Expanding its efforts to create a culture of lifelong learning, the Diocese of Montreal has embarked upon a new three-year continuing education program.

The program, which began Jan. 1, 2015 and runs until Dec. 31, 2017, asks clergy to complete 60 hours of continuing education over a three-year period, as required by Bishop Barry Clarke for each licensed clergyperson in the diocese.

Using a list of competencies for ordination prepared in 2013 by the Primate’s Commission on Theological Education and Formation for Presbyteral Ministry, clergy members identify which competencies they want to work on, prepare supporting documentation and keep track of their self-registered courses in a log.

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Modestine Brody is sure that her service over the past two decades is not a choice but a calling by Jesus Christ.

Since Brody was a young girl, the Christian ministry has been important in her life. She also had a knack for helping others.

Brody now serves as the executive director of Resurrection Outreach Ministries, which was started in 2001 by her and her now-deceased husband, Pastor Louis Brody.

The ministry initially consisted of a church, but now it includes the addition of Resurrection Restoration Center for the Homeless.

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The Warrens held their first Bible study on Jan. 25, 1980, in their Laguna Hills home near Moulton Parkway and Via Iglesia.

That same day, Kay Warren’s grandmother died. The couple wondered if they should cancel the church launch. They didn’t.

The first public service took place weeks later, on April 6, 1980, at Laguna Hills High School. There were 205 in attendance.

“It was confirmation that this was really going to work,” Kay Warren said.

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In her letter, Dr [Sarah] Coakley writes that she agrees “wholeheartedly with all the goals and aspirations” of the report, which envisions a 50 per cent increase in ordinations by 2020.

But she goes on to warn that devolution to the dioceses will be “profoundly undermining of all these good goals. . . Indeed, since there is no theology of ministry articulated in the report itself, one can hardly expect one to emerge in the course of individual bishops making decisions about ‘flexible pathways’, or taking on over-50s candidates without a BAP.

“Further, as the report itself acknowledges (but does not resolve), a huge set of problems can be envisaged about how to deploy clergy around the country in places of greatest need or effective pastoral abandonment, given the new plan for the financial support of clergy training.”

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The Ministry Division of the Church of England has expressed confidence in St Stephen’s House, Oxford, in an inspection report which praised the college for its “clear and distinctive identity which informs all aspects of its life”.

The report published today spoke of “a community at ease and comfortable with embracing a variety of perspectives and traditions on numerous issues whilst situated clearly within a distinct theological and spiritual tradition.”

St Stephen’s House received 12 out of a possible 16 ‘confidence’ outcomes, covering a range of criteria including practical and pastoral theology, teaching, and ministerial, personal and spiritual formation. The report also made 20 recommendations, noting that “the majority of these are for making good practice better rather than highlighting substantive problems.”

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And so his question to all those who have the freedom to speak in the Church and for the Church is ‘who do you really speak for?’ But if we take seriously the underlying theme of his words and witness, that question is also, ‘who do you really feel with?’ Are you immersed in the real life of the Body, or is your life in Christ seen only as having the same sentiments as the powerful? Sentir con la Iglesia in the sense in which the mature Romero learned those words is what will teach you how to speak on behalf of the Body. And we must make no mistake about what this can entail: Romero knew that this kind of ‘feeling with the Church’ could only mean taking risks with and for the Body of Christ ”“ so that, as he later put it, in words that are still shocking and sobering, it would be ‘sad’ if priests in such a context were not being killed alongside their flock. As of course they were in El Salvador, again and again in those nightmare years.

But he never suggests that speaking on behalf of the Body is the responsibility of a spiritual elite. He never dramatised the role of the priest so as to play down the responsibility of the people. If every priest and bishop were silenced, he said, ‘each of you will have to be God’s microphone. Each of you will have to be a messenger, a prophet. The Church will always exist as long as even one baptized person is alive.’ Each part of the Body, because it shares the sufferings of the whole ”“ and the hope and radiance of the whole ”“ has authority to speak out of that common life in the crucified and risen Jesus.

