That’s the task of ministry: using words, frail things really, to make sense of the incarnate God who’s beyond our sense.

Seminaries, at their best, are strong ecologies of reading and writing. They’re about setting students on a course for a ministry of abundant life for the sake of the church’s flourishing. They’re about helping students and their future flocks inch slightly higher in love of God and neighbor. Saint Basil the Great in the fourth century situated this mission in the context of reading and writing, and he put it really well. In Basil’s day, people were arguing over how exactly to describe the relationship between Jesus and the One who sent him, between the Father and the Son””are they the same, different, or sort of both? And there were of course the naysayers, the people who said it didn’t matter, who argued that we should be out there helping the poor instead of poring over this esoteric academic nonsense. Basil had an answer:

Those who are idle in the pursuit of righteousness count theological terminology as secondary, together with attempts to search out the hidden meaning in this phrase or that syllable, but those conscious of the goal of our calling realize that we are to become like God, as far as this is possible for human nature. But we cannot become like God unless we have knowledge of God, and without lessons there will be no knowledge. Instruction begins with the proper use of speech, and syllables and words are the elements of speech. Therefore to scrutinize syllables is not a superfluous task.

Sure, Basil says, those who don’t care about holiness don’t care about language. But those who want to love God know that our only way to do that is to love language””as theologians, future pastors, and educators, as writers, all we have is words from God to give out to other people. And words are enough.

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When two congregations with declining membership and attendance merge, the resulting church must make changes, says a member of the rebirth team for a merged church in Winona, Minn.

Corwin Osterloh believes the two churches have much more work to do.

“Two congregations with declining membership are still going down the same path,” said Osterloh, a member of Central United Methodist Church, which merged in July 2010 with McKinley United Methodist Church.

“We really started talking about the fact that what we were doing wasn’t working.”

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The Episcopal churches of the Naugatuck Valley share a unique and historic clergyman. The Rev. Richard Mansfield served as minister to a circuit that extended from West Haven to Waterbury, nearly 60 miles.

Mansfield’s father, Jonathan, was a deacon in the New Haven Congregational Church. The son studied to become a Congregational clergyman. He finished all the required studies for admission to Yale College (now Yale University) at age 11. College rules required him to wait until he was 14 before admission. He graduated in 1841 with first honors of his class. This earned him a prize that led to his conversion to Episcopalian.

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Consider the issues that most threaten humanity’s common future: global terrorism, climate change, overpopulation, and the political and social unrest caused by economic disparity. These problems transcend national boundaries and beg for international solutions. Yet political leaders have generally been unwilling or unable to find solutions.

So here’s where churches come in. Or should.

Religious leaders are the goad or conscience of a society. From the ancient Hebrew prophets to Jesus, Mohammed, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., we count on our spiritual leaders and communities for moral guidance. Conversely, people have been known to engage in horrendously immoral behavior if their religious leaders tell them it’s OK. Witness the shameful role religion has played in propping up the Confederacy, Nazi Germany or global terrorism. Simply put, religion matters. If not to the so-called new atheists, at least to ordinary folk….

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For the Rev. Cannon Felix Orji, pastor of St. Francis on the Hill on El Paso’s Westside, the news that he had been elected bishop for the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, or CANA, came as a big surprise.

He didn’t even know he was a candidate.

The last time he learned he was a candidate for bishop, he removed his name from consideration.

“I’ve not been a contender for the position,” Orji told El Paso Inc. “My interest in ministry is to serve the church and to preach the gospel, not to become a big shot. I’ve not really been interested in being a bishop.

“However, this time they did not want to talk to me because they didn’t want me to wriggle out of it again. But I’m delighted.”

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Churches have seen their congregations decimated this week after dissident Anglican priests and their parishioners turned to Rome.

Ash Wednesday marked the beginning of the exodus in both Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells as worshippers opted instead to celebrate their first mass at Catholic churches.

In Tunbridge Wells, Father Ed Tomlinson led 70 worshipers to join St Anselm’s Roman Catholic Church in Pembury leaving a congregation of just 15 at his former church St Barnabas.

