A letter to the parish about it is here.

The young minister’s alarm goes off at 6 a.m., time for his own devotional and the one he will send to the president of the United States.

This particular morning, Joshua DuBois meditates on the disciple Peter’s first letter to the early church. The text he prays over and e-mails to Barack Obama half an hour later is about something else.

It’s a private start to the day for the president and the pastor, a spiritual BlackBerry session they guard carefully.

Read it all.

Dear Members of Trinity Parish:

As your bishop, I am inviting you to attend a confidential meeting at which I will provide you with additional information concerning my reasons for inhibiting the exercise of the priestly office by Dean Philip C. Linder.

I am convening this meeting because in my pastoral judgment, and in my exercise of the ministry of oversight as an ordained episcopal leader in our church, it is my conclusion that sharing additional information with you is necessary. I hope to assure you of the deliberate and careful way in which decisions have been made, and the factual justification for them. The ultimate goal of the meeting is to ensure that the health and wellness of the parish are preserved.

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The church recently concluded a study of more than 32,000 Methodist congregations across North America, seeking the “key factors impacting vital congregations.” The study surveyed everybody from bishops to district superintendents to people in the pews.

Working with New York-based Towers Watson consultants, researchers constructed a “vitality index” to measure each church and concluded “that all kinds of UMC churches are vital — small, large, across
geographies, and church setting.”

The report identified four key areas that fuel vitality: small groups and programs; worship services that mix traditional and contemporary styles with an emphasis on relevant sermons; pastors who work hard on mentorship and cultivation of the laity; and an emphasis on effective lay leadership.

These four factors “are consistent regardless of church size, predominant ethnicity, and jurisdiction,” the study concluded.

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There were prayers for the Very Rev. Philip C. Linder and his family Sunday and a call for members of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral “to seek out God in prayer” as the congregation gathered for the first time since the extraordinary suspension last week of its longtime leader.

“The events of this past week have brought us to a place where we never expected to be,” the Rev. Charles M. Davis Jr., who was named interim dean, told the packed congregation gathered in Averyt Hall for the 10 a.m. service.

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You can find the announcement here.

A letter from the Bishop of Upper South Carolina may be found here and a resolution from the parish vestry may be found there. Read them both.

The top leaders of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral were preparing to oust their now-suspended dean, the Very Rev. Philip C. Linder, triggering a chain of events that led to the dramatic intervention by the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina, the bishop said in a statement Friday.

“Those of you who are puzzled or angered by my decision to suspend the Dean are asking many questions, some of which can only be answered with replies we are unable to give you for privacy reasons,” Bishop W. Andrew Waldo said in the letter posted on Trinity’s website.

“What must firmly be said, however, is that your wardens and chancellor came to me with a call for a special vestry meeting, signed by themselves and 16 vestry members, to consider the dissolution of the pastoral relationship between the Cathedral and Philip Linder.”

Waldo said he ordered Linder, 50, not to speak to parishioners of the historic downtown congregation while the dispute was under mediation, an order Linder violated, Waldo said. The root causes of the conflict between the vestry and Linder have not been made public and remain unclear.

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The Very Rev. Philip C. Linder, dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, was suspended today by the new bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina, apparently over a leadership dispute between Linder and the vestry of the downtown Columbia church.

Bishop W. Andrew Waldo issued the suspension after Linder violated ground rules for the mediation process, according to a statement circulated to lay leaders of the church.

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Frederick Loos was cussing like a sailor the other night, which was surprising given that he is a Roman Catholic priest and his foul-mouthed discourse was delivered from the pulpit to hundreds of faithful gathered before him.

He spoke of God, the need to serve him and how he can transform lives. But interspersed in his sermon was the most colorful of street Spanish, which brought smiles to the faces of many of the gang members, addicts and other young people pressed in tight to listen.

“When you go to China you have to speak Chinese,” the priest explained afterward, slipping out of his vestments. “If you’re speaking to kids you use their idioms. I don’t think God is offended if it brings them closer to him.”

Those enmeshed in Mexico’s thriving drug culture ”” users and traffickers alike ”” have an unusual relationship with the church. Sniffing glue and making the sign of the cross might not appear to go together any more than killing and the catechism. But for many believers in modern-day Mexico they do.

