News in the Middle East is rarely uplifting. On a daily basis, a roiling brew of fanaticism, insurgency and hatred boils over into country after country, yielding death and destruction.

In a region beset with such turmoil, it is highly unusual to come across someone who rises above the fray and ”“ without a trace of cynicism ”“ offers a message of hope. Thankfully, just such a voice was heard in Jerusalem this past weekend.

Reverend Canon Andrew White is an Anglican priest from Great Britain who is affectionately known as the “Vicar of Baghdad.” A large silver cross graces his chest; he walks with a cane and speaks with a faint impediment because of his personal battle with multiple sclerosis.

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Growing up, Janice Melbourne wanted to be a nun. Instead she became a priest.

Her lifelong journey of discovery began with her birth in Tehran, Iran, where her father was a U.S. foreign service officer. The journey now has come to Rock Hill, where the Rev. Janice Melbourne Chalaron is the rector at the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour.

Her journey of faith began in a “marginally Methodist” family that went to church twice a year, attending Catholic Mass in Helsinki, followed by a return to the Methodist church, then an introduction to the Episcopal church through her husband, Pierre Chalaron.

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My nickname, among those I work with as a railway chaplain, is the “Flying Vicar”. Being an ex-railwayman myself, I take it as a compliment. Usually my former colleagues can be depended on to come up with something so much worse.

Why “flying”, I’ve often asked? “Because you’re here, there and everywhere,” they reply. And that just about sums up the 37-hour week I’m contracted to do, plus the many extra hours I put in each and every week. I roam all over the place, from my home base in Preston, covering the whole north-west railway region.

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Come hear Baroness Cox live on Friday, February 7
7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Thy Kingdom Come – A Call to Action
Charleston Music Hall – 37 John Street

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There’s a strong possibility the fusillade from the UN panel may backfire, however, by blurring the cause of child protection with the culture wars over sexual mores.

In several sections of its report, the committee joins its critique on abuse with blunt advice to Rome to jettison Church teaching on matters such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and contraception. At one stage the panel even recommends repealing a codicil of Church law that imposes automatic excommunication for participating in an abortion.

Not only are those bits of advice deeply unlikely to be adopted, they may actually strengthen the hand of those still in denial in the Church on the abuse scandals by allowing them to style the UN report as all-too-familiar secular criticism driven by politics.

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Reconciliation is long and hard work. The first place we find reconciliation is in Jesus Christ. Only Jesus has the resources to give us so we can be reconciled. Paul says, be reconciled to God through Jesus. Even a loving person runs out of resources to forgive – like a bottle of water which becomes empty.

But the reconciliation of Jesus is like the Nile in flood. If you want reconciliation in South Sudan, renew your reconciliation with God in Jesus. In the revival of 1938, this region spoke of the joy of Christ. As Nehemiah says, the joy of the Lord is our strength. When I see you dance and I hear your sing, my strength is renewed.

It all starts with Jesus. So pray, pray and pray more. In England it’s a lesson we need to learn.

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The 26 bishops come from the following Member Churches: Australia; Canada; Central Africa; South India; England; Ireland; Kenya; Korea; Lusitanian Church; Melanesia; Myanmar; Aotearoa, New Zealand & Polynesia; Nigeria; Scotland; Southern Cone/South America; Sudan; West Africa;and the West Indies.

Several of bishops spoke of the course as having a profound impact on them and their ministry. Bishop of Korea’s Busan Diocese Onesimus Park said that, while he knew intellectually that Korea was part of the worldwide Anglican community, the visit had made this knowledge real.

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Read it all (an updated version of an earlier story).

The Anglican Church in North America is pleased to announce the release of To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism produced by the provincial Catechesis Task force.

Led by the Rev. Dr J.I. Packer, the Task Force has developed a unique and powerful resource for helping inquirers come to an understanding of the Christian faith, and for helping disciples deepen their relationship with God. Written in a “Question and Answer” format, this Catechism, in the words of Packer, “is designed as a resource manual for the renewal of Anglican catechetical practice. It presents the essential building blocks of classic catechetical instruction: the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments (the Decalogue). To these is added an initial section especially intended for those with no prior knowledge of the Gospel; as such, this catechism attempts to be a missional means by which God may bring about both conversion to Christ and formation in Christ.”

Read it all and note the link at the bottom to the text of the catechism itself.

Travel keeps getting easier for Cuba’s surging Christian community even as practicing their faith keeps getting harder. Case in point: Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso, a Cuban Baptist pastor who once appeared on CT’s cover and has since become a Bonhoeffer-inspired activist blogger.

Last fall, Lleonart Barroso made an unusually high-profile trip to Washington, D.C., visiting the Congressional Caucus on Religious Freedom and issuing a 30-point challenge to his Communist government. Last weekend, he found his house in central Cuba surrounded by security police, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).

