South Carolina was home to all three of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas on the Atlantic Coast in 2013, new Census Bureau estimates say.
Greater Charleston is the largest of those metro areas, and it has accounted for nearly a third of the state’s population growth since the last census in 2010.
00:00 The Pope a year in review
10:00 Global South adopts Diocese of South Carolina
18:10 ABC Canterbury year in review with Peter Ould
29:11 Why would anybody bring charges against Saint Schori?
38:14 R.I.P Terry Fullam
45:57 Closing and Bloopers
What makes a family? Love and support, for sure. People who challenge you, who tell you life’s brutal truths and then pick you up again.
And family shouldn’t end at 18, though it does for children in state custody, often removed from their biological families due to abuse and neglect. For many, foster or institutional care ends at the doorstep to adulthood.
Out into the world they step, usually alone.
That might have happened to Isaiah, Christopher and Jacob Flood if not for a Summerville couple’s calling to adopt kids who face the toughest road to finding permanent homes: foster teens with behavioral or learning challenges who have bounced from home to home, never knowing what forever means.
Read it all from the Faith and Values section of the local paper.
Let’s not fool ourselves. A lot of what gets called ministry is motivated by guilt. Peter was not reconciled to Jesus yet. So his efforts out on the lake that morning were driven by a desire to prove something, to compensate for a weakness in himself that he didn’t want to face. Peter was avoiding having that all important conversation with Jesus that thankfully he eventually did have. It is that conversation that will bring Peter back to his beginnings. Through that conversation he will relearn what we all need to learn that even if we’ve been Christians for a while, we never cease being sinners saved by Grace.
“Do you love me, Peter?” What a painful question that was. “You know that I love you, Lord.” “Feed my lambs.” Peter had to go back over his three denials of the Master and relive the agony of them. Three times Jesus asked him: Peter, do you love me? Peter do you love me? Peter do you love me? Only when Peter grasped that Jesus still accepted him, despite his huge failure, could his shame be absolved, and could he move on.
A failure to get this can affect whole churches….
Read it all or there is an audio link here if you want that instead.
Here is a list of recent stories with news, sermons, resolutions, etc. related to this past weekend’s convention of the Diocese of South Carolina:
Featured Entries:
The Diocese of South Carolina Formalizes Wordwide Anglican Ties at 2014 Convention
Bishop Mark Lawrence’s Address to the 223rd Diocese of South Carolina Convention
Bishop Mark Lawrence’s Message Regarding Resolution R-3 for the Upcoming SC Convention
Other Posts:
A Whole lot of Pictures from the South Carolina 2014 Convention (#223)
Wonderfully Encouraging Camp St. Christopher Video from SC Convention
John Barr’s South Carolina Convention Sermon, “I am the Door”
Kendall Harmon’s recent SC Convention Presentation on the Jerusalem Declaration
(Local paper) Diocese of South Carolina accepts provisional oversight from Global South primates
Proposed Resolutions for the Diocese of South Carolina Convention upcoming this Fri/Sat
More Detailed Information about the upcoming Diocese of South Carolina Convention
The Court of Appeals effectively said it will not tolerate legal shenanigans to delay a trial to decide whether the denomination may seize South Carolina property, including churches and the diocesan symbols. In asking the Court of Appeals to dismiss the action, the Diocese of South Carolina argued that TECSC is appealing a court order that is “unappealable”.
South Carolina’s Court of Appeals justices agreed.
“We are grateful that the court recognized that TEC and TECSC are misusing the judicial system to delay resolution of this case,” said the Rev. Jim Lewis, Canon to the Ordinary of the Diocese. “Their strategy of using legal motions to delay court decisions caused eight months to be wasted when they asked the federal court to override the state court injunction. As in that matter, the courts sided with the Diocese of South Carolina.”
TEC has a long history of dragging out legal battles, apparently in hopes of draining the resources of parishes and dioceses it seeks to punish for leaving the denomination. According to the latest published reports, TEC has spent more than $40 million on litigation in the past few years. TEC routinely appeals court decisions in hopes of wearing down its opposition ”“ and to intimidate parishes and dioceses that wish to leave the denomination.
