On Wednesday, the Metropolitan Planning Commission will consider the general development plan for Christ Church Anglican’s proposed new sanctuary and parish house with meeting and education facilities at the northeast corner of Drayton and 37th streets.

It’s a proposal that raises many interesting questions about the role of large-scale institutional development in a mixed-use area where narrower lots are common.

Of course, the Thomas Square neighborhood is already home to a significant number of large churches and institutions, as Christ Church Anglican’s proposal details. Similarly sized structures nearby include the Bull Street Library, New Covenant Church, the Christian Revival Center, Sisters Court Apartments and SCAD’s Wallin and Arnold halls.

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…that turned-out parish, the Church of the Holy Spirit, not only survived, but under Lawrence’s leadership it has grown from a puny 45 members when he arrived to 1,500. It spawned three daughter churches, too.

Lawrence himself has matured into a wiser leader, more focused on bringing people to Jesus Christ than pounding the pulpit over those hot button issues.

For all those things, Lawrence was consecrated Monday evening as the fifth and newest bishop in the Province de L’Eglise Anglicane au Rwanda and in the Anglican Church in North America.

“He’s a good guy,” said Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje, archbishop of the Rwandan church, who joined in Lawrence’s consecration, along with Bishop Richard Duncan of the North American church. “He’s a pastor, a committed leader to his flock. I saw how he cares for his church, the members of his church.”

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Members of the congregation at All Saints Anglican Church are looking forward to being in their new home.

The Peachtree City church has held a Blessing and Dedication ceremony for their land, which is slated to become the site of a new church and campus. The event took place onsite at 149 Ebenezer Rd. near Highway 54 in Fayette County.

The ceremony was conducted by the Rev. Michael Fry, the Rev. Ray Greiner and Bishop David Anderson. Anderson “was instrumental in the church’s founding,” according to Rob Rothley, public relations committee chair at All Saints.

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More bishops, fewer dioceses and the future of women clergy were amongst the main topics of debate at the Anglican Church of North America’s College of Bishops meeting this week in Orlando.

Bishops from the conservative province in waiting in North America in the Anglican Communion approved the election of two additional bishops for the PEAR-USA Network. The Rev. Quigg Lawrence will lead the Atlantic Regional Network and the Rev. Ken Ross the Western Regional Network, while the Very Rev. Clark Lowenfield was elected bishop of the Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast ”“ a diocese in formation.

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There was deep, honest, and profound conversation among the bishops as the College pursued Biblical patterns of reconciliation. There were apologies, conversations, tears and prayers for healing. One result was the restoration of Bishops Thad Barnum, Terrell Glenn and Todd Hunter back into full fellowship of the College.

Meeting in consecrated space, the College also approved the consecrations of the Rev. Quigg Lawrence (Atlantic Regional Network of PEARUSA), the Rev. Ken Ross (Western Regional Network of PEARUSA), the Very Rev. Clark Lowenfield (ACNA Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast in Formation).

In addition, the College confirmed the election of the Rt. Rev. Charlie Masters as Bishop Coadjutor of the Anglican Network in Canada, and received into the College the Rt. Rev. Frank Lyons, former Bishop of Bolivia, as Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

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The leader of the Anglican Church of Canada has emerged from his Dec. 6 meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury-elect, Justin Welby, feeling “very optimistic about his leadership….”

During his meeting with Welby, Hiltz said he mentioned ongoing concern about efforts by the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) to be recognized by the Church of England. Composed of Anglicans who have left the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church in the U.S., ACNA describes itself as “an emerging Province in the global Anglican Communion.”

Hiltz said he requested that if bodies of the Church of England are to meet with representatives of ACNA, “in fairness, they should also meet with us to get a better picture.” Welby was “very appreciative” of the place of the Anglican Church of Canada in the Communion and the contributions it has been able to make, added Hiltz.

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Referencing John 21:18, Archbishop Duncan spoke directly to the new primate and his wife and the vocation of this new stage of ministry.

“Becoming Archbishop means going where you do not plan to go. You are to have the mind of Christ in a very new way. The Lord Jesus is speaking to you as He spoke to Peter. You Stanley, and Mama, are to die and to live. Many days you will be carried where you do not want to go. You will be Christ’s servant more than ever now, as you seek to serve Him by being the servant of the servants of God.”

The sermon also reflected the deep friendship between the two men which began some eight years ago when Archbishop Ntagali visited Pittsburgh before his consecration.

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The Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) synod has elected the Rt Rev Charles Masters as Co-adjutor Diocesan Bishop to succeed our Diocesan Bishop and Moderator the Rt Rev Donald Harvey when he retires in 2014.