Security agents quickly seized the pastor as his wife and two children watched from inside the house.

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Worth–Ship
Or..
Worth–Shape.

Shaping our lives according to….our highest worth!

Worship: Shaped by our highest worth!

So if Jesus is our highest worth , our highest priority in life, then true worship is offering our entire being to him, asking him to shape every part of who we are.

Read it all (an audio link is also available on the parish website, either for listening or download).

Ignatius offers a fascinating insight into the heart of a true man of God given over to His will. It is tempting to want to leap from his example and vision of episcopacy to its practice within our own Church at this time, but such a leap needs great care. A bishop in the first decade of the second century cannot fairly be compared even to one of 250 years later let alone in the Church of today. The three-fold ministry was still in an early stage of its development. Even though Lightfoot has cogently argued that a case can be made for regarding episcopacy as being of Apostolic direction, and therefore possessing Divine sanction, long years of evolution and growth lay before it. At this stage too the Church across the Roman Empire faced the daily possibility of considerable persecution and martyrdom. That demanded a particular kind of shepherding and witness.
On the other hand a bishop at the beginning of the third millennium might profitably and properly ask (or be asked) whether endless committees and synods are really the way in which their lives are to be laid down for their flock? An institution requires administration, but in the New Testament list of charisms, administrators are quite low in the order of priorities, and of its pastors at this time the Church has other, more pressing, needs. Rather than imposing upon an already disheartened clergy systems of appraisal (mostly copied from secular models of management) it would be good for parish priests to experience bishops as those who were around so much that they could afford regularly to ”˜drop in’ and just be with them. It is hard to expect the parish clergy to make visiting a priority if their fathers in God do not set an example.

In some dioceses the more obviously pastoral role has sometimes been exercised by a suffragan but as more and more diocesan bishops, at least within the Church of England, are being selected from the ranks of the suffragans the temptation is for those who are ambitious to prove their worth more as potential managers than those given to the ”˜Word of God and prayer’ (Acts 6.2). If the communities within which the bishops are to exercise their ministry of unity and care are too large for them to do their work has not the time come to press for smaller dioceses and for bishops to strip themselves of the remnants of the grandeur their office once held and be found, above all, with their clergy and amongst the people, drawing them together into the unity for which Christ gave himself?

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“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”.

These words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer convey a strong resonance with our service this evening.

We gather to share in the ordination of three wonderful human beings- Charleston, David and Jason. We surround them and their families with our love and, we as a congregation, commit ourselves to supporting them not only now, but also into the future.

”˜Whom shall I send and who will go for us?’

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It all started when the Rev. Rob Dewey, police officer turned Episcopal priest, saw a need for chaplains at police scenes to counsel and support those affected, from first responders to victims and their families.

The need became an unfunded dream that became Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy, a growing nonprofit Judeo-Christian ministry turning 25 years old.

Its chaplains have counseled countless residents who have landed, by choice or by fate, at the doorstep of violent death and life’s other most devastating traumas.

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After all this he is still smiling.

A Church of England diocese has issued a list of social media rules to its staff and clergy, urging them to consider God when tweeting the masses.

The guidelines range from practical security advice to more faith-based instructions, including a warning that updates are “transient yet permanent”.

The list has been widely shared online, dubbed the “Twitter commandments”.

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An Anglo-Catholic priest was bullied out of his parish after challenging a cadre of “very right-wing” church- goers over a culture of binge-drinking, according to a report.

Father Simon Tibbs, 41, had been in charge of St Faith’s church in Great Crosby, Merseyside ”” which includes the former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie among its past parishioners ”” for just nine months when he was allegedly forced out last September.

An investigation into his departure found yesterday that he had offended an “inner circle” of the congregation by trying to drive through a ban on excessive drinking by worshippers who were treating the church like a “social club”.

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Bishops will have the power to demand that a priest undergoes a safeguarding risk-assessment under legislative changes proposed by the Archbishops’ Council last week. Priests who fail to comply “without good cause” will be guilty of misconduct under the Clergy Discipline Measure.

The proposal is one of 12, published on Monday of last week, which will be debated by the General Synod next month. They have been produced in response to the report of the Archbishop’s Chichester Visitation, which called for an “urgent” review of the Church’s safeguarding legislation.

The report that lists the proposals states that commissioning risk-assessments would be “the exception, rather than the norm”, and that bishops would need to give reasons to justify the direction. Priests would have the right to seek a review by the President of Tribunals of the diocesan bishop’s direction.

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Courage…is the indispensable requisite of any true ministry…. If you are afraid of men and a slave to their opinion, go and do something else. Go make shoes to fit them. Go even and paint pictures you know are bad but will suit their bad taste. But do not keep on all of your life preaching sermons which shall not say what God sent you to declare, but what they hire you to say. Be courageous. Be independent.