Listen to it all if you so desire or download the MP3.
Aging baby boomers want to stay in their own homes as long as possible and a way to do that, the so-called village concept, is catching on in South Carolina.
Experts say it’s less expensive for baby boomers as they age to live at home than in nursing homes, and people who remain in their homes are often happier and live longer. Some 8,000 baby boomers reach retirement age each day in the U.S.
“The baby boomers do not intend to go into nursing homes,” said Janet Schumacher, the coordinator of the Office on Aging in Charleston. “They are looking to each other to provide support.”
Virtual villages are associations set up to provide help to members with everything from transportation and home repairs to social and cultural connections. The first was started on Beacon Hill in Boston 13 years ago.
“This will give us gracious oversight from one of the largest ecclesiastical body in the (Anglican) Communion,” Bishop Mark Lawrence said in his address to the annual diocesan convention.
Lawrence and most local Episcopal parishes separated from the national church because of long-standing administrative and theological disputes. However, the Episcopal Church is a North American province of the Anglican Communion, so the separation left the diocese without a formal connection to the seat of global Anglicanism, the See of Canterbury.
Since then, the Diocese of South Carolina and others around the U.S. have sought ways to remain in communion with global Anglicans outside of the Episcopal Church umbrella.
“This measure of oversight allows us to be involved in the larger conversations that take place in the communion in a more direct fashion,” the Rev. Canon James Lewis said. “We’ll have a more direct connection.”
On Saturday, March 15, the Diocese’s 223rd Annual Convention unanimously accepted an invitation to join the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GFCA) and temporarily enter into a formal ecclesiastical relationship known as provisional primatial oversight from bishops in the Global South.
The convention’s nearly 400 delegates also voted to create a task force to explore more permanent affiliation options for the diocese. The task force will offer recommendations at the next Convention, which will be held next March.
Local critics of the Diocese’s 2012 separation from The Episcopal Church had said the disassociation would isolate the Diocese from the Global Anglican Communion. While the Diocese has maintained many informal relationships with organizations that are part of the communion, this formal primatial oversight arrangement makes clear that the Diocese is officially part of the greater Anglican Church.
“There’s an African proverb that wisely states ”˜If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together,’ said the Rt. Rev. Mark J. Lawrence, 14th Bishop of the Diocese, in his address to the Convention. “This will give us gracious oversight from one of the largest Ecclesial entities within in the Communion; one which includes Anglicans from a diverse body of believers from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America, the Indian Ocean and many, many others.”
“The Church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.” So wrote the Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner, several generations ago. And it was clearly under the burning fire of the Holy Spirit that the apostles moved out to engage the world with the good news of Jesus Christ. For what God had done in Jesus Christ for the world must be made known to the world. “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?” wrote St. Paul. “And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ”˜How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!’ ”¦ faith comes through hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10: 14-17) So these early Christians sent out and so they went out. Pressing on, as one missionary statesman has written, “”¦ going from city to city as heralds of the King, not staying to argue with gainsayers”¦.” We spend too much time arguing with those within the church who do not believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ needs to be proclaimed to all people while we remain in guilty silence about the Gospel in the presence of its many cultured despisers. It was not so for the early disciples. Inflamed as they were with a saving message and filled with an unspeakable joy they brushed off the dust of those who had rejected their message and moved on looking for the next opportunity. The Holy Spirit never allowed them to let the need to consolidate what they had gained to replace the need to advance. In fact advancement became the method of consolidation. I am gripped by these words from Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, writing about the church’s need to press forward “”¦ both to the ends of the earth and the ends of the world, rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God.” Of the Church’s need to press on in the strength of the Holy Spirit, living by grace, turning outward to engage the world, resisting the constant temptation to play it safe, he writes:
“When she (the church) becomes settled, when she becomes so much at home in this world that she is no longer content to be forever striking her tents and moving forward, above all when she forgets that she lives simply by God’s mercy and begins to think that she has some claim on God’s grace which the rest of the world has not, when in other words she thinks of her election in terms of spiritual privilege rather than missionary responsibility, then she comes under His merciful judgment (of God) as Israel did.” (p. 132)
Pressing forward in mission and rejoicing in hope: that is the glorious calling which we need to rediscover at the heart of our common life. One profound characteristic of the exploding growth of Anglicans in many parts of the Global South is their joy””joy in the midst of deprivation; joy in midst of persecution; joy in the midst of temporal uncertainty; joy that is rooted in the new life in Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. I yearn to see such unspeakable, irrepressible, iridescent joy within the life of our congregations, and frankly in my own life as well.
