People went to their church for Sunday services and they were locked out. Now, they’re left wondering if they’ll have to find a new place to pray. It all stems from an ongoing dispute with their church pastor. The St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church is about 400 members strong. They’re praying this will all get resolved and they’ll be able to stay at the church and keep the congregation together.

They gathered to sing and pray on the outside drive, locked out by steel gates, where inside they have celebrated god every Sunday for years.

“We haven’t seen anything like this before,” said church member Paul Chukwujekwu.

Read it all.

Read and watch it all.

When I visit Dad I worship at Church of the Cross in Ticonderoga, New York. It snowed all night and is still snowing presently so the drive from Silver Bay to Ticonderoga was quite treacherous, even on the ploughed roads. There is maybe 1 to 1 /2 feet of snow on the ground; it is a beautiful winter wonderland. During worship the snow came off the roof and spilled onto the parish walkway so the rector, Marjorie Floor, announced that unless one wanted to go through a lot of snow to get to the parish hall the best means available was through the main worship area–KSH.

Read it all.

Between $100,000 and $200,000 has been reported stolen from the Episcopal Church of the Advent, and a former church employee is now under investigation, according to the Leon County Sheriff’s Office.

Church leadership called a last-minute meeting Wednesday night at the sanctuary at 815 Piedmont Drive to explain the situation to parishioners. About 100 of them came.

“What’s happening to us is not a killing blow,” said Al Kaempfer, chair of the church’s finance committee. “We have good, strong assets as a church.”

The loss was discovered after an audit, Kaempfer said. Some of the parishioners gasped when he told them the church’s finances hadn’t been audited since 1998.

After the church split in February 2006, it took about a year before the church’s leadership could get things back in order. The audit is one of the business practices recently implemented as part of that reorganization.

Kaempfer told the congregation how much he wanted to tell them what happened, but he can’t as long as the investigation is still open. He said it would jeopardize the church’s ability to recoup the money. He asked them not to ask questions.

Read it all.

Check it out.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Feb. 3 will be a day of change and challenges for Grace Episcopal Church.

On that day, the Rev. Donald J. Curran will resign as rector of the historic church. The 12-member vestry board will follow. And so will several staff members, the musicians and a big chunk of the congregation.

Those leaving will make up a new church, Christ the King Anglican Church. Those staying will remain members of Grace Episcopal.

In recent years, many Episcopalians have been frustrated with the direction of The Episcopal Church (USA). They believe the church is losing its biblical and traditional roots and are upset with the church’s acceptance of gay clergy and blessing of same-sex unions. As a result, parishes across the country are leaving the denomination, which is the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. In October, Grace Episcopal and seven other parishes told Bishop John W. Howe, head of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida, they wanted to leave the diocese and the national church.

Both groups at Grace said the split is sad and painful for the church, but are hopeful they can work things out like Christians. The plan, Curran said, is for both congregations to share the use of the church building for services until June 30. The new church also wants to negotiate a lease for the manse, the church?s office building on Fort King Street, as well as the rectory where Curran lives.

Read it all.

When Reverend Anandsekar Manuel, the pastor of the historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Woodside, walked inside his church hours after a fire gutted the interior of the building, he described his reaction as devastated and shattered.

An overnight fire ripped through the church located at 61st Street and 39th Avenue on Wednesday, December 26, and dozens of firefighters worked for nearly two hours to get the fire under control as horrified neighbors looked on.

“This precious church building, which withstood all these years, watching it go up in flames was the most horrible, painful thing,” said Manuel, who has lived across the street from the church and has been its pastor since 1994.

Read it all.

During the recent approval process for historic preservation status for St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, City Councilwoman Linda Saul-Sena said what she likes best is that the 1904-built church “has changed very little.”

The church’s surroundings, however, will undergo major changes this year.

With $2.5 million raised, the project will see the bulldozing of a two-story building and construction of a children’s chapel in the northeast corner of the church complex, which occupies a city block between Twiggs and Madison streets.

Before the work begins, the Rev. John Reese was compelled to move forward with seeking the local landmark designation. It was a decision years in the making.

Read it all.

129-year-old Episcopal congregation on the South Side will be disbanded after worship Sunday.

Attendance at the Episcopal Church of the Mediator, which is in the Beverly/Morgan Park area, has declined to about 30 people. At its peak, it had 250 members, church leaders said.

