The head of the Episcopal Church has warned Pittsburgh Bishop Robert W. Duncan Jr. that he will face civil suits and possible expulsion as bishop if a proposed resolution enabling the diocese to leave the denomination passes during today’s diocesan convention.

A diocesan spokesman said the letter from Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, sent by fax to the Pittsburgh Diocese office late Wednesday, was “intended, honestly, to intimidate the convention.”

The 142nd annual convention is being held today and tomorrow in Johnstown.

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The split between liberal and conservative Anglicans grew wider in September as bishops of the U.S. Episcopal Church reaffirmed their denomination’s more-inclusive stance on homosexuality and a breakaway group of bishops moved to form a “new ecclesiastical structure” in North America.

About 150 Episcopal Church bishops met in New Orleans from Sept. 20 to 25, along with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, several primates (national archbishops from other countries) and members of the international Anglican Consultative Council (ACC). At the end of their meeting, the American bishops issued a statement that they said was the best expression of a position on which all present could agree. (Several conservative bishops had left the meeting early.)

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Received with thanks from the diocese of Utah–KSH.

October 27, 2007

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
The Episcopal Church Center
815 Second Avenue
New York NY 10017-4503

Dear Katharine:

With reference to your letter of October 17 inviting us to comment on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent and urgent request of you, The Episcopal Diocese of Utah””Bishop, Deputation, Diocesan Council, Standing Committee and Diocesan Convention””make the following recommendation in the “next steps” part of the request:

We urge you to ask the Archbishop to cancel the Lambeth Conference for 2008.

EXPLANATION:
”¢ The Communion is in such disarray over who recognizes whom, and the participation of “irregularly consecrated” bishops, that little good can come from the fragmented gatherings sure to take place at the Conference, and even attendance at common worship is unlikely.
”¢ We are unclear about the “other issues” being raised around the Communion, although the Archbishop suggests they are “very specific.” Within the constitution and canons of our church we have responded faithfully and courteously to the demands of others, even though questioning their authority to set the conditions of our continued participation in the Communion.
Ӣ We are leery about using the occasion of the Conference to present a Covenant that is exclusionary, that centralizes authority, or that adds to the core doctrine of our faith.
Ӣ The cost of holding the Lambeth Conference under the present circumstances is disproportionate to its benefits, and to the good we can do elsewhere in the mission of the church.
Ӣ Given the disarray we referred to above, we think that a Lambeth Conference in the near future would be disastrous to our public image around the world.

We send you our love and prayers, rejoicing in your strong and grace-filled leadership in these challenging times.

Faithfully,

Carolyn Tanner Irish (The Rt. Rev.)
10th Bishop of Utah

CTI/mkw

The Standing Committee of the Diocese of Pennsylvania has issued the following statement with regard to the difficult matters we now face:

Statement Concerning the Presentment and Inhibition Issued Against Bishop Bennison

On Tuesday, October 30, 2007, the members of the Standing Committee and Michael F. Rehill, Special Counsel to the Standing Committee, had a meeting with the Right Reverend F. Clayton Matthews, Bishop for Pastoral Development, Office of Pastoral Development of the Episcopal Church; David Beers, Chancellor to the Presiding Bishop; and his assistant, Mary E. Kostel. At that meeting Chancellor Beers permitted the members of the Standing Committee to read the Presentment against Bishop Bennison which had been issued the prior day, and gave them copies of a draft of the Inhibition which the Presiding Bishop intended to issue with the consent of a majority of the members of the Standing Committee. After a full and frank discussion, all ten members of the Standing Committee gave consent to the Inhibition.

With the issuance of the Inhibition by the Presiding Bishop, pursuant to the Canons of the Episcopal Church and the Canons of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, the Standing Committee will assume the role of Ecclesiastical Authority in the Diocese of Pennsylvania commencing at
12:01 am on Sunday, November 4, 2007.