The election took place at St Peter and St Paul Anglican Church in Ottawa on November 14 with the Primate of the Anglican Church in North America, the Most Rev Robert Duncan, presiding.

The House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in North America, of which ANiC is a diocese, must approve the election.

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When Bishop-elect Dorsey McConnell was chosen to lead an Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh still deeply wounded from a 2008 schism, he prepared to face anger, resentment and grief. He wasn’t prepared for the drivers.

“I had to get used to driving here because people are so polite,” said the bishop-elect, who hails from Boston. “I’ve been unnerved by the kindness of people in traffic. They let you turn left in front of them. I love this city.”

The question is whether the diocese will turn left. Pittsburgh has been among the most theologically conservative dioceses in an increasingly liberal denomination. That culminated in a 2008 split in which its last tenured bishop led a majority of parishes and clergy out of the Episcopal Church in a dispute over biblical theology and gay ordination. But some conservatives believed schism was wrong and remain in the Episcopal diocese, which is still fairly conservative by Episcopal standards. It has 9,000 members in 33 parishes.

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Two factions that divided the Episcopal church in Pittsburgh four years ago as part of a national schism have agreed to work together to support a ministry for homeless veterans and others in need.

An accord between the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh and the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh clears the way for Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship to take title to all property at its Uptown location and to seek a more favorable financing of its debt.

The Episcopal Diocese considers the ministry of paramount importance, spokesman Rich Creehan said.

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Christ Our King Anglican Church will dedicate a 16,000-square-foot multipurpose building at 10 a.m. today at its campus in New Braunfels.

In addition, the event will include the ordination of Issac Rehberg and Rodney Wood as transitional deacons by Bishop Bill Atwood of the International Diocese [of the] Anglican Church in North America….

Read it all and the parish website is here.

(Please note you may find more about this ministry here and there–KSH).

The agreement builds on a long-standing support of the Shepherd’s Heart ministry by many parishes of the Episcopal Diocese, who, along with individual parishioners, regularly donate, prepare and serve meals to the Shepherd’s Heart congregation. This has continued in spite of differences over whether Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship validly withdrew from the Episcopal Church in October 2008 and is now part of the Anglican Church in North America. The agreement sets this issue aside in favor of mutually serving the homeless, the poor, and the addicted. Both parties recognize the new relationship between the Episcopal Diocese and Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship is not of an ecclesiastical nature, such as would normally exist between a diocese and a parish, but one of cooperation and collaboration in a specialized ministry. Because of this unique use of the Shepherd’s Heart property, the parties have agreed that this agreement should not be interpreted as a model for resolving other property disputes.

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(Pr) The Most Reverend Robert Wm. Duncan, Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church in North America and Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, will visit the Kentucky campus of Asbury Theological Seminary on September 25, 2012. Duncan will speak in chapel and participate in lunch and a talk-back session with students, faculty and administration immediately following chapel.
The Anglican Church in North America unites approximately 100,000 Anglicans in almost 1,000 congregations across the United States and Canada into one Church. Asbury Seminary’s President, Dr. Timothy C. Tennent, said, “We are honored to host Archbishop Duncan on our Kentucky campus. He is an extraordinary Church leader, and his devotion to mission and church planting inspires us.”

In 1972 Duncan was ordained a deacon and then a priest. Early in his ministry, he served the Chapel of the Intercession in New York City, Christ Church in Edinburgh, Scotland and Grace Church in Merchantville, N.J. He was also assistant dean of The General Theological Seminary in New York City, Episcopal chaplain of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and rector of Saint Thomas’s Episcopal Parish in Newark, Del. In 1992, Duncan became canon to the ordinary for Bishop Alden Hathaway in Pittsburgh. In 1995 he was nominated from the floor and elected bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. In 2009, he was elected Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America and immediately made a call to plant one thousand churches (Anglican 1000) in five years. Duncan was a driving force in the creation of the Anglican Relief and Development Fund, a multi-million dollar enterprise for which he continues to serve as president.

In November 2007, St. Andrew’s vestry relinquished the keys to its church and community center on Mirador Drive after withdrawing from the Episcopal denomination.

The decision ”” which [Tony] Seel called galvanizing in terms of what congregants believed ”” drew national attention in a denominational dispute over the consecration of a homosexual bishop in New Hampshire.

Seel said the opening worship service will mark a new chapter in the congregational life.

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The Rev. Mark A. Bleakley, vicar of All Saints, will lead both the Holy Eucharist Services and the Christian Training. Bleakley currently lives in Vicksburg.

