Safe places are designed so the people of God can share their struggles with others in the journey of life. We believe that there are real sin struggles in the lives of our people. The purpose is to create an environment where the beginning of accountability, sharing, and confession can occur.

As it says in the gospel of John, “The word of God [read Jesus] became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” The philosophy of our church recognizes that if Christ comes in the flesh we must be in the flesh with each other. Meaning that Christ initiated with us, identified with us, and invaded us with the gospel of truth. The Safe Places ministry creates a venue where the congregation of [this parish of] MRPC can take off our veneer and initiate with each other the truths of our lives.

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[Many of the frequent quotes on hears among Methodists these days] …in some way, [are] responses to the question, “Can young people save the Church?”

Whether vocalized or not, this question permeates United Methodist dialogue about membership decline, denominational vitality and the state of young people in an ever-changing world. Many of our conversations about these topics are well-intentioned attempts to answer this question.

But the question of whether or not young people can save the Church is not effective, because it is based on inaccurate assumptions about young people and membership decline.

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1 Corinthians 5 is perhaps the clearest place that the Bible speaks to the need of discipline. The Corinthian church is proud of the sexually immoral behaviour of someone who professed to know and follow Christ. The church is told that some form of discipline is necessary both for the sake of the rebellious person (1 Cor 5:5) and also to protect the whole church from accepting, and ultimately engaging in the same kind of sinful behaviour (1 Cor 5:6)….

Reflecting on this and other passages, I often ask myself the question: Have we gone soft on church discipline? Immorality and other sin is a reality in our churches. Sometimes there is repentance. Other times there is not. And yet, it seems that church discipline is rarely exercised, if at all. Here are 4 reasons why I suspect we don’t do well in this area….

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Four churchwardens have resigned from a small rural parish in Kent in a long-running saga in which the diocesan bishop was forced to intervene.

In their extraordinary joint letter of resignation the four churchwardens accuse their rector, Dr David Attwood, of “poor personal relationships with several leading parishioners” and of being “extremely verbally aggressive” on a visit to one former churchwarden.

The four ”” Penelope Bell, Trevor Champ, Roger Flint and Michael Moore ”” say that when he arrived in 2002, having overcome an original rejection, the three parishes of Sundridge, Ide Hill and Toys Hill near Sevenoaks were thriving, with growing congregations and healthy finances.

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There’s a reason that St. Martin Episcopal Church’s Blue Christmass service comes on the shortest day of the year.

The annual service recognizes that holidays are a difficult time for some, especially those who have lost loved ones.

“It’s the day with the least light,” said the Rev. Murdock Smith, rector of St. Martin’s. “It’s not meant to be saccharine or ‘feel good.’ It’s to recognize this is what life’s about, and you don’t have to face it alone.”

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“Churches are kind of in the dark about how to help, unfortunately,” said Peter Bauer, an ordained minister and clinical social worker with the Veterans Administration in San Antonio. “But they don’t have to stay there. There are some very easy things that churches can do to be proactive and help with this population.”

Bauer, a former Navy chaplain, recently convened workshops on PTSD and traumatic brain injury for pastors and seminarians at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, Mass. His educational outreach builds on other small-scale initiatives that have gained momentum in recent years.

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Please keep Mrs. Allison Lawrence, wife of Bishop Mark Lawrence, in your prayers. She has suffered a back injury and will be recuperating at home. Please, no visitors at this time. We encourage you to add her to your parish prayer list. Cards of encouragement are welcome!

Her address is:

Mrs. Allison Lawrence
Diocese of South Carolina
PO Box 20127
Charleston, SC 29413

Dr Halapua acknowledges that Tuvalu’s present plight has been brought on by drought.

It rained in Tuvalu last Thursday for about three minutes ”“ and that’s the first rain they’ve seen during their rainy season. There’s no more forecast for the next three months, either.

There are, as far as Archbishop Halapua knows, very few ”“ if any ”“ Anglicans living on Tuvalu.

But that doesn’t mean he didn’t need to go there.

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[LUCKY] SEVERSON: In La Crosse, Wisconsin, 96 percent of the patients who die have gone through these advance directive discussions and designated how they would prefer to spend their last days.