The Reverend Glenn M. Matis, President of the Standing Committee, made the following statement on behalf of all of the members of the Standing Committee:

We believe that the allegations in the Presentment against Bishop Bennison are profoundly serious and we respect and rely on the work of the Review Committee of The Episcopal Church to have properly and thoroughly investigated these allegations. These allegations were not made by the Standing Committee, but having read the Presentment document carefully and discussed it with Counsel, we felt it incumbent on us to allow the process to go forward as requested by the Presiding Bishop?s office.

We recognize that the Inhibition will greatly expand the role and responsibilities of the members of the Standing Committee. We want to assure the Clergy and people of the Diocese of Pennsylvania that the Standing Committee has and will continue to exercise its canonical responsibilities in the best interests of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. Over the next days and weeks, we will be working closely with The Right Reverend F. Clayton Matthews, Bishop for Pastoral Development, Office of Pastoral Development of The Episcopal Church; Judge Michael F. Rehill, Esquire, attorney for the Standing Committee; and diocesan leaders, both lay and clergy, to develop and implement plans for exercising ecclesiastical authority in the absence of a diocesan bishop.

We are humbled as we assume this authority, and we are profoundly aware of our own and the diocese’s grief and sorrow at this time. We ask your prayers for Charles and his family, for the Standing Committee, and for all in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. With faith in Jesus Christ, with assurance of the presence of the Holy Spirit, and with sure reliance on the promises of God that will heal us and make us whole, we pray we may all be drawn together as we face this difficult time. May our hearts and minds be joined in such a way as to make possible the restoration of spiritual health in our beloved diocese, and may we once again become a place of leadership within the Episcopal Church.

Faithfully yours,
The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania

eople decisively favor letting their public schools provide birth control to students, but they also voice misgivings that divide them along generational, income and racial lines, a poll showed.

Sixty-seven percent support giving contraceptives to students, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. About as many ”” 62% ”” said they believe providing birth control reduces the number of teenage pregnancies.

“Kids are kids,” said Danielle Kessenger, 39, a mother of three young children from Jacksonville, Fla., who supports providing contraceptives to those who request them. “I was a teenager once and parents don’t know everything, though we think we do.”

Yet most who support schools distributing contraceptives prefer that they go to children whose parents have consented. People are also closely divided over whether sex education and birth control are more effective than stressing morality and abstinence, and whether giving contraceptives to teenagers encourages them to have sexual intercourse.

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Indecision and delay in responding to the crisis of faith and order over homosexuality will likely wreck the Anglican Communion, the Primate of the West Indies told his diocesan synod last week.

On Oct 22 Archbishop Drexel Gomez told the 107th session of the Diocese of the Bahamas synod gathered at Christ Church Cathedral in Nassau that reform was needed now to save the Communion.“It is clear that the future of the Anglican Communion is unclear at the moment but there can be no doubt that the future shape of Anglicanism will have to undergo significant adjustments if the Communion is to remain intact,” he said.

The adoption of an Anglican Covenant would go a long way towards restoring trust and accountability within the Communion, he said. However, the crisis of gay bishops and blessings could not be paperedover without dire consequences to the integrity of the Church as the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 ”˜changed everything,’ he explained.

Archbishop Gomez also said the Communion must also resolve the issue of bishops acting outside their territories and the plight of embattled traditionalists in US and Canadian dioceses and restorecatholic order to the church.

Chairman of the Anglican Covenant Design Group, Archbishop Gomez is considered one of the key international players whose support Dr Williams’ needs to keep the Communion going. The WestIndian primate is not likely to lend his support to the ACC’s attempt to rehabilitate the Episcopal Church, however.

Speaking to The Christian Challenge magazine, Archbishop Gomez said the ACC’s joint standing committee report of Sept that gave the US church a passing grade in complying with the primates’ requests was ”˜was more generous than I feel they should be.’ The Global South coalition of primates is expected to issue a statement this coming week that endorses the position of the African provinces, which held that the New Orleans statement failed to adequately respond to the requests made of the American Church by the wider Anglican Communion.

–This article appears in the November 2nd, 2007, edition of the Church of England Newspaper on page 7

Call us the Unhappy States of America.