“It’s been coming,” said Mary Reich, a parish leader. “You can’t run a parish on 30 people. Most of our members are over age 55.”

The final service will be at 9 a.m. Sunday at the church, 10961 S. Hoyne. After worship and a time of socializing, a letter from the bishop of the Chicago Episcopal Diocese will be read.

The Rev. Michael Stephenson, a diocesan official, said the letter officially “secularizes” the building. Future use of the property will be determined by the bishop, he said.

Read it all.

On Christmas Eve in the cathedral church in El Salvador, the late Archbishop Oscar Romero preached these words:

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God””for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit, there can be no abundance of God.

If any of you hearing this Christmas message finds yourself on the downside of life, I want you to know that you are not alone because God himself stands with you””and chose to become poor in human form in the mystery of the Incarnation. And for those of you listening who lack no material comfort, but you are spiritually poor; that is, you are empty of the divine love and generosity that incarnated Jesus, then help is on the way. Jesus has come to be incarnate in you also. For Christmas is not for those who have everything, and want everything; the power of Christmas is its power to lift up those who have nothing.

In fact, the greatest gift that you can possibly receive this day is the gift of you”¦the real you, the one whom God has come to save and to make whole again. You are the gift! For your life is invaluable, and in Christ you can do anything””even change the world. This is the greatest gift of Christmas!

Read it all.

The much-anticipated Advent Letter has arrived! It is hard to overemphasize the importance of the Archbishop’s letter to the Primates and to the rest of the Anglican Communion.

There is much to commend in this letter (The Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon’s analysis is very helpful). It reaffirms the Bible as our primary authority, reaffirms the traditional view of Christian sexual ethics (1998 Lambeth 1.10), and it acknowledges the hurt caused the Anglican Communion when one province acts without regard for the entire Communion.

However, what is not said in this letter may be its most important feature. History might say that this was one of the greatest missed opportunities of all time.

Archbishop Williams could have simply said, “With the advice of the Primates and for the sake of healing our Communion, I rescind the previous invitations to the July 2008 Lambeth Conference, and I hereby invite every bishop in the Anglican Communion who will agree (in writing) to the processes outlined in the Windsor Report and the Dar es Salaam Primates Communiqué, including their personal pledge to uphold 1998 Lambeth resolution 1.10 as the agreed upon standard of conduct for Anglicans worldwide.”

Instead, the Archbishop let stand the previous invitations to Lambeth which includes the attendance of bishops who supported and voted for Gene Robinson’s consecration against the advice of the Primates, and even allows for the possibility that Bishop Robinson himself will attend Lambeth 2008 with visitor status. The invitation list includes bishops who currently allow and sanction same-gender blessings, who ordain noncelibate gays and lesbians to holy orders, and who have said they will not stop these practices no matter what the rest of the Communion says. And the invitations specifically excludes all bishops ordained by Rwanda (AMiA), Nigeria (CANA), Uganda, etc. for U.S. oversight, no matter how loyal they are to the teaching of Anglicanism.

In his genteel English (Welsh) style, Rowan Williams does say that “acceptance of the invitation must be taken as implying willingness to work with those aspects of the Conference’s agenda that relate to implementing the recommendations of Windsor,” but such a wishy-washy reminder will clearly not deter revisionist bishops from attending. We have indeed become a church without boundaries. In case there’s any question about this, Williams goes on to say, “I have repeatedly said that an invitation to Lambeth does not constitute a certificate of orthodoxy but simply a challenge to pray seriously together and to seek a resolution that will be as widely owned as may be.” The “let’s vote on what Anglicans believe this week” – the lowest common denominator approach – empties our Anglican heritage of any content.

In another miscalculation, Archbishop Williams has chosen to not convene a Primates meeting before Lambeth. Instead, he will “convene a small group of primates and others…to work on answering questions arising from the inconc> lusive evaluation of the primates to New Orleans.” The Archbishop told the Primates at Dar es Salaam that he would consult them on invitations to Lambeth, which he did not do. He could have upheld the Windsor Report by inviting those who uphold the traditional values endorsed in the Windsor Report, but he did not. He could have revised the invitation list in the Advent Letter to support Windsor, but he chose not to do so. And the end result is the Windsor Report is rendered virtually meaningless, and the Windsor process has been exposed as a ploy to buy time. There could be very detrimental results from this Letter, including the disintegration of one of the Instruments of Unity (Lambeth Conference) and the diminution of the authority of another Instrument, the Primates Meeting. It looks to me like the man behind the curtain has been exposed.