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From here:

“There is no one activity that a pastor does that can have a greater influence on the vitality of the congregation than preaching,” Adam Hamilton wrote in his book Leading Beyond the Walls: Developing Congregations with a Heart for the Unchurched. Hamilton is profiled in the July-August 2003 issue of Good News magazine.

“If a pastor is a poor preacher and does not devote sufficient time to preparing sermons, the entire congregation will suffer,” Hamilton says. “If a pastor prepares well-researched and thoughtful sermons with clear relevance and application for her or his congregants and delivers them with passion, conviction and clarity, the entire congregation will reap the benefits.”

The Good News article goes on: “This is never more true than when the church’s aim is to draw the unchurched or non-religious person into a committed relationship with Christ. Yet preaching carries a negative connotation and is often one of the deterrents to non-believers in their search for faith. At Church of the Resurrection (COR), where 70 percent of the 12,000 members report that they were previously unchurched or nominally religious, one of the top reasons often given as a reason for joining the congregation is the preaching. According to Hamilton, laypeople are looking for sermons that are interesting, relevant, biblical, understandable, offer clear application to the hearer’s daily life, address real-life issues and are preached with conviction, passion, love, integrity and humility.'”

For the Rev. Geoffrey Little and his wife, Blanca, it’s time to leave one spiritual home and build a new one.

Today will be the Littles’ last day at St. James Episcopal Church on East Grand Avenue, but they’ll continue to serve the Latino community in Fair Haven and Fair Haven Heights.

This week, they’ll open a new evangelical parish, worshiping in a banquet hall at 229 Grand Ave.

Blanca Little, who has run St. James Christian Academy, will open a new school in the fall, running it out of their home on Lenox Street.

“We’re going to open a new church in Fair Haven,” Geoff Little said. “It’s going to be called All Nations Christian Church and it’s going to be associated with the new Anglican Church of North America.”

That affiliation is important to the Littles, because the change is much more weighty than just changing addresses. For Geoff Little, it means resigning as a priest in the Episcopal Church.

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…the Chief Pastor of the Church is a workman–working for God, working with God, working under His eye, and for the welfare of the immortal souls committed to his charge.

The Bishop then is a workman. This accords with what St. Paul wrote in his 1st Epistle to Timothy, when he said “If a man desireth the office of a Bishop, he desireth a good work,” His life and duty may be summed up in one word–work.

This implies that his life is not a rest, or a state of ease. That he is not to be a cloistered theologian, or dwell in ecclesiastical quietism. That he is not to be a mere dignified functionary of grace and power to be dispensed only in a perfunctory manner. That he is not to be the mere figure-head of a Diocese, placed there as a simple presiding officer, and machine-like to impart the grace of confirmation and orders, in the laying on of hands.

So far from this, the Bishop is to be instinct with life and work. He is to be the Shepherd and leader of the flock–the wise ruler–the diligent teacher–the faithful counsellor–the prompter and supporter of all Churchly activities; ever holding himself ready for labor, or for sacrifice. In the New Testament the office of a Bishop, to which we shall confine ourselves at this time, is represented under various similitudes, but it is to be noted that each one of them involves the idea of work. Is he called a Fisher of Men? He must work, in casting his net, and drawing it to land; and even when, at times, he ceases to throw the net, in order that he may mend it, or wash it, even then, he is working in private that he may perfect his implements of labor, and more ffectively launch out into the deep, and let down his net for a draught.

Is he called a Builder? He must work, not only in building up himself in the most holy faith, but also seek to excel to the edifying of the Church, building it up of lively stones, on Christ the living corner-stone, so that as a wise master builder, the structure which he erects, may become the Temple of the Holy Ghost.

Is he called a Steward? He must work in administering the trust, that deposit of truth and faith, committed to him, so that he shall rightly divide the word of truth, give to each of his Lord’s household his portion in due season, and bring forth, out of his treasured mysteries, things new and old.

Is he called a Herald; a Preacher? He must work in preparing and proclaiming the good tidings which he is commissioned to make known. The command of Jesus is, “Go preach the Gospel;” the injunction of the Apostle is, “Preach the Word;” “be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all Long-suffering and diligence;” but to do this, demands work of the [7/8] severest and most wearing kind, so that he may not, after having preached to others, be himself a castaway.