The articles are entitled Employment of young workers has plunged as older workers remain in entry-level jobs and A Dead End–few leaving stepping-stone jobs. Read them both.
“The very essence of the Church’s life is that she is pressing forward to the fulfillment of God’s purpose and the final revelation of His glory, pressing forward both to the ends of the earth and to the end of the world, rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God.
The treasure entrusted to her is not for herself, but for the doing of the Lord’s will, not for hoarding but for trading.
Her life is to be forever spent, to be cast into the ground like a corn of wheat, in the ever-new faith and hope of the resurrection harvest. Her life is precisely life under the sign of the Cross, which means that she desires to possess no life, no security, no righteousness of her own, but to live solely by His grace.
When she becomes settled, when she becomes so much at home in this world that she is no longer content to be forever striking her tents and moving forward, above all when she forgets that she lives simply by God’s mercy and begins to think that she has some claim on God’s grace which the rest of the world has not, when in other words she thinks of her election in terms of spiritual privilege rather than missionary responsibility, then she comes under His merciful judgment as Israel did.”
– From The Household of God, p. 132, a section of which was just quoted by Bishop Lawrence in his Convention address
Welcome Richard Giersch! As our new Director of Student Ministries, Rich will focus on transforming the hearts of our 6th-12 graders. Rich joins us with a wealth of experience and spiritual depth. Since 1988, Rich has been ministering to teenagers working with such organizations as Young Life and St. Andrews Church, Mount Pleasant. Rich was also ordained as an Anglican Priest and served as the interim Rector of Resurrection Fellowship Anglican Church in Greenville, SC.
Rich is married to Holly and they have two sons, Griffin and Oliver. Rich graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and has produced two Christian C-D’s of original songs.
There are a lot of links including resolutions, workshops, etc.–read it all.
The Diocese of South Carolina will hold its annual convention Friday and Saturday at Christ Church in Mount Pleasant using the theme “Move forward with strength.”
Nearly 400 clergy and delegates from 50 congregations across the lower and coastal areas of South Carolina are expected to gather for the two-day event.
Please make sure to read the text of this resolution and the rationale which are linked in the bishop’s comments–KSH.
Today, March 7, 2014, Canon Jim Lewis emailed to all our diocesan clergy and the lay delegates to our upcoming March 14-15, 2014, Diocesan Convention a resolution that God-willing, and with the Convention’s consent, will come to the floor. This resolution, R-3: “Response to Offer of Provisional Primatial Oversight,” originated in the Anglican Communion Development Committee (ACD) but has also been supported by a majority of the clergy of the West Charleston deanery with whom I met at their recent clericus on Shrove Tuesday. The ACD Committee is an arm of Diocesan Council. It was established in 2009 in order to strategically establish mutually-enriching missional relationships with provinces and dioceses of the Anglican Communion. It has played a key role in pursuing our diocesan vision of “Making Biblical Anglicans for a Global Age.” As your bishop I fully support this resolution and for all of the reasons mentioned in the Rationale attached to it. But particularly for the reasons presented in the final rationale: “Most importantly, however, this resolution is the response to something others in the communion have created, and it provides a means for us to better make biblical Anglicans for a global age in this in between-time. We choose to see it as a providential provision which gives us further sacramental closeness with the global Anglican family which we so richly treasure.”