The telling part will be how the Primates respond to the Advent Letter in the weeks to come.

In the meantime, Christ Church continues to maintain its strong gospel ministry and strong relationships with the healthy parts of the Communion, while working with Bishop Lillibridge for the realignment. Bishop Lillibridge has valiantly fought for the Windsor Report, and it is the Windsor bishops who are most hurt by these developments. I agree with Bishop Iker, the Episcopal Church is not going to turn back from its present course. That means that our future will be very interesting and challenging – and hopeful. I continue to think that it has never been more exciting to be a Bible-believing Anglican in America, and that God has prepared us for such a time as this!

–The Rev. Chuck Collins is rector of Christ Church, San Antonio, Texas

The Rev. Peter Strimer, rector of St. Andrew’s Church, said that everyone from all religious backgrounds are welcome at St. Andrew’s, including traditional Anglicans. He said he has previously referred people to Dan Keusal, the licensed counselor and astrologer in private practice who is leading the workshop, with good results. Mr. Keusal holds a degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame and worked for years as a parish and campus minister.

“Of the 35 people signed up for the class, nearly half have not been in our church or any church before,” Fr. Strimer said. “We are using Raymond Brown’s The Birth of the Messiah.” Fr. Strimer described the course as “a fun, captivating approach to the Christmas story” which draws upon Mr. Keusal’s training in Roman Catholicism and astrology.

Read it all.

A three-session course titled “They Followed a Star: Astrology and Christianity as Allies on the Journey” is being taught at St. Andrew’s Church in Seattle this month. The first session is scheduled to be held tonight.

The course is being taught by Dan Keusal, a licensed counselor and astrologer in private practice in Seattle. Mr. Keusal holds a degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame and worked for years as a parish and campus minister.

In a brief description of the course located on an internet website he maintains, Mr. Keusal describes his workshop as a way to “look at how astrology can support and deepen our journeys as men and women of faith.” The course was mentioned in the December issue of Episcopal Voice, the newspaper of the Diocese of Olympia and in the calendar section of the diocesan website. The course is also listed on the parish website.

Read it all.

St. Andrew’s Church of Mount Pleasant has one of the largest Episcopal congregations in the country, according to the national church’s latest census.

More than 1,300 people attended on any given Sunday last year, making the local church the seventh best-attended Episcopal church nationwide.

It is the only church from the state diocese to receive the recognition.

Most of the other Top 10 most- attended Episcopal churches are in major metropolitan areas, such as Houston, Atlanta, Boston and Seattle.

“It’s a nice recognition,” said the Rev. Steve Wood, senior pastor at St. Andrew’s. “I think it also in some ways increases responsibility that we’ve been entrusted with something precious, and we have a responsibility to be faithful with that trust.”

Wood joined St. Andrew’s about seven years ago. He said he doesn’t think they ever have been listed in the Top 10.

He said the congregation has grown since it submitted figures to the national church late last year for the annual census. They now typically see about 1,400 people each Sunday, he said.

The church has about 2,700 members.

Read it all.

It wasn’t until [Richard] Mayberry attended General Theological Seminary in New York City from 1967 to 1971 that he said he realized he was gay.

“I basically came out to myself in seminary,” Mayberry said. “I said, ‘What am I going to do now?’ ”

He confided to an Episcopal priest that he was gay. To his surprise, the priest said, “So what?” Mayberry said he learned others in the clergy were gay. The policy then was don’t ask, don’t tell, he said.

Mayberry toed the line for years, during his first assignment as an assistant pastor at St. Mark’s Church in Mount Kisco, N.Y., and later at St. Francis.

“Then, when I was thrust out of the closet by my partner’s sickness and death, it was much more honest, much more healthy,” Mayberry said. “I didn’t have to hide anything. It got to where, my goodness, now it’s a nonissue in this parish.

“I’ve seen a lot of changes in 40 years. Most have been for the better. To think now we have civil unions in Connecticut, marriages in Massachusetts, and the world is not ending. What I see as a wonderful development is all the gay couples raising children.”

