priest said.

The Rev. Paul Bresnahan of St. Peter’s Church in Salem said he is troubled by the Catholic Church’s unexpected overture this week, which appeared to be aimed at conservative Anglicans who have become disillusioned with their church, in part over its acceptance of openly gay bishops and female priests.

“It sends a terrible message to the gay community,” said Bresnahan, the father of two gay sons. “It says, in effect, you’re not welcome here. To me, that slams the door shut in your face.”

The decision by Pope Benedict XVI to reach out to Anglicans, who split from the Catholic Church in the 16th century and are currently facing deep discord, is also an affront to women, Bresnahan said. Many conservative Anglicans oppose the ordination of women, a position also held by the Catholic church.

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The former rector of the Church of the Holy Faith engaged in “gross sexual and financial misbehavior as a clergyman in charge of the parish,” according to a document submitted in response to a breach-of-contract suit filed by the Episcopal priest in August.

The Rev. Dale Coleman is suing the church for violating a severance agreement signed in May 2007 as he was leaving the parish after 11 years.

The Palace Avenue congregation had agreed to pay Coleman $115,000 in a dozen monthly installments beginning in June 2007. The money was to be divided between Coleman and his former wife, with Coleman to receive $50,002 and Susan Coleman, $64,998.

The church halted the payments with four of them remaining, informing Coleman that the severance agreement did not have “any legal effect” because of “serious misrepresentations and omissions.”

Makes the heart sad. Read it all, and, as a personal favor to me, instead of posting a comment say a prayer for healing and redemption for those involved in the mess.

The Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion in Fair Haven will be celebrating its 125th anniversary on October 24.

However, after celebrating that milestone, the church will be closing its doors and the property will be placed on the market.

The closing is largely due to increased competition amongst the nine Episcopal churches in the immediate area.

“This has been a mission church and the mission is completed,” Reverend Nancy Hite Speck said.

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When the Rev. Sarah Brockmann steps onto the altar for 10 a.m. Sunday worship service at Trinity Episcopal Church, she speaks and signs her greeting as she welcomes both hearing and hearing-impaired communicants.

And the church’s new rector continues to use as much sign language as she is able during worship, even for the hymns that accompany the Scriptures that day.

The small Rockland church has attracted the hearing-impaired from several area communities since it started offering a sign-interpreted Sunday service more than a decade ago, prompted by the persistence of a now-deceased member who originally pursued grants to cover the cost.

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The Israelites spent 40 years a building without a permanent home, the congregation of St John’s Chapel say it took them longer than that but they’re back where they belong Downtown.

The church on 18 Hanover Street was first consecrated in 1840 by Rt Bishop Christopher Gadsden but closed it’s doors in 1958.

The Lord bless them–read it all.

Check it out.

Often, The Episcopal Church is called a “bridge church” between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Many couples who join The Episcopal Church do so when a Catholic marries a Protestant. Both find in The Episcopal Church a theology and a style of worship that honors the faith traditions in which they were formed.

The foundation of faith in The Episcopal Church is often described using the image of a Three-legged stool.

The first leg of the stool is Holy Scripture. The catechism in the Prayer Book says of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament that “God inspired their human authors” and that “God still speaks to us through the Bible” (BCP 853). The Old Testament conveys the story of the covenant relationship between Israel and God. The New Testament reveals the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Holy Scripture serves as the touchstone of our lives.

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Father John Sewell wants people in Memphis to stop screaming.

From St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he is rector, he is spreading a message that Central Avenue motorists can see.

In front of the church, a sign reads “ScreamFree Zone.”

Screaming is not always about people raising their voice, Sewell said, “Sometimes they scream by drinking, sometimes they scream by getting depressed. It’s really about how we relate to one another.”

The aim of “ScreamFree Living” is to teach people how to stay calm before reacting, he said.

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