So Romero’s question and challenge is addressed to all of us, not only those who have the privilege of some sort of public megaphone for their voices. The Church is maintained in truth; and the whole Church has to be a community where truth is told about the abuses of power and the cries of the vulnerable. Once again, if we are serious about sentir con la Iglesia, we ask not only who we are speaking for but whose voice still needs to be heard, in the Church and in society at large. The questions here are as grave as they were thirty years ago. In Salvador itself, the methods of repression familiar in Romero’s day were still common until very recently. We can at least celebrate the fact that the present head of state there has not only apologized for government collusion in Romero’s murder but has also spoken boldly on behalf of those whose environment and livelihood are threatened by the rapacity of the mining companies, who are set on a new round of exploitation in Salvador and whose critics have been abducted and butchered just as so many were three decades back. The skies are not clear: our own Anglican bishop in Salvador was attacked ten days ago [in 2010] by unknown enemies; but the signs of hope are there, and the will to defend the poor and heal the wounds.

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A British priest with a reputation for supporting Christians in the Middle East has been named the new dean of St. James Episcopal Cathedral in Chicago.

The Rev. Dominic Barrington, 52 a priest with a background in arts management who has led pilgrimages of Americans and British citizens to the Holy Land, will be installed as the cathedral’s dean on September 13, pending the approval of non-immigrant visas for him and his family.

“In Dominic Barrington, St. James Cathedral has called a strong, loving and wise priest to be its dean,” Bishop Jeffrey Lee said. “I believe he will be an inspirational leader at the cathedral, and a strong presence in the city of Chicago, championing the mission and ministry of the cathedral as a place of extraordinary hospitality, significant outreach, and excellence in the arts.”

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Right now, in Syria and Iraq, militant Islamists are taking over churches by force and turning them in to mosques. In the Church of England, apparently, all that’s needed is an ask. On March 6, in the heart of London, St. John’s Waterloo hosted a Muslim prayer service or “Jummah” in the sanctuary, on consecrated ground. Apparently the “Inclusive Jummah” was exclusive of anything Christian””hence what appears to be the covering up of all Christian imagery so as not to offend the worshippers.
Can you think of anything more bewildering, more offensive to Anglican followers of Jesus Christ and others who are suffering persecution at the hands of radical Muslims””watching their children beheaded by ISIS in places like Mosul, Iraq because they would not deny Jesus Christ? Watching their loved ones burned alive in hundreds of Anglican churches in Northern Nigeria by members of Boko Haram? Watching their relatives and friends be blown up during Sunday worship services by Islamic extremists in Pakistan?

Would it seem to them simply “a strange and erroneous opinion”?

And what sense could they possibly make of the relative silence and inaction of the bishops in the Church of England who are overseers of this church””the Bishop of Southwark, the area bishop who directly oversees this congregation, as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury who is, apparently, the patron of St. John’s?

Well, there has been an “apology” by the Vicar of St. John’s, in a joint statement from the Bishop of Southwark. But in fact it isn’t an apology at all. The apology is only for the “offence” that it caused, for the “infringement” of the “guidelines and framework” of the Church of England. There is no acknowledgement that this service denied a core doctrine of the Christian faith. No acknowledgement that it was simply wrong to cover up Christian symbols and to permit a prayer service that begins with the assertion that only Allah is God and Muhammed his prophet.

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I think luo has something important to teach us in the face of dementia. In the face of deficit, decline, and death we try hard to cling on. But the lesson of the little word luo is that maybe the path of resurrection lies in letting go. If death is starting now, maybe resurrection can start now too.

Perhaps it’s only when we let go of who and what our loved one was that we can receive who they are now. Perhaps only when we find ways to enjoy who they are now can we reverse the deficit and the decline, because we stop assuming they’re moving away from something good and start appreciating that they’re moving into something new.

Dementia is not a living death. It’s an invitation to see how we can remain the same person yet take on new and rather different characteristics. In that sense it’s a training in resurrection, in which we shall be changed but still recognizably ourselves. Like resurrection, we can’t experience it unless we find ways to let go, to let loose, to be released and forgiven. God welcomes us into eternal life not by keeping a tight hold on us but by letting us go. The challenge for us in dementia is to find ways that we can do the same.

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A £100m recruitment plan for the Church of England has been criticised as a raid on church assets that has not been properly thought out and amounts to “spending the family silver”.

The proposals, submitted last month, are intended to address what Andreas Whittam Smith, head of the Church Commissioners, calls a “relentless decline in membership”. Mr Whittam Smith has previously said this has resulted in the average age of Anglican congregations approaching 70.

