“..the Christian life is a team sport…” Good stuff.

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…the first thing that God’s people are meant to be, day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, is we are meant to be a people who know our own failure, and who come to God with nothing in our hands, with no strength of our own, simply seeking his forgiveness, admitting our weakness. One of the great failures of the church in European history is that too often it is taken in by the appearance of strength and forgets its need of God. Over recent years we’ve done that over issues of the abuse of children in Europe. We’ve failed to say where we’ve gone wrong. We are to be a repentant church.

It is very easy to be confident in your own resources. When I was at university, which was sadly a very long time ago, two friends and I decided to walk across Scotland. It was about 230 miles, so it took about two weeks. We were good walkers but bad map readers. So we probably did 300 miles because we kept going one way and having to come back another. And on one occasion we were walking in western Scotland, and we came to a valley that split into two bits, and after a little while we realised that the valley we’d taken after about four miles ended in a cliff, and the other one had the main road. So we went back, and as we were going back we met some other people coming along the same bad route. And so being nice people we said to them, ”˜This is the wrong way, there’s just a cliff at the end.’ And they said, ”˜No there isn’t. We know this is the right way.’ So we smiled politely and we went on, and when we got back to where we should have gone from, we sat down and made a cup of tea and waited for them to appear, looking embarrassed.

Repentance is when you know you’re going the wrong way and, rather than going on, you turn round and go back and take the way that God has shown you. We are to be a repentant church. That is part of the culture of Christian faith.

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Clearly, the nation’s two largest churches {Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist] do play crucial roles in the chaplaincy program. A mere 234 priests serve the 25 percent of all military personnel who are Catholics. The Southern Baptist Convention has more than 1,500 approved chaplains, more than any other faith group.

America’s military leaders will have to decide if doctrinally conservative chaplains will be allowed to honor their religious vows or not, said the Rev. Russell Moore, leader of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, in a forum last week.

The current trend, Moore said, is to view chaplains as “carriers of the American civil religion, in a way that seeks to counsel and to do some religious duties but not to actually be Roman Catholics or Evangelicals or Latter-day Saints or Muslims or what have you. I think that is troubling. … I believe in religious pluralism in the public square where everyone comes as he or she is into the public square for more dialogue and not less.”

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At 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 26, the doors shut out the disagreements about church law as United Methodists Joe Openshaw and Bobby Prince vowed to love each other for the rest of their lives in a wedding ceremony performed by retired Bishop Melvin G. Talbert.

Before the wedding. television cameras from several news stations rolled outside Covenant Community United Church of Christ. The two men and Bishop Talbert faced questions about why, and what it would mean for them to disregard their denomination’s stance that the practice of homosexuality is not compatible with Christian teaching and that ordained clergy are forbidden to perform a same-sex marriage….

For Talbert, the answer to why and what lies ahead is more complicated.

“On May 4, 2012 (during the 2012 United Methodist General Conference), I declared that the church’s official position is wrong and evil ”¦it no longer calls for our obedience.”

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A few months ago, in late July, an interview was published in England, in which I’d been interviewed and had among many other things talked about what are called credit unions in England. These are small, local, community financial organisations. Over the last 40 of 50 years they have more or less disappeared. And if, in England, you are in a poorer part of the country, and in much of the rest of the United Kingdom, and you need some money quickly, you can get it very easily. There are many organisations. The interest varies between 2500 percent a year and 5500 percent a year. So it costs you. You borrow 200 pounds for five days. You roll it over cause you can’t pay it back. You roll it over again. Before you know it you owe two, three, four thousand.

I made what seemed to me the fairly obvious comment that I considered this to be usury and usury had been a sin since Moses. Well, it was a quiet day in the press. And they had nothing important to report, so we found that they reported it rather large scale. It was a casual comment. I wish I could say that I had a grand strategy, but I didn’t. It was an accident. But it was an accident in which God was involved. Because it has created such momentum that there is a great new movement to change the way we do community finance. And it is such a powerful movement that we’re even working with the Scots about it. And there is a miracle. It takes a lot to make the Scots willing to work with the English. Understandably, we’ve spent about 800 years ill treating them. But, what was interesting to me, was a comment by the head of our mission and public affairs department, who said he’s had to rewrite part of a book he’s writing on social action of the church, to say that it is not only about grand statements and about prayer, but in today’s society we are called to action. That in the postmodern society people look for a story of change, of engagement, of commitment, that brings testimony and witness to words and prayers.

