Listen to it all if you so desire.

Vicar Battle is a theologian, priest, well-known author, speaker and retreat leader. His ministry focuses on Christian non-violence, human spirituality and African Church studies.

Author of nine books, he has served as vice chairman of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute, assistant professor of Moral and Ascetical Theology at the University of the South, assistant professor of Spirituality and Black Church Studies at Duke University, rector of St. Ambrose Episcopal in Raleigh, academic dean at Virginia Theological Seminary, rector of Church of Our Saviour in San Gabriel, Calif., and Canon Theologian for the Diocese of Los Angeles.

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Listen to it all if you so desire.

…lastly, if I want another argument to make you good soldiers, remember your Captain, the Captain whose wounded hands and pierced feet are tokens of His love to you. Redeemed from going down tothe pit, what can you do sufficiently to show your gratitude? Assured of eternal Glory by-and-by, how can you sufficiently prove that you feel your indebtedness? Up, I pray you! By Him whose eyes are like a flame of fire, and yet were wet with tears””by Him on whose head are many crowns, and who yet wore the crown of thorns””by Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords, and yet bowed His head to death for you””resolve that to life’s latest breath you will spend and be spent for His praise. The Lord grant that there may be many such in this Church””good sold iers of Jesus Christ.

Read it all (cited by yours truly in yesterday’s sermon).

“Any time you can take an insult and make it your own, it’s a win,” explains Bolz-Weber, who speaks in Winnipeg Friday, Oct. 4 and Saturday, Oct. 5.

And she’s not the only one who believes in transforming words, and even lives. On her recent book tour promoting her new bestselling memoir, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint, the recovering alcoholic and former stand-up comic has attracted crowds of up to 900 people wanting to hear her story, and maybe share some of theirs.

“I think people are eager to have a whole life faith, to have the sacred story connected with their reality,” explain Bolz-Weber of the huge response to her book, which exposes her struggle with drugs and alcohol, her move to faith, and her efforts to stay there.

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he Anglican Diocese of Sunyani at the weekend ordain five deacons of the church into the Priesthood.

They are Reverend John Agyemang Prempeh, Rev Frank Kusi, Rev Collins Opoku, Rev Thomas Adjei Baffoe and Rev Richard Obeng.

Brothers Nathaniel Barimah and Gabriel Afrifa Kodom were also inducted to the diocesan Diaconate at a ceremony the St. Anselm Cathedral in Sunyani.

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The Rev. David Huxley didn’t plan on ever coming back to church ”” let alone entering the priesthood.

“I’d grown up Episcopalian, but when I got to be 17 or 18, church kind of lost its appeal,” said Huxley, who moved to Midland last week to take a position as the new rector at St. Nicholas’ Episcopal Church. “I went churchless for many years.”

Huxley became a police officer for the city of Madison, Wis. He worked there for 20 years before finding himself back in the Episcopal church, attending services upon a friend’s suggestion. Still, he never thought of becoming a priest until he kneeled to pray one Sunday and realized how much he missed church.

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A Stoke-on-Trent vicar has become the star of a real ale festival with a special brew named after him.

The Revd Chris Rushton, a Church of England minister at Holy Trinity, Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent is hosting a beer festival in the Minton Halls behind the church, starting …[Thursday]at 7.30 pm. and running until Saturday.

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It seems not a month goes by without a social media brouhaha involving a high-profile Christian leader.

Such was the case when a prominent pastor tweeted about the recent Oklahoma tornado in a manner that seemed to connect the deadly storm to an act of God’s judgment. In between such controversies, insightful blog posts or “retweetable” phrases also go viral. Social media is creating a new class of religious influencers. If you want to watch the modern Christian conversation unfold, just log onto Twitter or check your Facebook feed. The Christian community’s voice has become a substantial one in the social, digital space.

A new Barna study shows that, in the last two years, there has been a significant leap in the number of pastors and churches engaging social media. More than one in five American pastors (21%) say their churches use Twitter, up from only 14% in 2011. Facebook usage in churches has likewise jumped from just over half (57%) to a full seven in 10. Pastors themselves are also engaged in online communication, with nearly one-quarter (23%) who use Twitter, well over six in 10 (66%) who are on Facebook, and over one in five (22%) who have a personal blog.