[BERNARD] HAMMES (lecturing): This program is not trying to talk people out of treatment. This program is trying to help patients make informed decisions so that we know what they would want even in a crisis, and we can deliver the services that match their preferences.

SEVERSON: The program has been so successful representatives from around the country now attend seminars at Gundersen Lutheran. The success is due, in part, to the backing of the Catholic and Lutheran churches. A similar program is underway in Minneapolis-St. Paul, which is supported by the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, Pastor Leith Anderson of the Wooddale Church outside Minneapolis. He says he witnessed too many families going through emotional turmoil when their loved one was dying.

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Ask the parishioners of Grace Episcopal Church about disappointment and they will tell you how it was turned on its head. They will tell you about small gestures and generous spirits. They will share a legend in the making, a story to be told generations from now, to grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

They will tell you about the day the Earth cracked, a building closed and the people of the church were forced to find sanctuary elsewhere, how a great disappointment turned into a reward that transcended church walls and breached religious and racial ideologies.

The Rev. Canon J. Michael A. Wright, rector of Grace, took note of the symbolism. “Our walls are in need of repair, and what we’ve discovered is that other walls have come down.”

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The Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral appealed this week for cathedral life to “be allowed to operate as normally as possible”, after hundreds of activists, protesting against corporate greed and eco­nomic inequality, set up camp in St Paul’s Churchyard.

On Saturday, about 1000 protesters gathered outside the Cathedral, intending to occupy adjacent Paternoster Square, the site of the London Stock Exchange. The event was organised by the Occupy London movement, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests that have been taking place in New York over the past month.

After the protesters were prevented by police from entering Paternoster Square, they reconvened outside St Paul’s, where they were addressed from the cathedral steps by the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange.

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The Diocese of Hyderabad has launched an appeal for funds to help its local flood-stricken community, and the ACT Alliance has issued an appeal for Pakistan ”“ hit by severe flooding for the second time in just two years.

Over 5.4 million people have been affected by the floods that have hit Sindh province, southern Punjab and north-eastern Balochistan. Already 248 people have died, and communities that had barely recovered from the devastating floods of last year have seen their homes and livelihoods destroyed a second time.

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Frank Shane, a professional dog therapist and CEO of the K-9 Disaster Relief Foundation, had to improvise when he brought his golden retriever, Nikie, down to Ground Zero. There was no protocol for anything””from the kind of footwear Nikie should wear to how Frank should deal with the unfathomable grief of 9/11. Yet from the moment Frank and his dog stepped onto the site, they both knew they had a job to do. As it turned out, a pair of soft ears and a wagging tail offered one of the best ways to connect to the people on the ground….

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On Friday the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, visited St Christopher’s Hospice in Sydenham, London.

St Christopher’s, founded in 1967 by Dame Cicely Saunders, offers medical, nursing and support services for people coping with life-limiting illnesses, and their carers. It was, and is, a pioneer in the field of palliative medicine….

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In some of the darkest moments of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center ten years ago, Nathan Brockman saw Christian hope embodied at the parish of Trinity Wall Street.

“One of the more remarkable things I’ve seen is how immediately people’s faith came into play. Right after the first tower came down, the South Tower, you can imagine the proximity ”” it got very dark, it got very loud, you could feel the church shaking,” said Brockman, Trinity Wall Street’s director of communications and editor of Trinity News. “There was a congregation gathered there, seeking comfort, solace. Once the cascade stopped, Stewart Hoke, who was a priest here at the time, stood up before the congregation and he recited the Beatitudes. It was one of the most powerful things I’ve ever encountered. That was the response of faith. It wasn’t the reaction to run, it wasn’t the reaction to react violently, or panic. It was very meaningful.”

Later, during the months of cleanup, people continued to help each other. “What I remember was the frozen zone. There was an area literally behind a chain-link fence for a number of months after the attack and if you weren’t certified personnel you weren’t to go beyond that perimeter,” Brockman said. “For a while the Trinity congregation worshiped at the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. It was a very generous act of theirs. Trinity’s offices during that time were relocated uptown.”