Meanwhile, Father Ivan Aquilina took 40 parishioners with him to St Thomas’ Roman Catholic Church in Sevenoaks leaving 50 at the town’s St John the Baptist Church.

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Marti Fritz has put her heart and soul into St. Luke’s Episcopal Church for 30 years.

She sings in the choir, served twice on the lay board, raised her children in the congregation. Her husband is the church archivist. The ashes of Fritz’s mother and sister are in the church’s memorial wall.

“It’s really my home,” Fritz said of the church.

Right now, it’s a home in turmoil.

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The Rev. Steve Lawler should have just given up chocolate or television for Lent.

Instead, Lawler, of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Ferguson, decided to adopt the rituals of Islam for 40 days to gain a deeper understanding of the faith.

On Friday, he faced being defrocked if he continued in those endeavors.

“He can’t be both a Christian and a Muslim,” said Bishop George Wayne Smith of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. “If he chooses to practice as Muslim, then he would, by default, give up his Christian identity and priesthood in the church.”

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Russell Arnett remembers the day he proposed to his wife.

The Burlington-area resident made a reservation at a nice restaurant and he had roses and a card waiting for her.

It’s a story many people tell about their lives, but it’s not a story most Catholic priests ever have the chance to tell because most Catholic priests are not allowed to marry.

But Arnett will soon become one of very few married Catholic priests able to tell that story.

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The agency of Satan in the affairs of man cannot be doubted by any one who really believes the representations given us in this inspired volume. His great employment from the very first has been to seduce men to sin.

—-Charles Simeon, Horae Homileticae MCCLXXVI

The Rev. Jay R. Lawlor resigned Wednesday as pastor at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, three days after an elderly parishioner filed a police report accused him of assault, according to a letter received today by church members.

The letter from Bishop Robert Gepert, who heads the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan, said the church is launching its own investigation into the incident, which allegedly involved Lawlor shoving Marcia Morrison, 76.

Morrison was not injured, but told police she was emotionally traumatized.

“Regardless of what happened, and without laying blame, it does not reflect well on the whole community,” said Gepert’s letter. “As a result, I am obligated to initiate an investigation under Title IV of the Episcopal Church Canons. It also means I will begin searching for a priest-in-charge.”

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The Diocese of Lincoln failed to inform the Diocese of Massachusetts that one of its priests had been arrested for child abuse while serving as a vicar in Skegness.

The Rev. Franklin E. Huntress, Jr., relinquished his priestly orders rather than face a church trial last month after the Diocese of Massachusetts began an investigation into charges the 77 year old retired priest had molested a child in 1974.

During the course of its investigation, the diocese learned Mr. Huntress had been arrested by police for abusing a child in 1994 while service as vicar of St. Matthew’s Church in Skegness, Lincs. No charges were filed against the American vicar as the family did not want the child to testify in court. However, church investigators concluded the allegations were true after reading the police report and speaking to the officers involved, said Canon Mally Lloyd, the Bishop of Massachusetts’s assistant.

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From the BBC programme description:

Hundreds of traditionalist Anglicans intending to join the special section of the Roman Catholic church for disaffected Anglicans are to worship for the first time in Roman Catholic churches.
Father Ed Tomlinson will lead his 70 parishioners from their old church in Tunbridge Wells to the new Catholic Church in Pembury to celebrate Mass on Ash Wednesday. He explains the reasons for the migration.

Listen to it all (about 3 1/2 minutes).

One of the great privileges of being a priest is that I often get the opportunity to be with people when they die. It frequently astonishes me that, despite the ubiquity of death, this is something a great many people have never actually seen. Little wonder we’re so frightened of death. It used to be something public, but now it’s pushed out of life. Whereas we used to die at home surrounded by friends and family, we now die in hospitals, often alone and hidden behind expensive technology….

Today is Ash Wednesday. Like millions of Christians around the world, I will be marked with ash and told that I am dust and to dust I shall return. There is nothing depressing or morbid about any of this – in fact, quite the reverse. Personally speaking, it leaves me with a more intense sense of the preciousness of human life, something that’s intimately bound up with its intrinsic limit and fragility.

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Despite attempts by the Catholic hierarchy in Britain to prevent the move reopening old wounds, senior Anglicans have already said the overtures have a “slightly predatory feel” to them.