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This sure is matter of love; but came there any good to us by it? There did. For our conception being the root as it were, the very groundsill of our nature; that He might go to the root and repair of our nature from the very foundation, thither He went; that what had been there defiled and decayed by the first Adam, might by the Second be cleansed and set right again. That had our conception been stained, by Him therefore, primum ante omnia,to be restored again. He was not idle all the time He was an embyro all the nine months He was in the womb; but then and there He even ate out the core of corruption that cleft to our nature and us, and made both us and it an unpleasing object in the sight of God.

And what came of this? We who were abhorred by God, filii irae was our title, were by this means made beloved in Him. He cannot, we may be sure, account evil of that nature, that is now become the nature of His own SonNHis now no less than ours. Nay farther, given this privilege to the children of such as are in Him, though but of one parent believing, that they are not as the seed of two infidels, but are in a degree holy, eo ipso; and have a farther right to the laver of regeneration, to sanctify them throughout by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. This honour is to us by the dishonour of Him; this the good by Christ an embyro.

–From a sermon preached before King James, at Whitehall, on Sunday, the Twenty-fifth of December, 1614

After decades of glum trends ”” fewer priests, fewer parishes ”” the Catholic Church in the United States has a new statistic to cheer: More men are now enrolled in graduate level seminaries, the main pipeline to the priesthood, than in nearly two decades.

This year’s tally of 3,694 graduate theology students represents a 16 percent increase since 1995 and a 10 percent jump since 2005, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA).

Seminary directors cite more encouragement from bishops and parishes, the draw of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and the social-justice-minded Pope Francis, and a growing sense that the church is past the corrosive impact of the sexual abuse crisis that exploded in 2002.

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The nov­el­ist, essay­ist, and poet, Wen­dell Berry said he once knew a bar­ber who refused to give a dis­count to bald­ing men because his artistry was not in cut­ting off hair but rather in know­ing when to stop. Like­wise, I pray there is some artistry or at least crafti­ness in know­ing when to begin. After much coax­ing from sev­eral mem­bers of our dioce­san staff I have finally com­mit­ted to sit­ting down before this com­puter to write a blog. In doing so I’ve been told I need to give the blog a name. So here it is: I chris­ten thee, Midge-buzzings, Mus­ter­ings, and Mus­ings””a name which clearly mer­its a brief expla­na­tion, not merely for the obscu­ri­ties embed­ded therein, but because of what such a name sug­gests about the content.

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He had no truck with American abstinence. “God invented cream. Furthermore, having made us in his image, he means us to share his delight in its excellence,” he wrote. He liked a drink or two as well: a married couple’s half-bottle amid meatloaf and brawling children was one of the “cheerful minor lubrications” of the “sandy gears of life”. But modern-day Americans, he wrote glumly, “drink the way we exercise: too little and too hard….”

…[He also] had no time for strict scorekeeping, in the kitchen or anywhere else. Grace, not willpower, dealt with sin: Jesus came to save the world, not to judge it. Showy piety, legalism and quietism were all abominations, almost as much as the cheap oil and harsh flavours of phoney ethnic food.

His own scorecard had some blots. Divorce from the mother of his six children cost him his parish on Long Island and his post as dean of an …[Episcopal] seminary. His 27 books (mostly on theology) and cookery columns only partly filled the gap. But there were worse things than being poor, he wrote, such as losing sight of the greatness of small things. At a posh church in East Hampton, he started his sermon by burning a $20 bill, with the words: “I have just defied your God.”

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Listen to it all if you so desire.

Los Angeles filmmaker Andrew Thomas has turned his attention from the secular to the religious by directing a feature-length documentary on the life and times of the Rev. Malcolm Boyd, an Episcopal priest who says the church needs to be more relevant to the everyday person and has worked to improve that issue.

