But in churches that have not resolved their stance on homosexuality and same-sex marriage, the court decision is likely to provoke even more confusion. In the Episcopal Church, bishops in different parts of the state have issued different directives to their clergy members.

Bishop J. Jon Bruno of Los Angeles has authorized clergy members to perform same-sex marriages, said the Rev. Susan Russell, associate pastor at All Saints Church, and president of Integrity, a gay and lesbian advocacy group in the Episcopal Church.

Bishop Marc Handley Andrus of the Episcopal Diocese of California, which covers the San Francisco Bay Area, is urging all couples, heterosexual and homosexual, to first be married in a secular service and then come to the church for a blessing. Since the Episcopal Church does not allow rites for same-sex marriages, he said, this is a way to treat all couples equally.

“Sometimes the church is not quite caught up with the civil society, and this is one of those times,” Bishop Andrus said.

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They will now have to answer to Jesus.

An 8-foot statue of Jesus that was stolen from the cross at the Church of the Messiah on Detroit’s east side was found in an alley near the church.

The Rev. Barry Randolph said Patricia Bower, a woman who lives in the neighborhood, decided to take a shortcut home and found Jesus “in a bush, between two trees” Wednesday night.

Randolph and a church member went to pick up Jesus and found the green-hued, weather-beaten statue with only a hand missing.

“We are truly grateful,” Randolph said Thursday.

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The Rev. Michael Ruk, priest-in-charge of St. Paul’s Church, Levittown, and All Saints’ Church, Fallsington, Pa., has voluntarily stepped down from his duties at those congregations until the [disciplinary] review board of the Diocese of Pennsylvania completes its investigation and reports their findings to the Rt. Rev. Allen L. Bartlett, assisting Bishop pro tempore, and the diocesan standing committee.

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Someone stole Jesus Christ. From the cross.

The 8-foot-statue of Jesus had been on the cross on the side the Church of the Messiah on Detroit’s east side “for as long as anyone can remember,” said the Rev. Barry Randolph.

The weather-beaten statue was made of plaster, and has a green patina the thief or thieves may have mistaken for copper.

A parishioner called church staff Tuesday morning and told them Jesus Christ was gone. It may have been taken late Monday or early Tuesday from the 107-year-old Episcopal church at 231 E. Grand Blvd.

Read it all and join me in praying for the statue’s safe return–any city needs a statue like that, but surely Detroit does given all they are going through in that city right now.

Communion Partners is intended to

Ӣ provide for those concerned a visible link to the Anglican Communion
Many within our dioceses and in congregations in other dioceses seek to be assured of their connection to the Anglican Communion. Traditionally, this has been understood in terms of bishop-to-bishop relationships. Communion Partners fleshes out this connection in a significant and symbolic way.
Ӣ provide fellowship, support and a forum for mutual concerns between bishops.
The Communion Partner bishops share many concerns about the Anglican Communion and its future and look to work together with Primates and Bishops from the wider Communion. In addition, we believe we all have need of mutual encouragement, prayer, and reassurance. The Communion Partners will be a forum for these kinds of relationships.
Ӣ provide a partnership to work toward the Anglican Covenant and according to Windsor Principles
The Communion Partner bishops will work together according to the principles outlined in the Windsor Report and seek a comprehensive Anglican Covenant at the Lambeth Conference and beyond.

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Facing financial difficulties, the 100-year-old institution recently laid off 33 people, including clergy — its first layoff in decades — as it struggles to balance its budget. It is suspending programs, asking some remaining staffers to double up on duties and closing its popular greenhouse, a move that has stirred community anger.

“We’re in a phase of significant tightening,” said the Very Rev. Samuel Lloyd III, who took the helm of the Episcopal cathedral as dean in 2005. He said the severity of the budget shortfall caught leaders by surprise. “We didn’t expect that we would have to do what we have done.”

Soon-to-be former employees say they are devastated. “It came out of nowhere,” said greenhouse employee Patricia Downey, her voice wobbly with emotion. “It’s been hard.”

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A chapter of Minneapolis church history closed this week, a story soon to be repeated in St. Paul.

St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 4400 4th Av. S., one of the first black Episcopal churches in the state, held a deconsecration service Tuesday evening. A similar fate awaits St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in St. Paul, another one of the state’s first primarily black churches, which will close by the end of June.

The two congregations, both of which date to the early 1900s, are forming a new church, the location and name of which is still to be determined. And while the birth of the new church is considered a bright spot for many of the members, the atmosphere at St. Thomas was somber.