Bleakley graduated from Bob Jones University in 1995 and earned a Masters of Divinity in 2004 from Cranmer Theological House in Houston. He was ordained deacon at Holy Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church by Bishop Daniel Morse of the Reformed Episcopal Diocese of Mid-America and moved to Philadelphia, Pa., where he served as youth director at St. Mark’s Reformed Episcopal parish for a year. In 2005, he was licensed by Bishop Duncan to serve as a deacon at Grace Episcopal Church, Mt. Washington, Pa., where he served for two and half years.

On the Feast of the Holy Cross, Sept. 14, 2007, Bishop David Hicks of the Diocese of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic ordained him to the sacred priesthood at Grace Episcopal Church under the blessing of Bishop Duncan.

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Watch it all (about 39 minutes).

You can find the general link here, and the specific audio link which will begin playing there.

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You can find individual photos here as well as a slideshow there. For any who did not see it earlier or who wish to be reminded, you can see some background on this event there.

The Rev. Wolfgang Krismanits clearly remembers the first time he thought about writing a fantasy novel. He was walking on the beach near San Diego with his oldest son, then 2, when the boy ran after a group of seagulls, crying out “Dak, Dak” (his word for duck).

“I thought I’d like to write a children’s book about a seagull,” said Krismanits, the Anglican priest at the historic Red Church in Sonora.

Although it’s taken him 25 years to revise his original concept and complete his quest, Krismanits’ “The Seven Scrolls: Sword of Pantok” finally made it to print, released in May by Tate Publishing.

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Q: You have been one of the area’s more visible and respected church leaders, and now you’re taking on more responsibility. But you’re also a family man with a wife, Jacqui, four sons and interests in sports, music, travel and more. Your life must be a constant balancing act. How do you manage it?

A: You forgot a daughter-in-law and a grandson! I think, fundamentally, that I’ve discovered a heavenly Father who has reliably and consistently communicated himself to me, thereby shaping and imparting my self-understanding and my self-identity.

I’ve defined, a very long time ago, what success looks like to me. I’ve found satisfaction in Christ and, possessing him, I find satisfaction in life. Also, fortunately, my family enjoys many of the same things, so spending time together, praying, enjoying the outdoors, traveling ”” all of these things are things we enjoy together and that help us to stay connected.

At the beginning and end of the day, though, my life, my family’s life, are in the hands of the Lord. I have great confidence in his desire and ability to see us through the sorrows and joys of this life.

Read it all from the local paper Faith and Values section.

Last week’s Anglican Way Institute (AWI) hinted at the hopes and goals of traditional Anglicans in the United States. Ecumenical outreach, evangelism, and catechism dominated several lectures and discussions in Dallas. We can expect members of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) and other Anglican bodies to be dealing with these trends in the years to come.

The three featured plenary speakers gathered at the end of the week for open questions and answers. Bishop Ray Sutton of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Bishop Keith Ackerman of Forward in Faith, and Father Lee Nelson of the ACNA’s Catechism Taskforce. Much of their talk focused on AWI’s main theme of catechism. Ackerman noticed that, during the Oxford Movement, high churchman enacted their reforms on the seminary level with theology and on the parish level with catechesis. Unfortunately, today’s church lacks many of the right cultural avenues for thorough spiritual formation. Ackerman summed up the beliefs of the AWI nicely: “Our model and standard is the undivided church.” All too often, Christians have to choose between revivalistic evangelicalism and activist Social Gospel, both of which are innovations incongruous with the early church. The young Fr. Nelson complained about facing “spiritual birth defects” in his congregants, which came from “the weird way they’ve been discipled.” Functioning under a hubristic individualism, too many American Christians deride ancient understandings, creeds, and practices in favor of their own (often unlearned) interpretations of the Scripture and church discipline. “Sometimes people need to be told to shut up and listen,” Nelson announced, “We have this idea we can riff on the Christian faith. And that requires clergy to exercise their authority.” Bishop Sutton added, “Don’t make dogmatic what the Church has not.”

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Recently, I began communicating with a student at Fuller Seminary on the track for ordination. He has a new kind of church plant stirring in his heart. The Rev. Jamal Scarlett along with The Rev. Cameron Lemons are working together to plant The Grove Church of Lake Elsinore (CA). “Cameron and I started meeting together two years ago as we believed God was stirring our hearts toward multicultural ministry. I am Afro/Latino-American (Black Hispanic) and he is an Irish-American,” shared Rev. Scarlett.

When they met, they were both Southern Baptists. Cameron was a Youth Pastor at a local church and Jamal was a Worship Leader and Youth Pastor at another church. Over many coffee hours, they began a conversation about what it might look like to be a church that is multicultural. That is, a church that is not just multicolored, but sees diversity of culture as a ministry asset versus a liability. The desire was to be a church that reflected Revelation 7:9 where people of every nation, tongue and tribe worshiped and glorified the Lord together. Ultimately, this led to the call of planting The Grove Church with a missional imperative set on acts of kindness (feeding the hungry, caring for the lonely and the outcast) as well as seeking the restoration of all things, including reconciliation.