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My father, who died earlier this year at the ripe old age of 90, had a life that was as varied as it was long.

He served in the Italian campaign in the Second World War, then became an Anglican clergyman, a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and subsequently dean of St John’s Cathedral, Hong Kong. For 21 years he was principal of Morley College, an institute of adult education, in London, and finally director of a large charitable foundation. In his retirement he returned to his first love, church history, completing a project on Restoration church courts that he had put aside 30 years previously and ending his career with seven entries on Restoration Anglican divines for the Dictionary of National Biography, which was published in his 81st year. (“Not my period” he would always declare stoutly when asked a question about a historical event that fell outside the late 17th century, although in fact he wrote what is still a standard history of the movement for Christian unity.)

At the age of 85 he was awarded the rare degree of doctor of divinity by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a ceremony at Lambeth Palace at which Rowan Williams preached a fire-breathing sermon on the threat of secularism, little knowing that my father had long ceased to be a believer.

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This morning I stopped to chat with John W Yates III of Holy Trinity Church in Raleigh, N.C.. John was a former study assistant to John Stott and we talked about Uncle John’s influence on North American Anglicans.

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The United Methodist Church’s highest court gathers for its semiannual meeting in Baltimore on Wednesday, as the denomination confronts a growing movement of defiant clergy members opposed to church doctrine on gays and unwilling to back down.

They include:

The Rev. Steve Heiss, of Binghamton, N.Y. Heiss must promise by Thursday (Oct. 24), that he will never again preside at a same-sex wedding or face a church trial that could lead to his loss of clergy credentials. He said he will refuse.
The Rev. Frank Schaefer of Lebanon, Pa. He will be tried Nov. 18-19 for officiating at the 2007 same-sex wedding of his son.
The Rev. Gordon Hutchings of Tacoma, Wash. He faces a complaint for presiding at a same-sex marriage in his state.
The Rev. Sara Thompson Tweedy of New York. She faces a complaint of being a practicing lesbian.

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Q: If you had to name or or two ways that we could pray specifically for the conference what would those be?

A: Pray that God would pour out His Holy Spirit for the beginning of a new revival throughout the church through what He can accomplish at this gathering. Pray for the persecuted church throughout the world which is widely represented by many in attendance. Pray for the health and safety of all gathered.

Q: What has struck you most about being in a different place with so many Anglicans from so many varied locales?

A: This is what heaven will be like someday, and what a joyous opportunity to get a taste of it now….

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This was made by one of the children at Christ Saint Paul’s Yonges Island, South Carolina, and presented to rector Craige Borrett and myself this morning–KSH.

Next week, Prince George of Cambridge is to be christened into the Church of England in a 45-minute ceremony at the Chapel Royal of St James’s Palace. As well as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge: The Queen, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall and members of the Middleton family will be present.

Although godparents have yet to be announced, many have speculated over who the honour could be afforded to. Princess Beatrice, Prince Harry, Pippa Middleton and also some of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s friends from university have been picked out by analysts.

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The Church of England is relying on an increasing number of women priests to keep going as numbers of male clergy decline, even though women are still excluded from the highest office of the episcopate.

More women are being ordained into the Church than ever before, with women priests now accounting for nearly one in four full-time clergy and more than one in ten senior clergy.

The latest Church statistics released today reveal that a continuing rise in women priests has not been enough to offset a decline in overall clergy numbers….

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In his church office, pastor Chuck Smith kept a crown made of thorns and a jar full of candy. The thorns were from the Holy Land. The candy was for his grandkids. The image suggested his special appeal as a preacher: A harsh, old-school Christianity delivered with grandfatherly sweetness.

Smith, the founder of the Jesus People and the Calvary Chapel movement, and one of the most influential figures in modern American Christianity, died Thursday morning at his home in Newport Beach after a two-year battle with lung cancer, church officials said. He was 86.