Mayberry said that as more Episcopalians get to know gay people, their attitudes likely will become more tolerant. He recounted how parishioners at St. Francis became more comfortable with the idea of female clergy when they met women who were priests.

“That’s where the change starts. It starts with a real, live person, not an issue,” Mayberry said.

Breaking away from the parish will be difficult, though he said he knows he’s making the right decision.

“After 30 years, this is my family,” he said.

Read it all.

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

Most of the scaffolding that covered Trinity Cathedral in Downtown is gone, but there is still much work to be done before the 120-year-old landmark is again presentable to the public.

Since June, workers from Carnegie-based Young Restoration Co. have worked diligently to remove more than a century’s worth of grime, soot and acid runoff from the cathedral’s blackened exterior. It looks like the cleaners, who have been using baking soda and water to wash away the industrial muck of decades, are close to making the holiday deadline.

Read it all.

Fifteen years have passed since the stonemasons put down their chisels and mallets for the last time. Now, they can finally see what their carving wrought: the uppermost 55 feet 2 inches of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.

In recent weeks, the cathedral’s southwest tower has emerged from the rusty scaffolding that had enclosed it since the last round of construction ended in 1992. The tower is still far from complete, but it has grown noticeably closer to the sky.

What is now revealed, in a limestone several shades blonder than the rest of the cathedral, are crisp buttresses, gables, colonettes, gargoyles, pinnacles, crockets and ornaments known as trefoils (three cusps), quatrefoils (four cusps) and cinquefoils (five cusps).

The tower has a newly imposing presence.

“It has been set free from its bondage of scaffolding,” said the Very Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski, dean of the cathedral. Perhaps the greatest personal gratification, he said, was felt by those who labored so hard on the tower before the money ran out. “It was the first time they saw the magnitude of what was accomplished.”

Read it all.

From here:

I am pleased to announce that the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, has accepted my invitation to be our guest and speaker January 16-20, 2008. I am especially grateful to Assistant Rector Wes Wasdyke for helping invite Bishop Robinson. Wes is canonically resident in the Dioces eof New Hampshire where he served the church and medical communities for many years.

Bishop Robinson is an astute speaker and spiritual leader with a passion for shared ministry and well known for his pastoral support of clergy and congregations in New Hampshire. While he is the focus of much attention in the Anglican Communion, his visit to us is a personal one where he will be able to share his own journey of faith and encourage each of us in ours.

As is always the case in the visit of a bishop from another jurisdiction, Bishop Smith was consulted, and has given permission for Bishop Robinson to be our speaker in residence. Bishop Smith has encouraged us by describing this visit as an important part of the listening process which is key to the Windsor and Lambeth recommendations for the Anglican Communion.

The Boniface Speaker series was created to bring the brightest and best in religion to this parish and community. Among our other speakers in recent years we have welcomed The Rev. Frank Wade, Chancellor David Booth Beers, Professor Kathy Grieb, Bishop Johannes Seoka, and Brother Robert Hugh. The speaker in residence program includes times to preach and teach both parishioners and diocesan clergy, to speak to the public, and to enjoy some sabbath time in our beautiful area.

He said yesterday that the continuing conflict over Bishop Robinson’s ordination and concerning same-sex relationships could seriously weaken all the churches in the communion, not only those in Africa and other parts of the developing world that view the ordination as a violation of the Gospel but those U.S. churches that supported the New Hampshire ordination.

“I know there are some clergy who say they don’t care whether the Anglican Communion stays together or not. But they should care,” he said.

“If the Anglican Communion separates, or if the Lambeth Conference [the once-every-10-year gathering of the world’s Anglican bishops, slated for next year] doesn’t happen or happens with a reduced number of bishops,” he said, there will be “a chasm between the developing world, where Christianity is strong and growing, and us on the Western side. That growing church will be weakened because they will not have access to our strength, and West will be weakened because we will not have the exciting stories of their faith and what God is doing.”

Read it all.

To the Members of St Stephens Church, Sewickley

A Letter about Denominational Realignment

From your Rector and Vestry

October 12, 2007

Dear Friends in Christ,

I write to you as your pastor and brother in Christ in a season of great importance concerning our future, and I write with the unanimous support of our Vestry. For decades under multiple generations of leaders this parish has been filled with glad followers of Jesus Christ, working for the mission of his Gospel, and laboring for the reform and renewal of the Episcopal Church -under Holy Scripture and through the Holy Spirit. At St Stephens we have been deeply thankful for this call upon our lives; we love the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we love this Church.