Is he called a Shepherd? He must work in tending the flock; now gathering them into folds, now leading them to green pastures, now seeking out the straying, now taking up the lame, now guarding from wolves, and now resting with them at noon beside the still waters. In the words of good Bishop Hall, “he must discern in his sheep between the sound and the unsound; in the unsound between the weak and the tainted; in the tainted between the nature, qualities, and degrees, of infection; and to all these, he must know how to administer a word in season.”

Read it all but before you do, please try to guess the diocese and the date–KSH.

1. In a teaching document (Marriage- issued in 19991) the House of Bishops affirmed that “Marriage is a pattern that God has given in creation, deeply rooted in social instincts, through which a man and a woman may learn love together over the course of their lives.” In an introduction the then archbishops noted that “Lifelong marriage itself represents an unchanging ideal, and one which is the bedrock of a rapidly changing society.”

2. In the teaching document the House went on to explore the Church of England’s approach to the pastoral and other issues that arise when, sadly, marriages break down. It noted that, “The scope of God’s holiness is the scope of his mercy, and the more we are ready to open ourselves to the demand, the more we will know of his generosity, forgiving us where we have failed and granting us success where we thought we were bound to fail.”

3. Those called to serve the Church in holy orders are expected to be an example of godly living to those among whom they minister. Before people are selected for training with a view to ordination they are required to give information and assurances about their personal lives and, where relevant, marital history.

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United Methodist pastors in North Carolina are more obese than their neighbors like them, an “alarming” reflection of their isolation and job stress, according to a Duke University study.

It’s the latest in a series of troubling studies on the state of clergy health, and that has experts saying that some ministers are working themselves to death — perhaps even seeing that as part of the job description.

The most recent survey says it is the first in which researchers have directly compared a set of clergy with their immediate neighbors for rates of various health conditions, and the results aren’t good.

The obesity rate is nearly 40 percent for white United Methodist clergy aged 35 to 64, according to a survey of 1,726 ministers. That’s 10 percent higher than comparable North Carolina residents (white, in the same age group, with jobs and health insurance.)

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Incense, candles and joyful singing filled St. Mark’s Cathedral last weekend as the Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish celebrated one of her last official acts as Episcopal bishop of Utah: the ordination of five new deacons, four of them bound for the priesthood next year.

It’s almost an embarrassment of riches for the small diocese, and one that Irish, who is retiring in the fall, takes as a sign of the church’s health.

“We are poised in the best possible way,” Irish says, “to engage those who want to think their way through their faith.”

And yet even as an increasing number of Utah Episcopalians feel called to the ordained ministry, the church has fewer paid positions to offer. Two of the four new deacons who hoped to land paying clerical jobs have not found one.

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In a gesture borne of frustration and faith, a group of clergy from across Boston gathered in the City Council chamber yesterday to ask God for peace on the city’s streets.

“The violence in the neighborhood in which we serve is intolerable,’’ said the Rev. Cathy H. George of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Upham’s Corner. “And it wouldn’t be put up with anywhere else that I’ve ever been in the state.’’

The City Council opens each of its weekly meetings with a prayer, but yesterday, in a show of concern about a wave of violence in which five people under 16 have been shot this spring, Council President Michael P. Ross and Councilor at Large Ayanna Pressley asked a number of clergy to come and pray.

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It goes without saying ”” but must never be forgotten ”” that priority must always be given to the victims and survivors of abuse. They have suffered more than anyone. But at the same time, as the stories swirled around in newspapers and on television, it was impossible for many other ordinary Catholics and priests not to feel mired, sucked into the swamp.

One focus of attention became Rome, not simply because of the misconceived efforts to snare the Pope in the scandals, but also out of curiosity: there were people who wanted to know how those of us who live in Rome were coping. In particular they were wondering about the effects of the scandal in a college such as the Beda, where older men from the English-speaking world are preparing for priestly ordination. How was morale? Did we feel tarnished?

But quite soon I began to notice a shift in the line of interest. It became less a matter of how we were coping, and more a question of why people still wanted to be priests at all. The questions were not hostile. They were respectful. Nevertheless, people wanted to know, if our instinct is to shun failure, who would want to be associated with Catholic priesthood?