“He was definitely a pioneer,” said Donald E. Miller, a professor of religion at USC. “He had a transformative impact on Protestantism.”

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It’s easy to tune out when the Senate goes through its morning rituals. The president pro tem calls the chamber to order; there’s the Pledge of Allegiance. One morning could sound like any other.

Except for the past two weeks. Barry C. Black, the Senate chaplain, has been using his morning prayers to say exactly what he thinks is wrong with Washington lawmakers: “Remove from them that stubborn pride, which imagines itself to be above and beyond criticism.”

A retired rear admiral who often sports a bow tie, Black became the Senate’s first African-American chaplain when he took the job 10 years ago.

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At a time when many Christian leaders today are failing, we need to reclaim these eight vital qualities:

1. You must have a sure calling. Nehemiah said to the king: “Send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it” (Neh. 2:5, NASB, emphasis added). Nehemiah was a “sent one.” He was called by God, and he surrendered. You must be convinced that you are called. You may have great preaching skills, a powerful anointing or a magnetic personality, but human abilities and God-given talents alone will not make you successful. You must know that you know that you know that God has sent you.

2. You need a heavenly burden. When Nehemiah heard that Jerusalem’s walls were destroyed and that the Jews were displaced, he wept (1:4). His call to leadership flowed out of true compassion for people. The most successful leaders step into their assignments not because they want to make a name for themselves or because they want a paycheck from a church, but because they want to help others. If love is not your motivation, do us all a favor and wait until God’s compassion grips you. The church today does not need any more leaders with personal agendas or selfish ambitions.

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Do ministers of congregations need to go to seminary?

Not that long ago, historically speaking, this was a perfectly fair question. Today, it’s becoming a point of debate again….

What is changing is a movement in two directions with a single, general effect. On the one hand, nondenominational churches are springing up, with many of the larger, or “megachurch,” institutions having no affiliation with a denominational certification body. Therefore they have no specific requirement for a bachelor’s degree or Bible college certificate of one sort or another. Each non- or undenominational congregation can hire whom it chooses, and even ordain or not ordain as seems right and proper for its history and sense of tradition.

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Mary MacGregor, who heads the diocese’s Iona School, said programs like theirs and the Bishop Kemper School are what the church needs. She noted that in the Diocese of Wyoming, one of the Iona partners, 90 percent of their priests are bivocational. And the need for local education programs will only grow, she said.

“This is the movement that is going on in the church. There will be more internal schools in the Episcopal Church,” she said. And while quality content is essential, it isn’t the only requirement, she said. “We have to have a mix of quality, accessibility and do-ability.”

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It is the first time that a royal christening has been marked with coins.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s son will be christened on 23 October, just over three months after his birth.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, will perform the christening at the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace.

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The small, quiet town in Fairfield County is a world away from the streets of Dorchester, but the two communities are, in a sense, linked: Both mourn the innocent children they have lost to gun violence.

Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, saw that connection when he and his staff were putting together a day of workshops aimed at helping church members ”” including many small-town dwellers and suburbanites ”” find ways to help end violence, part of the B-PEACE for Jorge campaign.

“When Newtown happened, it was three months after Jorge’s death, and it was so clear to all of us that this was not something that just happens in the city,” Shaw said in an interview in his office last month. “This happens everywhere.”

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For most of us Ember Days go unno­ticed. With the excep­tion of sem­i­nar­i­ans writ­ing let­ters to bish­ops telling them of their progress, Ember Days have all but dis­ap­peared in the life of the Church. Even in farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing closer to the earth and to the cycles of seed-time, vin­tage and har­vest there is pre­cious lit­tle atten­tion given to Ember days. Such is our loss; for knowl­edge of the sea­sons has much to teach us and not just for lessons about the soil. Last week on Sep­tem­ber 18th, 20th, and 21st the Church’s cal­en­dar rubrics noted what used to be the “vin­tage” Ember days””that is the sea­son of the grape har­vest. As a native Cal­i­forn­ian I remem­ber it well””the grape har­vest that is not the Ember days.