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“Today’s decision is consistent with All Saints Church, Pasadena’s identity as a peace and justice church,” said [Ed] Bacon, following the historic vote. “It also aligns us with the Scriptures’ mandate to make God’s love tangible by ”˜doing justice and loving mercy’ (Micah 6:8) and with the canons of our Episcopal Church that forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”

“In this our 125th year, this morning’s decision was a natural step forward on All Saints’ lengthy journey of justice, peace, and inclusion,” Bacon concluded. “As the rector of All Saints Church, I am inspired by the visionary stride All Saints’ lay leaders took today. I am honored to serve a church where the leadership demonstrates such stirring courage to move beyond lip service about embodying God’s inclusive love to actually committing our faith community to the practice of marriage equality.”

“As a priest and pastor, I anticipate with great joy strengthening our support of the sanctity of marriage as I marry both gay and straight members and thus more fully live out my ordination vow to nourish all people from the goodness of God’s grace.”

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After raging floodwaters slammed into downtown Johnstown on May 31, 1889, a heavy bell was all that remained of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church.

On Thursday, with a boost from a crane extending 100 feet skyward, that bell was returned to its rightful place.

The delicate installation of a shiny new belfry marked the culmination of years of fundraising, expert planning and careful craftsmanship.

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According to a Flint Journal article, regular attendance at the 66-year-old church was about 70, but dipped to 30 after Kulchar left. Today, attendance is at 45 and growing.

“We went through a great time of healing as a congregation and we are ready to move on,” said Norb Birchmeier, senior warden of Trinity Episcopal Church. “I believe we are a stronger congregation because everyone became closer to each other.”

Congregants often believe they are better at performing some of the management tasks of the church, he said, which leaves new pastor Rev. Lori Johnson more time to address spiritual growth. Johnson’s first service at the church was April 13.

“They seem to be connecting to something in each message,” Johnson said of the Sunday services. “They seem happy and excited to have a new priest and are looking toward the future.”

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When Lynn and Roger Perkins married in 1983, they not only embarked on a marriage, they embarked on a spiritual journey together.

That journey took an unusual twist in the road in 2004, a twist which eventually lead the couple to a new vocation and a new life in Gallup.

Recently ordained as Episcopal priests in November 2007, the Perkins are the new, part-time co-vicars of the Church of the Holy Spirit. Although the Episcopal Church has been ordaining women as priests for about three decades, the Perkins said it is unusual for both a wife and a husband to serve together as co-vicars. Their arrival in Gallup is a boon to their small congregation, which has been shepherded for the last decade by a series of interim pastors. The church will officially celebrate the couple’s arrival with a ceremony later this month.

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Consider what $20 will buy at your local grocery store.

Now consider that for the same $20 you could provide 100 meals to people living in an impoverished country.

Grace Episcopal Church is once again teaming up with Stop Hunger Now to provide 50,000 meals to people in need.

SHN is a nonprofit, international relief organization committed to ending hunger worldwide. The organization provides direct emergency food and other life-saving aid in crisis areas. SHN is headquartered in Raleigh and has provided more than $100 million of aid to more than 55 countries. Grace Episcopal first partnered with SHN in 2006.

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This is a difficult letter to write but I must let you know that I have submitted my resignation to the Metropolitan of Rupert’s Land effective September 1, 2008. I begin that day a new ministry as Rector of the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Texas.

I cannot begin to express my gratitude for the privilege of serving with you these past 17 years, first as Dean and, since 1993, as Bishop. Our sense of call to Texas is a positive one but at the same time I felt that it would be an opportunity for the Diocese to be overseen with a fresh pair of eyes, and to enjoy the excitement and momentum a change of bishop brings.

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Three Episcopal churches in the city are in the process of merging into a single parish.
The Episcopal Church of the Ascension, 160 Rock St., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 125 Mason St., and the St. John’s-St. Stephen’s Episcopal Partnership, 711 Middle St., held a covenant-signing worship service Sunday at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension.
The new Episcopal parish will be named the Church of the Holy Spirit, located at 160 Rock St.
A fourth Episcopal church, St. Luke’s, 315 Warren St., has decided against joining the merger at this time.
“Over the past few years, none of those churches was going particularly well,” said the Rev. Wallace Gober, who was interim pastor of St. John’s-St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.
“They were doing okay, but it was the decision of the people that they could do more of the work of the church if they pooled their resources,” Gober said.

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The Very Rev. Robert Taylor resigned Friday as dean of St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, amidst acclaim for his accomplishments but following months of controversy over staff shakeups and parish leadership.