As we enter the latter part of this decade, it is now evident that differences of faith and practice have torn the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, probably beyond mending. The challenges we face are rooted in longstanding developments inside western culture that are spreading worldwide. These challenges cannot be avoided, for we face them everywhere. I thank God for your endurance, your courage, and your clarity in this important struggle.

We have come to a moment of decision. After years of effort and much personal anguish, I now believe that the Episcopal Church has clarified and hardened its opposition to the historic and biblical Christian faith to such an extent that we cannot pursue our gospel mission fruitfully while remaining under its authority. Your Vestry concurs. For the sake of our health and future mission, we believe that we must now partner with our diocese to realign our congregation and affiliate with a different Province of the Anglican Communion.

Read it all.

For the 110 Episcopalians who shared their stories at “The Abundance of God’s Love” retreat at Shrine Mont in Orkney Springs, Virginia, October 7-8, their tales were not entirely unique.

Unhappy with the actions of the Episcopal Church at General Convention in 2003 and 2006, their congregations’ leadership decided to reconsider their membership in the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia.

Parishioners noticed a shift in the climate of their congregations: Episcopal flags were removed, or rectors focused their preaching primarily on “the issues.” They entered into “40 Days of Discernment” — in hindsight, with a sense of naiveté, said some participants. And they all entered into a journey categorized by confusion, frustration and, for some, hopelessness.

“It’s like the stages of grief,” said Suzanne Fichter, parishioner of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, Herndon. “Denial, anger, acceptance.”

In the Diocese of Virginia, the majority of 15 congregations would vote to quit the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia. In several places loyal members of the Episcopal Church remained. In four of them — St. Stephen’s, Heathsville; St. Margaret’s, Woodbridge; The Falls Church, Falls Church; and Church of the Epiphany, Herndon — those loyalists reorganized. They called congregational meetings and elected new vestries and new delegates to diocesan council. They have returned to weekly Episcopal worship, albeit in exile from their church properties, and returned to mission and ministry in their communities.

Read it all.

My wife Sharon and I spent an extended Columbus Day weekend in the Northeast, largely in Newburyport, MA. My father was born there over 80 years ago and grew up during the depression. His family attended a Congregational church that now is a member of the United Church of Christ. We were blessed to visit family there, but we found that even in small town New England, Episcopal Church issues were having an impact.

Because when I picked up Saturday’s local paper, I couldn’t help notice a front-page article detailing the local Episcopal Church’s (one town over) struggle to survive after the majority of its congregants left for the Anglican Church of Kenya. Only 10 families remained to keep the original Episcopal Church afloat. In contrast, according to congregational statistics from the Episcopal Church, average worship attendance had been at over 300 in 2006.

That’s a huge drop. If we apply the U.S. 2006 average family size of 3.20 persons to the families that remain (and that seems to be close to the mark, given year 2000 census figures for both the town and the county), we’re looking at roughly 32 members left in the Episcopal congregation. That means that at most roughly 11 percent of the congregation did not break away to form the new All Saints Anglican Church in a nearby community and remained with the Episcopal Church.

I can’t imagine the pain that those who remain with the local congregation must feel to see their congregation shrink by roughly 90 percent.

Read it all.

The large and liberal All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California””after squirming on the hook for two years as the Internal Revenue Service examined the content of a preelection sermon””has been tossed back into the religious stream because its “political intervention” favoring one candidate “appears to be a one-time occurrence.” The church will not lose its tax-exemption over the October 31, 2004, sermon.

In delivering that judgment, the Department of the Treasury letter that arrived September 10 also noted that policies were in place at the 3,500-member church to prevent prohibited political campaign activities. But the department urged the church to remind future speakers not to endorse candidates.

Because the IRS did not indicate where rector emeritus George Regas may have crossed the line in his sermon (“If Jesus Debated Senator Kerry and President Bush”), the present rector, J. Edwin Bacon Jr., announced September 23 that the church is mounting a counteroffensive.