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In his first interview since his son’s suicide in April, famed pastor Rick Warren told CNN that he knew his son, Matthew, had bought a gun, dismissed rumors that Matthew was gay and said he doesn’t blame God for the tragedy.

“I have cried every single day since Matthew died,” Warren said Tuesday in an exclusive interview with CNN.

“But that – that’s actually a good thing. Grief is a good thing. It’s the way we get through the transitions of life.”

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The Primate of Rwanda Onesphore Rwaje and others are consecrating David Bryan at Church of the Apostles in Columbia, South Carolina and I am following along to learn and get a chance to have fellowship with those present.

“I was really attracted to this place. I felt like I was being called to come to Block Island,” said [Eileen] Lindeman, who moved here from near San Francisco in late August and now works part-time as vicar, also known as the priest, of St. Ann’s.

Lindeman’s duties involve leading the Sunday worship services, which begin at 9 a.m. each week and last about an hour. At the service, she leads the prayers, “consecrates the elements” (preparing for the holy communion, Lindeman explained) and she also delivers a sermon. She helps lead a monthly Taizé prayer service, which happens the fourth Wednesday of each month. She also performs weddings, funerals and baptisms ”” the first Saturday of her job she said she performed renewals of marriage vows for two couples.

Aside from these roles, Lindeman said she really wants to be there for her congregation, and for the community as a whole, regardless of a person’s religious denomination. She said that often people call or visit with specific situations or concerns ”” sometimes they just want to talk, she said ”” and she wants to have enough flexible time to be there to accommodate each person. According to Lindeman and Parish Administrator Erica Tonner, for a little over a year, St. Ann’s has had an interim priest who has not lived on the island year-round.

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The 50 members of All Saints Episcopal Church in Hitchcock, Texas, are looking forward to December, when Mark Marmon will be ordained their priest.

One reason for the excitement? They won’t have to pay him.

A 57-year-old fly fishing guide, Marmon, whose wife is a lawyer, says he doesn’t want or need a church salary. He belongs to a growing breed of mainline Protestant clergy who serve congregations in exchange for little or no compensation.

“We’re the frontline,” Marmon said. “If it weren’t for us, these churches would just roll up and die.”

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In 2012 Samuel Wells left his position as dean of Duke University Chapel and research professor of Christian ethics at Duke Divinity School to return to England, where he is now vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. After seven years in the American academy and the Episcopal Church, Wells developed a unique insider-outsider perspective from which those he leaves behind have much to learn. As parting gifts he offers two books with wide-ranging interest for American readers: What Episcopalians Believe and Learning to Dream Again.

What Episcopalians Believe, the American companion to Wells’s What Anglicans Believe, begins in a defiantly prudent place. Amid all of the controversy in the Episcopal Church, Wells “is not arguing that we live in especially momentous times” (p. xii). What interests Wells in this introductory work is not primarily to analyze positions on women’s ordination or same-sex blessings, but to understand and celebrate what God has done for the world in Jesus Christ.

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“If you aren’t seeing God at work in your life, you aren’t far enough out on the limb yet…” [Mark Lawrence said].

It’s a theme Lawrence has stuck by and modeled since, the Rev. Canon Jim Lewis says.

“As our bishop, he has consistently modeled a kind of faith that is prepared, when called to do so, to step out of the boat and trust in God’s loving provision,” Lewis says. “Consequently we continue, I believe, to see God at work among us in amazing ways.”

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“What a great clergy day,” said the Very Rev. David Thurlow, Rector of St. Matthias in Summerton, SC at the end of the gathering of clergy of the Diocese of South Carolina on September 12, 2013. Over 85 clergy of the Diocese gathered at St. Paul’s in Summerville for the once-yearly event.

“The legal update was clear and understandable,” said Thurlow, “the questions asked and answered were insightful and helpful. Alan Runyan’s personal testimony and witness to God’s work was incredible and powerful. Bishop Lawrence did great in setting before us an updated picture of where we are and giving us vision, hope and encouragement as we journey on together. All in all the day could not have been better!”