What brought this to mind was our lat­est dioce­san Clergy Day. Not that we in the Dio­cese of South Car­olina are in what I would call a “vin­tage season”””though cer­tainly some may feel this past year they have been like grapes in the wine press trod­dened and squeezed. No, as I looked out on the assem­bled broth­ers and sis­ters, rather than see­ing brethren in the vin­tage month, what came to mind was that more than a few had passed through or per­haps were still in a fal­low season.

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The Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Accra, Rt. Rev. Dr. Daniel S. M. Torto, has condemned excessive alcoholism among Christians, especially Anglicans, in public.

According to the Who Health Organisation (WHO), the harmful use of alcohol results in 2.5 million deaths each year, and 320 000 young people, between the age of 15 and 29, die from alcohol-related causes, resulting in 9% of all deaths in that age group.

Alcohol is the world’s third largest risk factor for disease burden; it is the leading risk factor in the Western Pacific and the Americas, and the second largest in Europe.

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Stephen Fendler, president of CM Almy, shows off a rack of samples from his brand-new women’s collection, pointing out a piece he’s particularly proud of: a black blouse in a stretchy jersey knit.

But Mr. Fendler’s collections won’t be seen on the runways anytime soon. CM Almy says it is the largest, and one of the oldest, American producers of clerical clothing, and its models are hitting the pulpit instead of the catwalk. Their designers create garments for priests, ministers and bishops mainly within the Episcopal, Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches ”” from everyday plain shirts and white collars, to the more elaborate and colorful ceremonial chasubles.

“We have seasons, and items go in and out of style just like the fashion world,” Mr. Fendler said. But “our style changes are driven by evolutions in holy ceremonies. Nobody would call us the most fashion-forward company in the marketplace.”

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Lillian Daniel: What possessed you to write a novel? Has it always been a dream of yours?

William Willimon: Sort of. I’m a lover of novels, ever since a college course in the modern American novel. I love Flannery O’Connor, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann and even dear, sweet, degenerate Marcel Proust. I reread them all.

Pastors must be curious about people. Novels are a natural aid to pastoral work. When you watch Gustave Flaubert dissect a character, it’s a great help in attempting to figure out why the chair of your vestry is so screwed up. Also, as a pastor, you spend a great deal of time with people who are exposed and without adequate protection. Being a pastor is therefore almost like being a novelist without all the alcohol.

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Kimberla Lawson Roby stood near the pulpit of a Baptist church in this Atlanta suburb one Saturday in late August, giving her testimony. She spoke of infidelities, mistresses, blackmail, out-of-wedlock children and extravagant spending. She did so as neither minister or worshiper, but rather as a novelist telling scores of rapt fans about her fictional characters.

…for the past 13 years …[she has been] writing a series of novels built around an African-American pastor, the Rev. Curtis Black. The series, now numbering 10 books, has sold well upward of one million copies, and several titles have made best-seller lists.

Besides being a commercial phenomenon, Ms. Roby’s books represent a theological and cultural one.

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….before taking part in the elaborate liturgy, Hougland and Jefferts Schori took a tour Friday of Grand Rapids landmarks: historic St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Heartside Ministry and a luncheon at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. They also got an up-close glimpse of ArtPrize in the full glory of a classic Michigan autumn.

All of it assured Hougland he made the right choice in choosing Grand Rapids as his home along with his wife, Dana, an educator and autism specialist.

“This is a beautiful part of the world,” Hougland said in an interview at St. Andrew’s. “I had no idea how wonderful western Michigan is.”

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(Please note that this is a follow up to this article posted on the blog September 22–KSH).

A Methodist minister who resigned her pulpit last year after deciding that she was no longer a believer, and who was recently hired by a humanist group based at Harvard to help build congregations of nonbelievers throughout the country, has acknowledged fabricating aspects of her educational background.

The former minister, Teresa MacBain, whose crisis of faith was described in the On Religion column last Saturday, claimed she had earned a master of divinity degree from Duke University.

She had also listed that degree in the résumé she submitted to the Humanist Community at Harvard in the course of being hired as director of its Humanist Community Project. In addition, she had made references to the degree in previous public statements, some of which were reported online.

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