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Six chaplains serve Creedmoor, a state hospital with 400 residents and 10,000 outpatients. The majority of those patients have received diagnoses of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. The chaplains represent Judaism, Islam, Catholicism and both mainline and evangelical Protestantism. They lead worship services, text study groups, spirituality discussions. They will soon hold a 9/11 memorial event. And up and down the corridors and through the wards they offer pastoral counseling.

A black spiritual, drawing on the prophet Jeremiah, has a refrain for this work: “There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole.” Rabbi Benjamin A. Samson, the chief chaplain at the hospital, has his own description: chicken soup.

“We provide a sense of almost refuge,” said the Rev. Jeff C. Williams, an evangelical Protestant minister. “It’s nonjudgmental, nonconfrontational. In all the other parts of their lives, there are limitations based on their diagnoses.”

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Visitors joined regular members of the congregation at St Edmund’s Anglican church in Oslo on Sunday 24 July as their 11am service focussed on the massacres two days ago in the city and at a youth camp on an island nearby

Canon Janet HeilParish Priest, Canon Janet Heil says that leading the prayers for relatives and friends of the many people affected (the death toll is currently 93 and may rise still further) was a very emotional time. The church was thronged with people after the service and clergy stayed there to welcome anyone who came seeking comfort and prayer help. Flowers and candles have been left on the steps of the church which is on the outer edge of the police cordon around the city centre.

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[The] Rev. Nicholas Holtam has smoothed over many conflicts in his long career as an Anglican vicar. Before he leaves his central London parish this month [to become the Bishop of Salisbury], he wants to bring peace to one more group of warring factions: the Pearly Kings and Queens.

The “Pearlies” are no street gang. They are groups of mainly aged “Cockney” Londoners who sew mother-of-pearl buttons on their clothes in lavish designs and sing sentimental pub songs. Begun in the 1870s by an orphan London street sweeper, the Pearlies are mostly known for raising money for charity.

But all is not well in their world. Their ever-dwindling ranks have splintered into three factions. Years ago, a feud over finances caused several Pearly “families” to split off from the Original Pearly Kings and Queens Association to form a new group, the London Pearly Kings and Queens Society.

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During the first Sunday service since three tornadoes ravaged central and western Massachusetts, worshipers including volunteers and veteran congregation members packed the nave to hear a message of hope and community.

“Any time there is a disaster, even people of faith have questions,’’ [The Rev. Bob] Marrone said. “Why did this happen? Where was God?’’

Since Wednesday, volunteers have used the church as a relief hub, keeping it open round-the-clock to provide free food, clothing, and guidance. For two hours yesterday, the church also gave the weary a quiet place to relax, reflect, and be thankful.

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Christine Bell, Manager of Salisbury Services, says gambling counselling is a highly specialised field. “Gambling counselling is a relatively young industry, only 15 years old,” she said. “Drug and alcohol counselling is well established over many decades, with many therapeutic inter-ventions being well tested and researched.” Christine says many people in the community don’t see gam-bling as a social problem, as it has often been seen as part of our recreational history. For a large percentage of people in our com-munity this can be so, however others see the opportunity to win ”˜large’ amounts of money which they believe can enhance their lives in many ways. “Gambling can become a problem for people, and this is usually seen around the time when it stops being fun,” Christine said.

“Many gamblers find it hard to control the time and money spent on gambling. “Part of the counselling is to find out what the client is look-ing for when they go into the gambling venue. Some go in with the expectation of losing a certain amount – problem gamblers go in expecting to win.” Once the motivation to gamble has been established the process of addressing the issues under-pinning the gambling activities and finding alternative activities begins. The problem is not just expecting to win on that occasion but also the need to win back or “chasing” prior losses.

Problem gamblers are often chasing losses to get their money back and when this does not happen they can feel desperate and guilty about it. Christine says only a small per-centage of people experiencing problems seek professional help. Many clients have to ”˜hit rock bottom’ or come close to it before they will seek help. The main reasons why gam-blers do not seek professional help are the social stigma as-sociated with having a problem, denial of a problem and people believing they can handle the problem themselves.

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Just as she was preparing to mail out information to the first group of Anglican participants taking an online suicide prevention course, Cynthia Patterson received a letter from a parishioner in an indigenous community in Eastern James Bay, Ont. A 15-year-old girl had hanged herself in her grandparents’ basement.