However, Lee Bennett, who has been the vicar of the Church of England’s St Mary the Virgin Church, in Benfleet High Road, since 2007, is adamant there is no need to worry….

He said: “It is nothing more than an idea at this stage.

“Nothing has been decided and when, or if, it is, I will be very open about it.”

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A Church of England vicar has defected to the Catholic church in an emotional speech to his Torquay flock yesterday.

Father David Lashbrooke…, who has been attached to the Parish Church of St Marychurch for almost nine years, fought back tears as he broke the news to his congregation. He is one of hundreds of Anglican priests who have left the Church of England in recent months. Many have opposed developments including women bishops, gay clergy and same-sex blessings.

Father Lashbrooke said he had wrestled with the changes brought to the Church of England and his decision to leave was ‘God’s calling’.

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Glorious God, we give thanks not merely for high and holy things, but for the common things of earth which thou hast created: Wake us to love and work, that Jesus, the Lord of life, may set our hearts ablaze and that we, like Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, may recognize thee in thy people and in thy creation, serving the holy and undivided Trinity; who livest and reignest throughout all ages of ages. Amen.

With his wife, Hayley, and two children, aged one and four, Father Ed [Tomlinson] regrets that the diocese of Rochester could not consider a church-sharing scheme. “I feel the real scandal is that the building is going to be used for one hour a week. There will be no 8 o’clock Communion or 6.30 evening service any more. A church-share would have been so easy and very compassionate.”

One woman who is going is 90 years old. She has been attending each week since the age of two. “It is an emotional wrench for her.” They could not go to the Tunbridge Wells Catholic Church because it is already full to bursting. Even in Pembury, it will be a squeeze.

“I still feel it is a tragedy. I would have wanted to say, ”˜How do we maintain the strongest Christian presence here without worrying too much about the denomination?’ ” But he has never considered staying. “For whatever reason God has given me a little Catholic heart and I cannot do anything else.”

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Father Martin Carter is one of only a handful of Roman Catholic priests in Canada who are married.

Formerly a married part-time Anglican minister, Carter, 65, of Charlottetown was a granted rare permission by the Pope to become a Catholic priest after he converted.

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An Anglican priest in British Columbia has earned a PhD for his research into the spirituality of snowboarding.

Rev. Neil Elliot of St. Andrews Anglican Church in Trail began his studies 10 years ago in England, pulling together a love of snowboarding, an interest in spirituality and a desire to understand the relationship between spirituality and religion.

It was the word “soulriding” that first captured his attention more than a dozen years ago, while he was living in England and snowboarding in the Alps in Europe. The term made him wonder if there was a spiritual dimension to carving a path down a mountain.

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[The Rev. Erwin Barron, a college professor in San Francisco whose church credentials remain with the Presbytery of the Twin Cities [Minnesota] Area, faced a 2 1/2-hour trial before a presbytery panel of six at Oak Grove Presbyterian Church in Bloomington. After almost three hours of closed deliberations, the panel split 3-3. A two-thirds vote was required for conviction, which lawyers said could have led to defrockment.

“I’m relieved,” Barron said. “I wish it was more definitive. … The decision is not clear for the church.”

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Peter John Gomes (rhymes with homes) was born in Boston on May 22, 1942, the only child of Peter Lobo and Orissa White Gomes. His father, born in the Cape Verde Islands off Africa’s west coast, was a cranberry bog worker. His mother was a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. Peter grew up in Plymouth with literature, piano lessons and expectations that he would become a minister. He was active in the Baptist Church and preached his first sermon at 12.

He worked as a houseman to help pay for his education. After graduation from Plymouth High School in 1961, he attended Bates College in Lewiston, Me., a co-educational liberal arts school founded by abolitionists in 1855. He majored in history and received a bachelor’s degree in 1965, then earned a bachelor of divinity degree at Harvard in 1968 and was ordained a Baptist minister….