One part of the answer to such a question comes from remembering that the behaviour of a few priests, even one, however much it shames all those who have been ordained, is not the behaviour of the many. We find it as repellent as anyone.

And another part of the answer lies in the nature of vocation itself. Vocation, a sense of calling, is something compelling, like falling in love.

Read the whole article.

Standing before more than 10,000 Roman Catholic priests, Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday strongly reaffirmed the Vatican’s commitment to priestly vows of celibacy, cutting off speculation that he might reconsider the issue in light of the church’s sexual abuse scandal.

At an outdoor vigil in St. Peter’s Square that veered between moments of deep reverence and outbursts of enthusiasm more characteristic of a soccer game, the pope told the gathering of priests, believed to be the largest in history, that celibacy “is made possible by the grace of God ”¦ who asks us to transcend ourselves.” Celibacy would be a “scandal,” he said, only in “a world in which God is not there.”

Some critics have suggested that the vow of celibacy may at least be partly responsible for the sex abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church, either because it is so difficult to uphold, or because it may discourage men with normal sex drives from becoming priests. In recent months, as the abuse scandal has widened in Europe, an Austrian bishop urged the Vatican to drop celibacy, which he said should be voluntary.

Benedict’s remarks came in response to a question posed by a Slovakian priest, and he made it clear that he supported continuing the practice of celibacy under his pontificate. He compared it to heterosexual marriage, which he called “the foundation of the Christian culture.”

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In the 1960s, there were about 41,000 priests in France. Today, there are around 15,000. About 800 priests die each year, and only 100 are ordained.

Frederic Fonfroide de Lafon is the head of the firm that the church has hired to run its public relations campaign. He says to attract new priests the church must first improve the image of the priest in France.

“Priests suffer from a low social status, so we’re trying to change that by showing what being a priest really means. A priest has extensive training in philosophy and the humanities. He is not someone who lives apart from society in his own world, but someone who participates,” Fonfroide de Lafon says.

“A priest accompanies people in the most important moments of their lives,” he adds.

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By the time she graduated from Vanderbilt Divinity School in May 2009, the Rev. Kara Hildebrandt could translate a passage from the Greek New Testament with relative ease, write a sermon like a pro and pass her ordination exams with flying colors.

Finding a job as a pastor?

That was a bit more difficult.

A combination of many preachers, too many small churches and a bad economy have led to one of the worst job markets for ministers in decades. That has led to the so-called clergy glut. According to the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, there are more than 600,000 ministers in the United States but only 338,000 churches. Many of those are small churches that can’t afford a full-time preacher. Among Presbyterians, there are four pastors looking for work for every one job opening.

That has left many good pastors out in the cold, waiting before finding a new job or finding alternative employment, denominational leaders say.

Read the whole article.

The Rev. Gerald Fitzgerald, who founded a Roman Catholic religious order that helped troubled priests, began warning American bishops in the early 1950s that pedophile priests couldn’t be cured. So sure was he that he made a $5,000 down payment on a Caribbean island to quarantine the worst offenders.

The island plan was never realized, but the basic idea to keep problem priests away from young people wasn’t new. St. Basil wrote in the 4th century that clerics who seduced boys should be publicly flogged, imprisoned and supervised so they would “never again associate with youths in private conversation nor in counseling them.”

Yet it wasn’t until 2002 that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a zero-tolerance policy requiring that any priest who has engaged in sexual abuse of a minor be reported to authorities and permanently removed from ministry. The crisis has cost American dioceses more than $2.6 billion in settlements and fees since 1950.

Read it all from today’s Wall Street Journal.

It might seem like an example of reverse mission: young African men leaving their homeland to pursue ordination as Catholic priests in a religious order that has no missionary presence in Africa, but a long-standing ministry to African-Americans.

For six Nigerians who will be serving in the United States as Josephite priests, it has been a 10-year journey, starting with four years spent in formation and undergraduate studies in a program the order has established in their home country and six years in the United States for the novitiate and graduate theological studies.

That journey concluded with their ordination in Washington May 29 by Bishop John A. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., who himself was ordained as Josephite priest.

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“Sham” church weddings between foreign nationals are putting clergy under huge pressure, a North­ampton vicar said this week.