Taylor came to “The Holy Box,” as the cathedral is often nicknamed, in 1999 with a background that put him instantly in the news. He had been an anti-apartheid student leader in South Africa, became a protege of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and is a partnered gay man.

“Despite our many accomplishments together, my vision for our future has diverged from that of the Vestry in significant ways, and that has resulted in a loss of trust between us,” Taylor wrote.

The Vestry are elected lay leaders of the St. Mark’s parish, which is the seventh largest Episcopal congregation in the country.

Read it all and there is more here.

Say a prayer for St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church. But not inside the 139-year-old landmark.

The church closed Easter Sunday.

“We should have been smiling and rejoicing and exclaiming, ‘He hath risen!’ ” said the Rev. Dr. Napoleon Bryant Jr., the church’s ordained deacon.

“Instead, the service was as solemn as the funeral of a child,” added the clergyman who has also been a parishioner at the racially mixed church since 1951.

Officials with the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio attribute the closing to declining attendance.

“That’s the main reason,” the Rt. Rev. Thomas Breidenthal, diocesan bishop, said. Only 16 households regularly put money in the offering plate.

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Old wood benches quaked under the thunder of the pipe organ at Calvary Episcopal Church, fully awakening the overflowing Easter morning crowd.

As light filtered into the sanctuary through an elaborate stained glass window portraying Jesus on the cross, a traditional service, unyielding to time, unfolded.

But for those who couldn’t make it to Easter services, even some of the most traditional churches offered other options.

As more churches are creating an online presence with podcasts, Web streaming and cyber-giving, worshipers don’t have to leave the comfort of their homes to get religion.

Nevertheless, local clergy say virtual worship did not reduce Easter turnouts this year, but may have helped bolster numbers on one of the largest church attendance days of the year.

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[KIM] LAWTON: At Maundy Thursday services, music helps set the mood as Christians begin their annual time of mourning the arrest, prosecution and crucifixion of Jesus.

Thomas Tyler is in charge of worship and music at Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. He says it’s spiritually important to sing the songs of grief before celebrating Christ’s resurrection.

Mr. TYLER: We want to skip over the sorrow. We want to skip over the abandonment and go get our praise on. But, if you don’t remember what he went through, then I feel your appreciation for the significance of that resurrection is marginalized.

Read it all or watch and listen to the video report.

Read it carefully and read the report the link for which is at the bottom of the blog post.

I will consider posting comments on this article submitted first by email to Kendall’s E-mail: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Historic Pipestone Inc. has added a new building to its list of preservation projects. The group purchased the St. Paul Episcopal Church located at 221 4th street SE. It is the oldest existing church building in Pipestone and one of only two quartzite stone churches remaining in Pipestone.
Dave Christensen and Chuck Draper, members of Historic Pipestone Inc. said the organization wanted to purchase the church building in order to preserve its history and structure.

“It has really great architecture,” Draper said.” It is a good example of an early church.”

The church will be cared for and renovated over the next few years. As with anything that is more than 100 years old, the building is going to require some TLC mixed with plenty of elbow grease. Christensen said replacing the windows is at the top of the committee’s to do list. Followed by fixing the bathrooms and painting the sanctuary.

“The windows are leaded stained glass and some of the leading is coming loose,” Christensen said.

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The words “sculpture park” bring the rolling expanses of Orange County to mind (Storm King Art Center) or, at least, the river’s edge in Queens (Socrates Sculpture Park). They do not instantly conjure up the traffic-jammed corner of Varick and Canal Streets.

Yet that is where New York’s newest sculpture park will be established: on a recently cleared block owned by the Episcopal Trinity Church, paralleling Juan Pablo Duarte Square on the Avenue of the Americas.

“When they’re idling in traffic trying to get through the Holland Tunnel, they’ll have something to look at,” said Maggie Boepple, the president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, which will curate the sculpture park on behalf of Trinity Real Estate, managers of the church’s extensive holdings downtown.

“It’s a tremendous gift to the city,” Ms. Boepple said.

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Change ringing does sound good. The typical bell tower in the United States is attached to an Episcopal Church (with a few exceptions) and has eight tuned bells that form a diatonic scale. Some towers have 10 (the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., for example) or even 12 bells (Trinity Wall Street).

Invariably, the bells ”” giant instruments cast in a foundry ”” are procured from England. Many are very old. They are mounted in a manner that enables them to rest in the upright position and turn a little more than 360 degrees when rung. A rope is attached to a big wheel in such a way that pulling it gets the bell going in both directions.