In clerical collar and vestments, he was a figure of homiletic power in the pulpit, hammering out the cadences in a rich baritone that The New Yorker called a blend of James Earl Jones and John Houseman. In class, he was a New England patrician: the broad shoulders, the high forehead and spectacles that tilted up when he held his head high, the watch-chain at the vest and a handkerchief fluffed at the breast pocket.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

A judge Friday sentenced the Rev. Donald Armstrong to four years probation for his no-contest plea to one count of misdemeanor theft of funds from the Colorado Springs church where he once served as rector.

Fourth Judicial District Judge Gregory R. Werner also ordered Armstrong to pay restitution in the amount of $99,247 that was diverted to pay for his son’s and daughter’s college education. The money came from a trust fund originally set up to pay for the education of seminary students.
Werner refused to order an apology, citing his practice of not wanting to get involved in how such a letter would be worded. He also agreed with [Armstrong lawyer Dennis] Hartley that jail time would serve no purpose.

“There is a huge divide between these two churches,” he added.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

After 30 years of commitment to the ministry, Roger Ard, the rector at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Rome, will conduct his last service March 6.

“I am going to begin my retirement by doing absolutely nothing,” he chuckled. “After that, I hope to start writing and maybe do a little teaching.”

Ard has been at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church for 10 years. The church plans to throw a celebration service for Ard on March 6 after his final service.

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This Sunday afternoon in Chestnut Hill, loss will be officially transformed into opportunity, resignation into delight.

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel will be installed as the new rector of the Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the venerable parish that sits next to the green fields of the Philadelphia Cricket Club.

St. Martin’s vestry, the governing board of the church, invited Kerbel to be the church’s new minister, replacing the Rev. Robert Tate, who retired last year after 14 years at the church.

“With Jarrett we get the whole package,” said Barbara Dundon, who headed St. Martin’s search committee. “He’s good in every one of the key areas we were looking for: preaching, liturgy, outreach, stewardship.”

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Now that [the Rev. Lee] Bines is stationed in Moncks Corner, he’s turned his energies toward the troubled youth in the rural schools of Berkeley County. Those are the schools with the highest dropout rates, poorest population and most black students, a special area of concern to a black pastor.

Bines was trying to motivate about 50 young people at a luncheon Thursday afternoon. It was part of what he called the fourth annual Young Brothers to Men Summit, which continues through Sunday at Wesley United Methodist Church at Highways 6 and 315.

The summit, which also was sponsored by the Delta Alpha chapter of the Phi Alpha Fraternity, brings together educators, counselors, lawmakers and representatives of the juvenile justice system to encourage each other to keep trying to reach troubled youth. For instance, one of today’s topics is “Breaking Strongholds: Confronting and Resolving Violence in the Youth Culture,” with Moncks Corner Police Chief Chad Caldwell and staff from Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s local paper.

Two Anglican priests who believe their church is “moving away from traditions” have become Roman Catholics.

Father Ivan Aquilina and Father James Bradley, of the Church of St John the Baptist, Quakers Hall Lane, Sevenoaks, explain how it affects them and parishioners.

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“Bittersweet is not a strong enough word for what I’m feeling,” the Rev. Tommy Tipton told parishioners who packed Holy Cross-Faith Memorial Episcopal Church for his sermon on Sunday.

It was his last at the church after 12 years as rector, and it drew tears from church members who said they will dearly miss him.

Tipton, who was assistant rector at Prince George Winyah Episcopal Church in Georgetown before coming to Holy Cross, is moving to Columbia to be the bishop’s assistant in the Diocese of Upper South Carolina.

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He was ordained in 1956, and during a four-year curacy at St Mary Abbots Church in Kensington completed an Oxford BLitt on the revival of Anglican religious orders in the 19th century. This was subsequently published as The Silent Rebellion (1958) and remains the standard work on its subject.

From 1960 to 1969 Allchin was at Pusey House, Oxford, as a member of a chapter of priests, known as Librarians, who provide a centre of Anglo-Catholic worship and spirituality for the university. During this time he co-wrote The Rediscovery of Newman (1967), heralding a revived interest in one of the great figures of the 19th-century Church.

On one of his many visits to the United States he met Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk whose writings on spirituality, combined with a radical political outlook, had made him internationally famous. A strong friendship ensued, and after Merton’s death in 1968 their exchanges of letters were published. Allchin became the first president of a Thomas Merton Society formed in Britain.

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