The Revd Michael Hills, Vicar of St Michael’s and of Holy Sepulchre, Northampton, has had three weddings raided by immigration officers as couples were about to get married. He said that his church appeared to have been targeted by people arranging sham weddings, often between illegal immigrants from Africa and EU nationals.

Couples had shown Mr Hills false passports and household bills to try to prove their address, and their entitlement to marry in the parish.

Four people were each sentenced to two years in prison last week, after admitting trying to dupe Mr Hills into marrying them using forged paperwork.

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Vicars in parts of rural Wales face being forced to cover more than a dozen parishes because of a recruitment crisis.

The Diocese of St Davids, which covers much of West Wales, currently has just three vicars to cover 27 parish churches.

But when the Reverend John Powell of St Mary’s in Cardigan retires in August, it will mean just two vicars to cover all the parishes.

The diocese is not alone in facing a recruitment crisis ”“ according to Church in Wales figures a quarter of current serving clergy are due to retire within the next decade and less than 10% of Wales’ vicars are under 40.

Read the whole thing.

[She] called for Christians to begin proclaiming their religious convictions amid an increasingly secular culture, beginning at the workplace:

In some places to be a Christian by day is to be regarded as a dinosaur ”“ dangerous and clumsy, deeply stupid, a thing of the past. To avoid that label, and therefore professional stagnation, discipleship might well be limited to quiet though generous gestures in the dark rather than public witness to Christian faith.

In other work contexts there is a veneer of acceptance, but in modern professional culture Christianity is not particularly respectable and Christians are assumed to have a conservative moral outlook which flies in the face of diversity and polarity and self expression. Professions require putting our own preferences aside.

In the U.S., you’d expect such lines to be followed by a call to speak out against gay marriage or against the government’s attack on religion in the public square….

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A former priest who left the Roman Catholic Church because he fell in love with a woman is not only a priest again at a new church but will soon be a father.

On Sunday Alberto Cutié, 41, presided over his first service as an Episcopalian priest at the Church of the Resurrection in Biscayne Park. After the service he said things have been going great for him.

“It’s been very good. I’m really trying to serve the same God that I have always served, obviously in a different church, and serving the community as a priest is a real blessing,” said Cutié.

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Nine years ago Clancy Wolliver called for the vestry and search committee to invite me to be your rector. It was a dream come true, and Ellen, our children and I all felt it was God’s calling. Ministering among you at Christ Church has been the most spiritually demanding and fulfilling years of my 29 years as an Episcopal priest. Thank you for your amazing and generous support when my family and I needed you, for your patience when I failed you, and for your steadfast commitment to God and his Word. It has been an honor to serve one of the really great congregations in The Episcopal Church. For my failures and successes, I have loved you, the people of Christ Church.

I’m sure it will not surprise anyone that my decision to take early retirement is because of a crisis of conscience. Even though I was born and raised in The Episcopal Church, it has moved further and further away from the Gospel to which I committed my life and I have concluded that there is no future for me in this spiritual environment.

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The news today that Mr [Stephen] Green is planning his departure as chairman of HSBC gives us an opportunity to pause and consider the record of the man who, after meeting his wife while working as a volunteer at a hostel for alcoholics, has carved out a career where he has tried to match morals and Mammon.

Mr Green is a devout Christian and an ordained Anglican priest. Last year he wrote Good Value – Reflections On Money, Morality And An Uncertain World, about how shareholder value should mean more than simple monetary reward. The dividend and the bottom line was only one way to judge the performance of a company – what about its social role or environmental impact?

Mr Green said at the time that the system had suffered “a massive breakdown of trust: trust in the financial system, trust in bankers, trust in business, trust in business leaders, trust in politicians, trust in the whole process of globalisation”. The author Giles Foden, reviewing the book, described him as “the sage banker”.

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Orthodox Anglicans in North America are inviting priests in the Church of England to make a show of solidarity by taking part in a clergy swap.

The Anglican Church in North America was formed last year by Anglicans who broke away from the liberal Episcopal Church in the US. It is proposing the swap in the wake of last Saturday’s consecration by TEC of its first partnered lesbian bishop.

ACNA said the clergy swap would be an opportunity for Church of England parishes and clergy to express their solidarity and friendship with ACNA churches.

Participating clergy will be matched to churches with similar preaching and ministry styles and serve the pulpit for a period of three to four weeks in January and July or August next year.

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