The commissioners manage the Church’s historic and investment assets, worth slightly more than £6bn at the end of 2013. Mr Whittam Smith wants to use about £100m of that to boost the number of ordained priests by 50 per cent.

This is in addition to the £2m already approved to train senior clergy and potential leaders in a “talent management” programme, a controversial proposal made in a report chaired by Stephen Green, the former chairman of HSBC and an ordained minister in the Church.

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“Matthew was crazy about theology, a total idealist about studying theology. ”¦ But he wanted to learn history and philosophy and art and everything else,” said Pentiuc. “I don’t know anyone else who read so much and absorbed so much, so soon. It was going to take him 10 or 15 years to fully synthesize what he knew and to find his mature voice.”

Friends joked that they could say “Go!” and challenge Baker to connect random subjects ”“ such as “Duran Duran,” a rock band, “GMOs,” a genetics term, and “Apollinarianism,” a 4th Century heresy ”“ and “he would come up with authentically deep links between them,” said Damick.

It’s easy to imagine three or more books emerging from existing lectures, papers and research by Baker, noted Damick. But all the books and academic tributes in the world cannot answer the ultimate questions being asked by loved ones and friends mourning this loss.

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For example, I believe that:

Religion is a human construct
The symbols of faith are products of human cultural evolution
Jesus may have been an historical figure, but most of what we know about him is in the form of legend
God is a symbol of myth-making and not credible as a supernatural being or force
The Bible is a human product as opposed to special revelation from a divine being
Human consciousness is the result of natural selection, so there’s no afterlife

In short, I regard the symbols of Christianity from a non-supernatural point of view.

And yet, even though I hold those beliefs, I am still a proud minister. But I don’t appreciate being told that I’m not truly a Christian.

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The Anglican Church is quietly preparing for a hearing that could see the defrocking of one of its former bishops, five months after the royal commission recommended he face disciplinary action for ignoring complaints from sexual abuse victims.

Keith Slater, whose title remains the Right Reverend, was forced to resign as the Grafton Bishop in 2013 for the way he handled abuse claims from a group of 40 people.

They were men and women who had been sexually, physically and or psychologically abused at the North Coast Children’s Home in Lismore between the 1940s and the 1980s.

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A priest in the diocese of Southwark who opened us his church for Muslim prayers has apologised after being told that this was not permitted within a consecrated building.

The Vicar of St John’s, Waterloo, the Canon Giles Goddard, said on Tuesday that the event had caused “great consternation”, and he apologised for “the offence caused and any infringement of Church of England’s framework and guidelines”.

The prayers were held on 6 March as part of the Inclusive Mosque Initiative, in the run-up to International Women’s Day. They were led by Dr Amina Wadud who campaigns for gender justice in Islam. Men and women sat alongside one another in the church.

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Complaints about the service prompted a meeting on 10 March 2015 between Canon Goddard and the Bishop of Kingston-on-Thames, the Rt. Rev. Richard Cheetham — who also services as Anglican president of the Christian Muslim Forum. After the meeting Canon Goddard gave an interview to Ruth Gledhill of Christian Today stating everything his church did was legal and within bishops’ guidelines.

He added: ”˜It is very much about St John’s being a place of welcome. We understand God as a generous God, a God who celebrates love and celebrates life.”

”˜We try and make sure we live that out. In that sense we feel very properly Anglican.’

However, Dr. Gerald Bray, director of research at the Latimer Trust at Oak Hill Theological College in London questioned Canon Goddard’s views about Islam and Christianity. Writing on Facebook he said: “The simple truth is that Islam is the only major world religion that is explicitly anti-Christian. The Buddha, for example, could not have known anything about Jesus and did not develop his ideas in contrast to Christ. Muhammad, on the other hand, knew about Christians and Jews and could easily have become one or the other himself. Instead, he concocted his own religion based on elements of Judaism and Christianity and regarded it is the culmination (perfection) of both. You could say that Islam is related to Christianity in much the same way as Mormonism is, but this does not constitute ‘a common tradition’.”