“While we are pleased that the IRS examination is finally over,” Bacon said at a news conference, “the IRS has failed to explain its conclusion regarding the single sermon at issue. Synagogues, mosques and churches across America have no more guidance about the IRS rules now than when we started this process.”

Read it all.

Read it all.

When these problems are viewed together, they embody a significant theological shift in the denomination away from orthodox Christianity and biblical Anglicanism. This is evident more in some parts of TEC than others. It may not be immediately recognized because of the veneer of traditional Anglo-Catholic worship that overlays it.

This shift is evident in the Episcopal churches in the part of Kentucky in which I am now living. It represents a radical change from what I heard preached and taught in the same churches over 20 years ago when I first began to visit the area. The message is not just one of the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the church but of universalism, pluralism, and social and economic liberation. At the same time the worship in these churches can be characterized as traditionally Anglo-Catholic ”“ candles, eucharistic vestments, elaborate ritual, processions, chanted prayers and other liturgical texts, incense, vested choirs, organs, standard hymns and anthems, and Holy Communion on weekdays, as well as Sundays.

Of the five Episcopal churches in the area, only two give any appearance of real vitality. The latter can be attributed in part to their location, one in the downtown district of the region’s only city and the other in a university town. The area had six churches but the sixth church was closed in 2005 and its congregation merged with that of another church. One of the remaining five churches gives all appearances of being slated for closure at some future date: it is little more than a preaching station.

Read it all.

As is well known, the Episcopal Church radically altered its theology and practice at its General Convention in 2003. As a result a significant amount of unrest has gone on in the TEC community which the leadership has tried to downplay or deny.

It is important to understand that those who are deeply opposed to the new theology fall into not one but four groups, each of which is engaged in different things.

(1) There are people who are voting with their feet, and departing from the Episcopal Church to Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Free Church Protestantism.

According to the Christian Century, “the Episcopal Church has suffered a net loss of nearly 115,000 members over the past three years “with homosexuality issues fueling the departures.” Kirk Hadaway, the denomination’s director of research, noted that “it is a precipitous drop in losing 36,000 in both 2003 and 2004, and now 42,000 in 2005.” The numbers for 2006 have not been released yet, but they are sure to show this trend continuing, and indeed probably increasing as the departure of large portions of whole parishes or indeed nearly all of some parishes begin to be reflected in the numbers.

Also, the level of struggle is well indicated by a recent national church publication in which we learn:

“The proportion [of parishes] with excellent or good financial health declined from 56% to 32% between 2000 and 2005.”

And: “The proportion in some or serious financial difficulty almost doubled, increasing from 13% in 2000 to 25% in 2005.”

(2) There are whole parishes or portions of parishes which through different means have sought to leave the Episcopal Church but to keep their ties to the Anglican Communion through a relationship with another Anglican Province. At present, these groups are in a state of flux and in seemingly nearly constant motion but it is possible to delineate some sense of their numbers:

Anglican Mission in America (Rwanda), some 100-115 parishes
CANA (Nigeria), some 60 parishes
Uganda, some about 30 parishes
Kenya, some 20-30 parishes
Southern Cone, some at least 50 parishes

Now, not all of these parishes consists of former members of TEC as some are church plants, but many of them contain sections of former TEC folks and in a number of cases nearly the whole parish came over from TEC (Christ Church, Plano, Texas, being a recent example, in that case of a church who joined AMIA/Rwanda)

(3) There are parishes or sections of parishes who are on the verge of deciding along the lines of group 2 in some way by the end of 2007/early 2008, depending on the outcome of the Tanzania Communique, the House of Bishops meeting, and the response of the Anglican leadership thereto. Saint Clements, El Paso, one of the largest parishes in the diocese of the Rio Grande, just voted by an overwhelming margin to leave TEC on Sunday, September 16th. It needs to be emphasized that many of these people and parishes do not wish to depart, but feel if the Anglican Communion leadership continues to fail to provide a safe place for them, they have no other choice.

It must also be noted that three dioceses Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, and San Joaquin, appear to be considering moves in this direction. I am not aware of any time in the history of the Episcopal Church when three dioceses as whole dioceses sought to consider these kinds of momentous decisions. (It will of course be noted that the dioceses are not monolithic-no diocese is-and there are smaller groups within the diocese that feel differently. Nonetheless the contemplated collective diocesan action is significant).