To Patterson, appointed coordinator of the Council of the North’s suicide prevention program in 2009, this only served to underscore the urgency of addressing the high incidence of suicide among the country’s aboriginal people.

This spring, about 20 ordained and lay, aboriginal and non-aboriginal volunteers from the diocese of Moosonee took part in “River of Life,” an online suicide awareness and prevention course developed by the Calgary-based Center for Suicide Prevention. Volunteers from the diocese of Keewatin are to follow next.

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Over 200 people have died throughout the South and Southeast, as severe storms and tornadoes continue to batter the region, causing widespread damage to homes and civic infrastructure. This new wave of storms comes shortly after an earlier cluster of storms that barreled through the Southeast over the weekend of April 16. Episcopal Relief & Development has been in contact with impacted dioceses, and is working with local churches to respond in a number of locations. As the area braces for future potential bouts of severe weather, the organization encourages prayers for people who are at risk or who have suffered losses, for the families of those who have died, and for the rescue and relief teams who are working to save lives and address immediate needs.

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Recovering addict Danny Mocibob loves race car driving and sometimes even smashes them up — all in the name of doing church work.

“I lived on the streets when things got really bad for me, so I know what can happen if you get caught up in addiction,” says the member of Brockville’s Wall St. United Church.

Now he’s part of the novel church outreach program called Racing Against Drugs, which he says is stopping rural kids from drinking, drugging and driving. His church sponsors cars at Brockville Ontario Speedway and in demolition derbies, and racers like Mocibob work with law enforcement to get the message out to young people and families at the events.

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The Bishop of Tohoku, the Rt Rev John Hiromichi Kato, said that the affected area was very wide and diocesan staff had not been able to visit all areas.

One member of St John’s Church, Isoyama, has been confirmed dead but there has still been no news of the tiny church’s other seven members.

“We pray that they are all safe in some temporary shelter,” said Bishop Kato.

The diocese’s main church, Christ Church Sendai, has still not been able to locate some of its members.

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Churches across Japan are responding with prayers, donations, and relief operations to the impacts of the March 11 earthquake and its subsequent tsunamis and nuclear power plant accidents.

As of March 16, more than 3,700 people were confirmed dead, more than 7,800 missing, and about 2,000 injured, according to the National Police Agency. More than 400,000 people have been evacuated from the disaster zones in northeastern Japan. The earthquake also damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, where workers have been struggling to contain radiation leaks.

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Austin Ihiekwe knows firsthand just how deadly malaria can be. He grew up in Nigeria and watched as his baby brother died from the mosquito-borne disease even though his parents could afford medicine and were diligent in treating their children.

“In the rainy season, all kids had malaria, every month or every other month,” said Ihiekwe, 67, of Cottage Grove. “But the availability of medicine is not universal. Some could afford it, some could not.” And the medicines didn’t always prevent the disease.

From Ash Wednesday through Easter Sunday, Ihiekwe and members of Christ Episcopal Church in Woodbury are raising money to buy 364 insecticide-treated mosquito nets to be sent to Africa. The 364 nets represent one for each member of the congregation. The effort is part of a larger mission project during Lent involving Episcopal churches statewide and their nearly 20,000 members, said Brian Prior, bishop of the Episcopal Church in Minnesota.

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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 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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According to a 2006 Today’s Christian Woman article,1.5 percent of Americans engage in self-harming behavior. This jumps dramatically to 12 percent among college students (most self-injury begins in the teen years). Most self-harmers are female (60-70 percent), and many, although not all, struggle with eating disorders, too. I’ve not seen research on the incidence of self-harm among Christians compared with the general population, but my experience shows that this problem is far from rare within the church….

I’m not surprised that self-punishing behaviors occur among Christians. And this is not to blame the church. For legalism ”” and I would argue that this is what these behaviors are at their core ”” comes in guises both religious and secular. The desire to control the destiny of a few moments, if not our lives, is a fact of the human condition. But it is a fact that directly opposes the gospel of grace. Indeed, our vain attempts to mete out our own justice and punishments and thus save ourselves merely reflect the universal human desire to be our own God. For those who self-harm, the gospel comes as an invitation to trust in the One who has enacted perfect and complete justice before God on our behalf, through his body, so we don’t have to punish our own.

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