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In his address to the 224th Annual Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina, Bishop Mark Lawrence outlined a plan for advancing the church’s mission through starting new congregations, renewing an emphasis on evangelism, and cultivating a missional approach to ministry and life. It was a bold vision indicative of a diocese determined to move forward after several years of legal battles following its disaffiliation from The Episcopal Church (TEC). Using the acronym CAMEL, Bishop Lawrence mapped out the current landscape of the diocese under the five categories of Consolidation, Affiliation, Missionalization, Education, and Litigation.

Although some local parishes decided to remain with TEC after the diocese disaffiliated in 2012, the losses are being made up through the addition of new congregations. At last year’s convention, Lawrence noted, Grace Church, Pawleys Island and Grace Church, North Myrtle Beach were welcomed into the diocese. This year, two more new congregations–Resurrection, North Charleston and St. James, Blackville–were welcomed as missions.

“Let us pray that this trend continues in the coming years,” Lawrence said. “In fact, it is a worthy goal for this diocese that we either welcome two new missions each year or celebrate two new campuses established by existing congregations each year, or a combination of the two.”

Punctuating that challenge, the bishop added, “May this become the defining ethos of the Diocese of South Carolina–advancement as a method of consolidation. We shall know who we are by the fact that we are continuously adding new congregations to our number.”

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Yesterday one hundred years ago ”“ 16th March, 1915 ”“ John Crowther, from the South Douglas Road in Cork, set off to France. The October before ”“ on 29th to be precise ”“ he had volunteered for service. By 9th May he was in the middle of the fighting. First he was reported missing, then ”˜reported killed.’ That’s all the newspaper report says: no date is given. Nothing more: gone!

The photograph ”“ from the newspaper, grubby now in the 100 years that have passed, shows still a youthful, fresh face ”“ like any of the lads you’d see these days heading along that same South Douglas Road in Cork to school, to meet their friends, or to their sports club.

Putting faces to the names carved in stone memorials around our county has been driving our WWI memorial project here at St Fin Barre’s and soon the emerging work will be on display.

Back to my point: Putting faces on human situations is crucial.

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You can listen directly there and download the mp3 there.

It is quite literally impossible for any minister to give to newly changed people–new [Church] members–all the fellowship and training they need.

—Experiment of Faith (New York: Harper&Row, 1957), p.21

As our nation honours at this service all of you who served in Afghanistan ”“ forces personnel and many others, alongside so many of other nations ”“ I ask you to hear those same words today, reverberating around our land: great is your faithfulness. You know about faithfulness.

Today is a moment for us to say thank you: thank you to all who served, whatever your role.

We thank you for your faithfulness: you who left family behind, you who trained hard, you who did not turn from danger, you who suffered injury and you who risked yourselves to care for the injured. I’m told that each wounded person was supported by up to 80 others by the time they got home. Great is your faithfulness.

We also thank those of you who stayed behind, who let your loved ones go

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An assistant priest at Manhattan’s famed Cathedral of St. John the Divine was busted on drunk driving charges Friday evening as she emerged from the Holland Tunnel in Jersey City Friday night, according to Port Authority police.

In addition to being hit DWI, reckless driving, and disobeying traffic law charges, Diane Reiners, a 53-year-old Episcopalian minister from Brooklyn, was also charged with criminal possession of a controlled dangerous substance after police found in her vehicle 31 pills of an anti-anxiety drug that was prescribed to someone else and more than 200 pills of tramadol, a potent pain killer, authorities said.

Police responded to reports at 6 p.m. of a woman driving through the Holland tunnel from Manhattan to New Jersey in an “erratic manner,” a report said.

According to witnesses, Reiners’ 2004 Toyota swerved between lanes and struck the tunnel curb.

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Today, the same counterfeit ideas that Danielou identified are once again in circulation. Cultural change is cited as a reason to alter the Church’s teaching on communion for the divorced and remarried. Those who object are dismissed as ice-hearted “formalists.” What we need now is spontaneous faith rather than rulebook rigidity.

In his famous interview, Danielou warned against such arguments, saying that “with the pretext of reacting against formalism” there has arisen a “false conception of freedom that brings with it the devaluing of the constitutions and rules and exalts spontaneity and improvisation” and an “erroneous conception of the changing of man and of the Church.”

Danielou made these arguments even while living in great closeness to those who are usually held up as the beneficiaries of replacing formalism with freedom. Though his views made it difficult for him to live with his religious brothers, they did not prevent him from dying with those in need. If we hope to reprise Danielou’s arguments today, we would do well also to imitate his actions.Read it all.