(4) There is a considerable group of other individuals, parishes and dioceses who are completely opposed to the new theology and practice of TEC’s leadership, but who wish to find a way to stay connected to the Anglican Communion as they continue to stand in radical opposition, and are not sure what the way forward is. Two examples would be the diocese of South Carolina, and the parish of Saint Martin’s Houston, which claims the largest membership in the country and which made clear in its last call process that their new rector would need to stand solidly for the theology of the Anglican Communion and the Windsor Report.

The national leadership’s way of treating this problem is to give the most narrow definition as possible to group two, and then to try to minimize the problem.

Unfortunately, for example we see things like this:

Note on Dioceses, Congregations and Church Structure

· Dioceses and congregations remain part of the Episcopal Church even when local leaders and/or a number of parishioners opt to leave the denomination as a matter of personal choice.
· Dioceses are created by the General Convention and cannot be dissolved without action of the General Convention in accordance with the provisions of the churchwide constitution and canons. Congregations, likewise, are created by a local diocese and continue within that structure unless otherwise decided by the local bishop in consultation with other elected diocesan leaders.
· According to a September 2007 update from director of research Kirk Hadaway, out of some 7600 total Episcopal Church congregations, located inside and outside the U.S., since 2003:
32 have LEFT–and by that we mean the majority of the congregation expressed a desire or voted to withdraw from The Episcopal Church, the bishop declared the congregation abandoned and notified the national office, where the church is now listed as non-filing/closed.
23 have VOTED TO LEAVE–meaning a significant number, usually including the clergy, have expressed a desire to withdraw from The Episcopal Church.

(And one immediately notes in passing that the national church office managed to get THESE numbers updated and out before the House of Bishops meeting, but that they still do not have the numbers out from 2006 in terms of overall membership numbers. Hmmmmm. I wonder why.)

Or this, which ran in April 2007 with the headline “Episcopal Bishop says few leaving over same-sex issues”:

The Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop on Wednesday downplayed the notion of a denominational schism over homosexuality, saying only a tiny fraction of congregations have moved to break away.

In an interview, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said the congregations had “gotten a lot of attention and been very noisy,” but accounted for less than 1 percent of the country’s total number of parishes, which she put at 7,500.

“The Episcopal Church is alive and well,” she said. Jefferts Schori was in Virginia Beach on Wednesday to speak at the Episcopal Communicators annual meeting at The Cavalier Hotel.

You can see what is going on, they are playing games with numbers and categories. “Few” leaving actually means “congregations,” and congregations means congregations defined as a whole. This is collapsing all four categories into a very narrow and misleading picture of group number 2.

People know that in reality it is very difficult to get whole parishes or dioceses to take significant decisions about ANYTHING, much less something as important as this. Given the degree of opposition and hostility faced in numerous quarters from diocesan and national leadership, and given how many Anglican reasserters (such as your blog convenor) have been advocating a stay and be opposed but be faithful stance, it is actually surprising that the numbers from the four categories are this large.

The key point is, taken together the four groups illustrate a VERY SERIOUS problem. Good leadership owns the actual situation and then tries to deal with it, it does not try to redefine it narrowly and pretend it is less than it is–KSH.

Update: the above article was written before and independently of this one by Simon Sarmiento but the information seems to be of a similar type.

“We’re very clear on our (church governance) and our theology,” said Washington, D.C., Bishop John Bryson Chane on Wednesday. “Our position on full inclusion in all parts of church life for all the baptized has not, and will not, change.”

“This is the first time the Archbishop of Canterbury will hear, in our own voices, where we are as a church, what we’ve been through and where we are going,” he said.

Traditionalists are holding steadfast as well. More than 60 parishes have split off to align with traditionalist archbishops in Africa and South America. Several are battling their former dioceses in court for possession of parish properties.

Already the primates for Nigeria and Kenya have consecrated U.S.-based bishops to run essentially parallel parishes in defiance of the Episcopal Church. But the Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon of the Diocese of South Carolina estimates 8% to 20% of active Episcopalians “have enormous problems with what’s happening, but no provision is being made for them….

Though Harmon sees intense pressure on the Episcopal Church this week, Canon Jim Naughton, spokesman for Chane’s diocese, says traditionalists have no cards left to play. “I think the leaders of the Episcopal Church are more optimistic about remaining in the Communion than they have been in several years,” Naughton says.

Read it all.