As these two pastors were praying for a vision for their church plant, they were led on a journey to Anglicanism.

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Phil Fleming, deacon at St. Peter’s Anglican Church of Canton and also assigned as deacon in charge of Trinity Anglican Church in Monmouth; the priest of the Canton church, Father Michael Brooks; and the priest’s wife Louisa Brooks attended an assembly of Anglican church leaders from throughout the world this month.

The assembly was held June 7 through 9, but other meetings also were held June 4-6, in Ridgecrest, N.C. Louisa Brooks attended as a voting delegate. Michael Brooks did not vote but wanted to attend some seminars on “church plantings”–establishing new churches and making them grow, Fleming says.

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The U.S.-based Episcopal Church that many of ACNA’s members split from was largely unmentioned, but the divergent direction of the two churches was apparent. The Episcopal Church became increasingly centralized in the past 100 years, with more and more authority placed in the office of the Presiding Bishop and the denomination’s General Convention. Subsidiarity ”“ placing responsibility with the lowest unit capable of carrying out a function ”“ often fell by the wayside.

ACNA seems to have realized this, instead keeping the church at the provincial (national) level relatively streamlined.

“What you celebrate, you become,” claimed Ed Stetzer, a Southern Baptist missiologist and a keynote speaker for the assembly. Stetzer, who heads the SBC’s Lifeway Research arm, advised how to get out of the way of local efforts: build a culture of multiplication (churches and ministries), avoid the dependency that comes from lavishing money upon start-up churches (it doesn’t improve the odds of success, he reports), open more lanes to potential church leaders (lay and bi-vocational pastors) and give permission to people to do non-traditional things, such as have voluntary clergy.

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The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has named the Rev. Alan Hawkins to serve as the Vicar of the Anglican 1000 movement, Archbishop Robert Duncan told delegates to the church’s 2nd Provincial Assembly.

Archbishop Duncan told delegates on the opening day of the 7-9 June 2012 meeting in Ridgecrest, N.C., that Mr. Hawkins, the rector of the Church of the Redeemer in Greensboro, NC, will supervise the province’s church planting initiative ”“ a work the archbishop characterized as being the “central” program of the province.

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The dis-integration of the Anglican Mission in the Americas during this past year has been a challenge for North American Anglicanism and for Global Anglicanism. What was one of our founding jurisdictions, and distanced to became a ministry partner in June 2010, has gone through a season of re-definition and loss since June 2011 that has greatly diminished the AM and that has broken the hearts of many in this Council, across this Church and around the globe, not least that of your Archbishop. What will become of the remnant “Society for Mission and Apostolic Works” we cannot know, we only know that what has emerged does not look like the Anglican Mission, the AMiA, that was once so central to who and what we became as a Church. We continue in prayer for these now functionally separated brothers and sisters.

Two amazing things, at least, have come out of the adversity of this situation. One is that the vision given by God to us in the Common Cause days ”“ the vision of a biblical, missionary and united Anglicanism in North America ”“ is owned by more of us than ever before. The dis-integration of AMiA has produced an amazing new partner in PEARUSA (Province de L’Eglise Anglicane au Rwanda USA) whose bishops and representatives are here with us to take their place among us.

Yesterday, the College of Bishops adopted a three-way protocol (PEAR, ACNA, and PEARUSA) that effectively gives PEARUSA participation as if it were a diocese of this Church. Moreover, today this Council will be asked to approve a diocese in formation (called Christ the King and centered at Houston, Texas) composed of former AMiA congregations. In other parts of our two countries (Canada and the US) congregations that have been AM congregations are associating with existing dioceses of the Anglican Church in North America. Bishop Todd Hunter of Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO) has joined us as a bishop with special mission and two of our dioceses have given “cover” to two other Anglican Mission bishops and their congregations ”“ with a third bishop and network in conversation ”“ as their relationships to the AM gets sorted out.

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Read it all (16 page pdf).

You may find the link there should you wish to use it.

Ahead of Assembly 2012, members of the Anglican Church in North America College of Bishops gathered in Ridgecrest, N.C. The meeting began with Morning Prayer and a time of Bible study and was undergirded by the theme of spreading the transforming love of Jesus Christ.

The bishops in attendance prayerfully considered and approved the election of a new bishop, The Rev. Stephen Wood, rector of St. Andrew’s Church-Mount Pleasant, S.C. Wood has been serving as vicar general for the Diocese of the Carolinas, a diocese in-formation within the Anglican Church in North America.

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