What exactly does it mean to you to be a priest?

It’s a funny thing in a way, probably atypical, but from the time I began to think about being anything I wanted to be a priest. Don’t ask me why. It’s the grace of God and I can’t explain it all, but I kept that through grammar school and high school. When I was going into high school, one of the Holy Cross priests from Notre Dame was giving a mission at our parish in Syracuse, and he told my mother that I ought to come out to Notre Dame and do my high school in the seminary. And she said, “He’s not going to pick up at age 12 and go that far away. He’s going to high school here.” And the priest said, “Well, he might lose his vocation.” And she said, “Let me tell you something Father. If he loses his vocation growing up in a Christian family, where he goes to mass and communion every day and is an altar boy, in the Church, I’ll tell you something””he doesn’t have one.” So when I finished high school, I came here.

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Father Trevor Smyth has been vicar of All Saints Church, Exeter Road, for over 14 years.

Now the town is set to lose him to a parish in East Sussex.

For 45 years, Fr Trevor, 69, the son of a former Church of England priest, has dedicated his life to the church.

In that time, he has earned a deserved reputation for being extraordinarily hard working.

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In an effort to block the state’s involvement with…[same-sex] marriage, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday (March 10) to abolish marriage licenses in the state.

The legislation, authored by Rep. Todd Russ, R-Cordell, amends language in the state law that governs the responsibilities of court clerks. All references to marriage licenses were removed.

Russ said the intent of the bill is to protect court clerks caught between the federal and state governments. A federal appeals court overturned Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage last year. Russ, like many Republican legislators in the state, including Gov. Mary Fallin, believes the federal government overstepped its constitutional authority on this issue.

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Latest statistics released by the Church of England show that the number of young people (under 30s) now make up a quarter of all people accepted for training for the Church of England ministry. Figures show for 2014 show that 116 young people under 30 were accepted for training.

This is the highest number of young people accepted for ordination training in the past 25 years.

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Toward the end of his life Stott spoke of his “three renunciations.” First, he decided against an academic career, feeling God had called him to be a pastor. Second was Stott’s renunciation of marriage. Third was his renunciation of the episcopate when some wanted him to be a bishop. His pastoral calling, he felt, remained primary.

As to marriage, Stott said this: “I was expecting to marry. I went about with a weather eye, and in my twenties and early thirties was looking for a possible bride. I did have two girlfriends””not simultaneously but one after t’other! But all I can say is that when the time came to decide whether to go forward in the relationship or not, I lacked the assurance that I should. That is the only way I can really explain it” (pp. 271-72). This was more a circumstantial and passive renunciation than an intentional choice.

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A few weeks ago, Linda Woodhead suggested in the Church Times that discipleship was a ”˜theologically peripheral concept’, and the following week Angela Tilby dismissed the ”˜d-word’ as ”˜sectarian vocabulary that”¦shows the influence of American-derived Evangelicalism on the Church’s current leadership.’ The short discussions in each place actually raise not one but three, inter-related, questions:

1. Is ”˜discipleship’ Anglican?

2. Is ”˜discipleship’ biblical?

3. Is the Church of England biblical?

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[Les] Modder’s 19 years of service includes many glowing fitness reports. He spent several years providing spiritual counsel to Navy SEALS, and in December received a letter of commendation from the head of the Navy Special Warfare Command, who called Modder the “best of the best” and a “talented and inspirational leader.”

Modder’s Liberty Institute attorney, Michael Berry, said the effort to fire him reflects a broader cultural change in the military.

“I think what we are seeing is a hostility to religious expression in the military now,” Berry said. “What we’re seeing is this new modern, pluralistic, Navy where service members are encouraged to be hypersensitive, especially about issues of faith, marriage and family.”

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Much has changed in the world since 2000, and few can deny that many of those changes have been facilitated by technology.

The Internet, in particular””both how much we use it and what we use it for””has dramatically altered the way people live their lives, do their work and engage in their relationships. Pastors are no exception: In the past 15 years, church leaders have significantly increased their use of the Internet and have, by and large, come to accept it as an essential tool for ministry in the 21st century.

In a recent study of U.S. Protestant church leaders, Barna Group looked at pastors’ use of the Internet and their attitudes toward it today compared to 15 years ago, at the turn of the century.

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