The thing we need to rememÂber as we try to get at this probÂlem of sin is that it is very hard to get at it at all. There is so much that proÂtects it from our inner eyes. The axiom of the ReformÂers is aproÂpos here: “What the heart desires, the will chooses, and the mind jusÂtiÂfies.” When we try to get at the motives of the heart, the mind and will are forÂever getÂting in the way jusÂtiÂfyÂing ourÂselves. These are like layÂers of garÂments swirling around the heart of our sin. But in Christ we can pray that through the work of the Holy Spirit, who conÂvicts our hearts of sin; the liturgy’s use of Psalm 51 and the Litany of Penitence’s bruÂtal namÂing of sins; and with the Scripture’s conÂstant entreatÂing us to turn to God’s mercy and forÂgiveÂness; these will rend or tear through the layÂers and layÂers of these garÂments evenÂtuÂally leavÂing the sinÂful heart revealed that we might by grace turn and look to Jesus Christ””to his cross and death. St. Paul’s letÂter assigned for today reminds us of this. “For our sake he [God] made him [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the rightÂeousÂness of God.” (2 Cor 5:21) He reminds us that the heart of our need is nothÂing less than the Cross; God’s forÂgivÂing love, his recÂonÂcilÂing work and grace. NothÂing else will do. For once the sin in the heart is revealed and his forÂgiveÂness received, the transÂformÂing work of God’s Spirit begins to tune our lives. And from here, through Divine-human coopÂerÂaÂtion, even the disÂciÂplines of the SpirÂiÂtual life (as enuÂmerÂated in the Ash WednesÂday liturgy, see BCP, p. 264) may be of serÂvice. But we must get the order corÂrect. Begin with the Lenten disÂciÂplines and we will go awry every time””going from infesÂtaÂtion of mice to cats to dogs to lions to eleÂphants and back to mice again. Begin and remain in a grace-filled repenÂtance that yields a torn and conÂtrite heart and God’s grace shall abound. Then we may seek God’s guidÂance about self-denials and devoÂtionÂals and whatÂever else we find to mark our morÂtal nature in grace. Yet we dare not side step the word of aposÂtolic proclaÂmaÂtion””“We implore you on behalf of Christ, be recÂonÂciled to God.” (2 CorinthiÂans 5:20)
A critical shortage of affordable housing affects the long-term economic health of the region and strains the budgets of many homeowners and renters, according to a new study.
Some 33 percent of homeowners and 50 percent of renters are living in housing they can not afford. Those affected include teachers, police officers and others in the tri-county’s largely service-based economy, says the report released by the Berkeley, Charleston, Dorchester Council of Governments.
“Housing affordability greatly impacts the ability to retain existing businesses and attract new industries,” it says.
Read it all from the local paper.
On New Year’s, [Carrie] Davis picked up a book by Christian writer Jen Hatmaker, “7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess.”
The book tells Hatmaker’s story as the wife of a pastor to a big church in Austin, Texas, where they were busy loving their fellow well-to-do neighbors as themselves.
Then Hurricane Ike tore through town, and they opened their home to displaced strangers. A 10-year-old boy walked in and yelled, “Dad! This white dude is RICH!” Hatmaker writes.
She hadn’t thought they were.
Please take the time to read them in order (from bottom to top). An excerpt follows:
My experience at both Trinity and Nashotah House has led me to conclude:
1. You can be an Anglican seminary outside the control of the Episcopal Church and still survive.
2. You cannot be a seminary in the Episcopal Church and remain orthodox.In witness to that, I point to the following news I received today: Bishop Iker Resigns in Protest From Nashotah House Board (because Bp. Salmon has invited Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to preach in Nashotah House’s Chapel), an event that is shocking and tragic to many alumni.
Just as my “getting the House in Trouble” by reaching out to the AMiA and the ACNA and starting a congregation in the seminary chapel may have been the low point (as some would reckon it) of my deanship, the scandal of inviting Katharine Jefferts Schori to preach in the seminary chapel will probably go down as the low point of Bp. Salmon’s deanship. I can only say that I would put the low point of my deanship up against the low point of Bp. Salmon’s deanship any day. (I would also gladly compare the high points of my deanship with the high points of his.)
In Bp. Salmon’s first interview as Dean and President, Doug LeBlanc reported:
Salmon said he plans to strengthen relationships, both among seminary faculty and staff and between the seminary and bishops of the Episcopal Church. (Emphasis added.)
Well, now we see where that has led, don’t we? Salmon is further quoted as saying,
“The name of leadership is relationships – people connecting with each other and working together,” he said. “Our broken relationships in the Church are a testimony against the Gospel.”