A ‘stay,’ or rigid piece of wood, projects from the bell’s crossbeam and reaches the ‘slider,’ another piece of wood fixed at one end but able to slide a little to and fro at the other end. A properly struck bell has just enough momentum to get it back into the upright position with each pull of the rope. The stay reaches the slider, preventing the metal tonnage of the bell from continuing in the same direction. Another pull on the rope and the bell comes ’round the other way.

David Porter, tower captain at Grace Episcopal Church, is teaching me the hand stroke. The hand stroke and back stroke together cause a complete two-dong ring. A circle of practiced ringers can achieve ‘perfect striking’ with even and orderly strokes. The rings of the bells overhead should be evenly spaced. It requires concentration and adroit maneuvering.

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Read it all (page 1).

I will consider posting comments on this article submitted first by email to Kendall’s E-mail: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

The revelation of his hidden world comes at a time of deep tension within the Episcopal Church of the United States over the issue of homosexuality. Since the church ordained an openly gay bishop in the Diocese of New Hampshire in 2003, a dozen congregations in various parts of the country have withdrawn from the American branch of the church and aligned themselves with theologically conservative African or South American branches of the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is a part.

Those African and South American branches have described homosexuality as “an offense to God.”

At St. John the Divine, where inclusiveness toward those of all backgrounds and sexual orientations has long been fundamental to the culture of the congregation ”” in part as a result of Bishop Moore’s leadership ”” the reaction was more complicated.

“I’d like to say that we all have secret lives ”” and that’s why we come here,” said Mary Burrell, a longtime member of the congregation. “We are all sinners, trying to find our way.”

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The bookkeeper for Episcopal Church of the Advent turned herself in Thursday on charges she embezzled $512,000 from the church.

Investigators with the Leon County Sheriff’s Office said Rosanne Stone, 50, took the money from three church accounts over four years. She was arrested on charges of grand theft and money laundering. She was released from the county jail on $1,000 bail.

Sgt. James McQuaig said it was possibly the biggest embezzlement case the Sheriff’s Office has ever seen. He said Stone used the money to buy antiques, jewelry, furniture, silverware, lamps and glassware on eBay.

“We counted and literally have hundreds of items seized as evidence,” McQuaig said.

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Today we had a pre-church meeting about last year’s deficit of $53,127.86, the previous year’s loss of $46,104.05 today’s operating funds of only $8,000, and a 2008budget that includes a $56,076.11 deficit. Where to begin? Since the sermon was shortand sweet by Mary Cat, we can spend the next week solving the financial problems of the Church.
It looks like two years of deficit spending finally generated some interest in the workings of this small corner of the Episcopal Church. The budget numbers presented were sufficient for the pewsters to formulate many theories for the causes, and a number of possible solutions.

Cutting expenses was urged by many today. Expenses in 2005 were $525,310 and had risen to $589,437.11 in 2007. In fact expenses rose $23,000 from 2006-2007 after a deficit of $46,104 in 2006. Seems like belt tightening should have started last year.

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(Hat tip: Stand Firm)

[Timothy] Squier, with wife Kristal and four children, are living in Evanston but looking for a home in the Antioch area.
This is Squier’s first call as a rector. He served on the Northwestern University campus at Canterbury House as interim chaplain and was assisting priest at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Evanston before his call to St. Ignatius.

He appreciates the long history of St. Ignatius in Antioch, where it was established in 1915 in a former Campbellite church on Main Street that was built in 1863. The former church and rectory are now owned by the Lakes Region Historical Society. The parish built a larger building on five acres at the corner of Depot Street and Deep Lake Road in 2001.

Ironically, Squier grew up as a Campbellite, now known as Disciples of Christ, because his father was a Disciples of Christ pastor. He was ordained in that church in 1996 but in 2000 became Episcopalian and started the process to become an Episcopal priest.

“I changed my denomination because of the overall difference between the denominations of the Christian philosophy and in the way the sacraments are viewed,” said Squier. “In my experience in the Episcopal Church there is a deep desire to be connected to the long history of Christianity, and that is reflected in the belief that Jesus is present in the bread and wine. Campbellites believe the sacraments is simply a memorial meal to remember Jesus.”

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Brenda G. Tirado of Leyfred Terrace received her confirmation at Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church yesterday at the hands of a special guest.

The Rev. Gordon P. Scruton, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts, performed the ceremony for Tirado, 31, who works as a victim and witness advocate at the Hampden County district attorney’s office.

“It was very inspiring. I had a chance to meet with the bishop (beforehand),” she said after her confirmation.

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