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The next big movement in Massachusetts health care may come not from the state’s world-famous hospitals or its cutting-edge research labs, but from houses of worship.

Stepping up pressure on the health care industry to control spiraling costs, which are crimping family and government budgets, the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization will host a forum next Tuesday at Temple Israel in Boston’s Longwood Medical Area to grill hospital and insurance leaders about the affordability of medical care.

Top executives of major hospital groups, such as Partners HealthCare System, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Steward Health Care System, and leading insurers, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Tufts Health Plan, have accepted invitations to the event, which is scheduled for 7 to 9 p.m.

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It happens at St. Paul’s, Summerville, S.C., from 10:30 a.m. until 4:00.

Thank you.

One of the great themes of the Hebrew Scriptures is that God identifies with the suffering. There are all these great texts that say things like this: If you oppress the poor, you oppress to me. I am a husband to the widow. I am father to the fatherless. I think the texts are saying God binds up his heart so closely with suffering people that he interprets any move against them as a move against him. This is powerful stuff! But Christianity says he goes even beyond that. Christians believe that in Jesus, God’s son, divinity became vulnerable to and involved in – suffering and death! He didn’t come as a general or emperor. He came as a carpenter. He was born in a manger, no room in the inn.

But it is on the Cross that we see the ultimate wonder. On the cross we sufferers finally see, to our shock that God now knows too what it is to lose a loved one in an unjust attack. And so you see what this means? John Stott puts it this way. John Stott wrote: “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the Cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?” Do you see what this means? Yes, we don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, but we know what the reason isn’t, what it can’t be. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us! It can’t be that he doesn’t care. God so loved us and hates suffering that he was willing to come down and get involved in it. And therefore the Cross is an incredibly empowering hint. Ok, it’s only a hint, but if you grasp it, it can transform you. It can give you strength.

And lastly, we have to grasp an empowering hope for the future. In both the Hebrew Scriptures and even more explicitly in the Christian Scriptures we have the promise of resurrection….

Read it carefully (noting especially the original setting as described) and read it all.

Over time I have come to believe that the reading of scripture in public worship is as important as expounding on scripture (i.e., preaching). As a friend says, “A good reading is expounding.”

I am appalled at the way some traditions and congregations take such a casual attitude toward the reading of scripture in worship. It’s treated sometimes as the role “anybody can do.” Not anybody can do it, and it takes practice. I get the sense sometimes that people are reading the assigned text for the first time when they read it in worship.

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A Youtube video of a mom doing the “happy dance” after putting her children on the bus for the first day of school went viral this week. The school bus pulls up, the kids hop on, N’SYNC’s “Bye, Bye, Bye” is cued up, and the Framingham mother starts dancing wildly on the curb.

I think it resonates because it captures the swirl of emotions this time of year….

The reality is that we both fear and crave routine.

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J.C. Michael Allen didn’t consider himself religious. But that was before he found himself interviewing a controversial Episcopal priest as a writer for Look magazine.

The priest was James Albert Pike and he spoke of racism, abortion, birth control and exploitation of workers.

Allen was taken with Pike’s activism and told him: “If I could believe in God, I’d become a priest.”

Allen was baptized soon after. He went on to become an ordained Episcopal minister and the dean, or head priest, at Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral in downtown St. Louis.

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More and more we are finding people who neither believe nor disbelieve in God — they can’t even verbalize what faith might be like. They have never experienced faith of any sort whatsoever.

In the Episcopal Church, all are welcomed at each and every worship service. It does not have to be a national crisis.

The Episcopal Church looks at life, especially our spiritual life, as a journey in which we grow in a deeper and fuller knowledge and love of God.

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An English priest, the Revd Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, has been elected as the new Bishop of Waikato Diocese in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand & Polynesia.

Dr Hartley, 40, has been living and working in the country since 2011 as the Dean of Tikanga Pakeha students at St John’s College in Auckland. She will be the 7th Bishop of Waikato and the first woman to hold the office.

In a statement released today Bishop-elect Hartley said she was looking forward to travelling around the diocese and learning more about its people and places.

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