No, Bishop, the heterodoxy of the Episcopal Church, in general, and of Katharine Jefferts Schori, in particular, are a testimony against the Gospel. We are called to separate ourselves from false teachers; and a shepherd, whether of a diocese, a parish, or a seminary, is called to protect his flock from wolves. In the words of the ordination vows Bishop Salmon took: “Are you ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word; and both privately and openly to call upon and encourage others to do the same?” To lead a seminary like Nashotah House in these days, and to fail to keep that ordination vow, is to see your seminary turn into another Seabury-Western, or General, or worse.
June 28, 2006
Irenaeus of Lyon
The Members of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of South Carolina have received with great thankfulness the clear statement from the Archbishop of Canterbury issued to the whole Communion on June 27, 2006 in which he states that disagreements over human sexuality must be settled on the basis of “Holy Scripture and Historic Teaching” and not through “social and legal” considerations. The Archbishop makes it very plain that the dignity and worth of every person is not the question under discussion. Prejudice and bigotry are clearly wrong, and must be exposed and rejected. The rhetoric of “inclusion” has, however, often been used to obscure the Communion’s teaching that, on the basis of Holy Scripture, the Church cannot bless same sex unions, nor can we ordain those engaged in homosexual practice.
For this reason, the consecration of Eugene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 created a crisis in the Communion. The election of a new Presiding Bishop who supported his consecration, and who has advocated and permitted same-sex blessings in her diocese is another painful complication. Archbishop Williams has given his conclusion that the actions of our recent General Convention have not produced a complete response to the challenges of the Windsor Report.
The Archbishop envisions a future for the Communion, through a covenant process, in which full membership will require adherence to those commonly held values found in Holy Scripture and the Sacred Tradition of the Church. Churches unable to agree to the terms of the covenant will be reduced to some kind of “affiliate” status. This work will begin immediately, but will take time for all the details to emerge. As this process unfolds, we wish clearly to number ourselves among the dioceses and parishes that seek full constituent membership in the Anglican Communion.
We also have a mandate to reassure the people of the Diocese of South Carolina that the status quo is now impossible. We have watched with great sadness as the Episcopal Church has, year after year, taken actions and adopted teachings which further and further distance it from the Faith of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. We are grieved that relationships have now been so strained that we are no longer in impaired, but rather broken communion. For that reason, we do hereby request of Archbishop Williams that he, in consultation with the Primates of the Communion and the Panel of Reference, speedily provide alternative Primatial oversight for the Diocese of South Carolina. In a spirit of humility, we acknowledge our own imperfection and sin. We renew our commitment to the Great Commission, to the Holy Scriptures, Creeds and Sacraments of the Church Catholic, and to the reconciliation of the Anglican Family of Churches by means of the full implementation of the Windsor Process.
Fr. M. Dow Sanderson,
President of the Standing Committee
Note: This statement was passed without dissent by the Standing Committee, meeting on June 28, 2006 at Church of the Holy Cross, Sullivan’s Island.
South Carolina’s military communities are bracing for an uncertain future after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday called for deep cuts to the Army in 2015.
While Fort Jackson in Columbia – where more than 45,000 recruits are trained annually – is the obvious target, Charleston’s and other installations also may be in the cross hairs since Hagel also called for a new round of base-closure reviews in 2017.
Still, the decision on rekindling a Base Realignment and Closure Commission depends on Congress, which has delayed the assessments in recent years in the interest of protecting jobs at home.
Read it all from the local paper.
Like something out of a science-fiction flick, the four-rotor apparatus looks the part of an oversize, mechanical dragonfly.
A distinct hum similar to the insect exudes from the gadget when it hovers at eye level. The buzz fades to silence in seconds when the device darts skyward and nearly out of sight.
A small camera captures all that lies within its line of vision – in this instance, a mix of cobblestone, historic homes and church steeples that comprise Charleston’s French Quarter.
No, this contraption isn’t being maneuvered by engineers on some military testing site. It isn’t soaring beside airplanes at a local airport. It’s under the control of a 27-year-old College of Charleston student killing time on a sunny afternoon.