—-Phillips Brooks, Lectures on Preaching, the 1877 Yale Lectures (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1969), p. 59

Listen to it all should you wish to and also note that there is an option to download it
there (using the button which says “download” underneath the link which says “listen”).

Having a racially diverse church remains more dream than reality for most Protestant pastors. More than eight in ten (85 percent) say every church should strive for racial diversity, according to a survey from Nashville-based LifeWay Research.

But few have diverse flocks.

Most (86 percent) say their congregation is predominately one racial or ethnic group.

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This week at the Vatican, Syria was at the top of the agenda. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences convened a panel of experts, including former Egyptian Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, to search for ways to end Syria’s nearly three-year civil war. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the crisis with Vatican Secretary of State and Cardinal-designate Pietro Parolin. And Pope Francis himself, in a speech to diplomats, renewed the call for peace in Syria that he made in September at a special prayer vigil in St. Peter’s Square.

Few actions are more characteristic of the modern papacy than appeals for peace. Think of Pope Paul VI at the United Nations in 1965 calling for “No more war, war never again”; Pope John Paul II with leaders of other religions praying for peace at Assisi ; or popes giving annual Christmas and Easter addresses that highlight the most urgent crises around the world….

The pope as peacemaker is a role no more than a century old, and is the legacy of the man who held the office during World War I.

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The Reverend Thon Moses Chol is a pastor at St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia and one of South Sudan’s Lost Boys, a refugee to the US….

Read it all and watch the whole video (a little over 2 minutes)

From here:

If there is to be a renewal of true spiritual life within the Church today there must be a radical reassessment of what takes place in the pulpit. The welfare of the Church is vitally linked to the preaching of the Word. If the Church is to flourish then there must be a recovery of faithful, relevant, biblical preaching. Four hundred years ago, William Perkins’s immeasurable influence revolutionized preaching in England. Through his clear, practical and powerful preaching, God’s Word was set free in the pulpit and spiritual life blazed in the Churches of England. If we wish to see the dawn of revival in the Church we dare not ignore the evidence of Scripture and the lesson of history, that preaching is the primary task of the Church

Read it all (page 6).

Finding the future in the past–an interesting theme, that, to be sure. Listen to it all (highly recommended).

You can find the audio link here; listen to it all (just under 23 minutes).

Let us return again to the theme of witnessing. In the second reading the Apostle John writes: “It is the Spirit who bears witness” (1 John 5:6). He is referring to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, who bears witness to Jesus, testifying that he is the Christ, the Son of God. This is also seen in the scene of the baptism in the Jordan River: the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus like a dove, revealing that he is the Only Begotten Son of the Eternal Father (cf. Mark 1:10). John underscores this aspect as well in his Gospel when Jesus says to his disciples: “When the Paraclete comes, whom I will send from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me; and you too will bear witness to me, because you have been with me from the beginning” (John 15:26-27). This is a great comfort to us in educating others in the faith because we know that we are not alone and that our witness is supported by the Holy Spirit.

It is very important for you parents and also for you godfathers and godmothers to believe strongly in the presence and the action of the Holy Spirit, to call upon him and welcome him in you through prayer and the sacraments. He is the one in fact who enlightens the mind, who makes the heart of the educator burn so that he or she knows how to transmit the knowledge of the love of Christ. Prayer is the first condition for educating, because in praying we create the disposition in ourselves of letting God have the initiative, of entrusting our children to him, who knows them before we do and better than us, and knows perfectly what their true good is.

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An award-winning pastor and the congregation he leads at the Flora-Bama lounge have left the United Methodist denomination, he confirmed Wednesday.

The Rev. Jeremy Mount, who received the Harry Denman Evangelism Award in June at the United Methodists’ annual meeting in Mobile, turned in his credentials in mid-December, he said. He is the third well-known pastor to leave the Alabama-West Florida Conference in 2013.

“We’ve always loved the local churches we’ve been a part of,” said Mount, who was discipleship pastor at Perdido Bay UMC and led Worship on the Water as a ministry of the church. “We have had a harder time dealing with the larger structure of the denomination.”

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Three below zero on a Minnesota morning, and the Rev. Oliver White stomps the snow off his boots as he enters the stucco edifice of Clark Memorial United Church of Christ to lead worship. He peels off an overcoat to reveal the kente-cloth vestments his wife made for him, which match the kufi hat he wears.

On this Sunday midway between Christmas and New Year’s Day, he sees a congregation thinned by both vacation and weather. Perhaps 50 people fill the pews, yet in their modest number resides a startling range: a lesbian couple with their son; a 98-year-old man who still shovels his own sidewalk; the black and white relatives of a biracial baby about to be baptized.

“Good morning, and let’s have the church say, ”˜Amen,’ “ Mr. White, 71, begins, standing in the aisle rather than at the pulpit. Hearing the desultory response, he chides: “That was only half the church. Again?” The voices now rise, and he adds his own emphatic “Amen!”

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