One year before Election Day 2008, most Americans are dismayed by the country’s direction, pessimistic about the Iraq war and anxious about the economy. Two of three disapprove of the job President Bush is doing. Nearly a year after Democrats took control of Congress, three of four Americans say it isn’t achieving much, either.

In all, 72% of those surveyed in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Oct. 12-14 say they are dissatisfied with how things are going in the USA while just 26% are satisfied. Not since April have even one-third of Americans been happy with the country’s course, the longest national funk in 15 years.

“Don’t get me wrong, America’s a great country,” says Lori Jones, 46, a medical assistant in Phoenix. But she worries about her family’s finances and prospects for the next generation. “I think we’ve somehow lost our way.”

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To the list of marketing oxymorons — the sunless tan, cheeseless pizza, soap-free detergent — add this: the no-water carwash.

Lisa and Jeff Peri have been peddling Green Earth Waterless Car Wash for only five months but already have gotten some traction, gaining a major local hospital and one of California’s biggest Lexus dealers as customers for their product, which they describe as environmentally gentle.

The Peris’ Inglewood company, which currently goes by the name of its fragrance-free cleaner, also markets a few related products and sometimes will send its employees to wash cars. The entrepreneurs are looking to attract buyers who are sensitive to chemicals in cleaners or concerned about drought, given that washing a car at home uses 80 to 140 gallons of water and running it through a commercial carwash uses 20 to 45 gallons of water.

“We feel like we are doing something life-changing for other people,” said Lisa Peri, 36.

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WHATEVER IS DRIVING Dr. [Rowan] Williams’ strategy, it would seem in the wake of the HOB meeting to have reached a crossroads. The primatial jury is still out, of course, but it is already evident that the HOB statement will not fly with a significant segment of the global church. The Communion’s future will pivot heavily on how Williams now handles key matters going forward.

Of course, even Archbishops of Canterbury must contend with historical forces beyond their control. In all probability, TEC’s long recurrent role as artful dodger of orthodoxy, even if it has slightly receded for now, has set in train fragmentation and realignment among Anglicans that cannot now be averted.

This is a lengthy article but there is some material in it not available elsewhere and it is well worth the time–KSH.

Mr. [Peter] Frank reported little to no additional communication to the diocesan office after the Presiding Bishop’s letter became public late yesterday. Support for Bishop Duncan and the direction in which he is leading the diocese is both broad and deep, Mr. Frank said.

Although a public response to the Presiding Bishop’s letter is not expected until tomorrow, Mr. Frank said there have been no changes to the convention agenda and none are anticipated. Following his address, Bishop Duncan will read aloud to convention his response to Bishop Jefferts Schori, he added.

Read it all.

O’Neal produced huge profits for the firm; last year, net income was a record $7.5 billion. On the job, at least, he made no attempt to be a nice guy. The Wall Street Journal reports that O’Neal would rake his executives over the coals if quarterly earnings reports showed that rival Goldman Sachs was outperforming Merrill in some area. Now that O’Neal is on his way out, of course, people who worked for him are saying things to reporters – he was aloof, he was brusque, he didn’t tolerate strong-willed subordinates – that they wouldn’t have said to his face.

It’s the classic high-flying modern Wall Street story – you claw your way to the top, make a lot of money for your stockholders, make a lot of money for yourself, hold on as long as you can. O’Neal lasted five years in the top job at Merrill, which is about the average tenure of an American CEO.

What’s really significant is that there is a Stan O’Neal. And a Dick Parsons, the African-American CEO of Time Warner, rumored to be on his way out, too, after a long and profitable run. And a Ken Chenault, the African-American CEO of American Express, who is staying put, far as I know. And a Bob Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, widely acknowledged as the first African-American billionaire.

Just two or three generations removed from slavery, they rose to control big chunks of the American economy. They attained Master of the Universe status by being smarter and tougher than their peers – and now a much bigger cohort of black corporate executives is coming up behind them. It just goes to show what happens when you open a door.

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It wasn’t easy being the token evangelical in the Howard Dean office during the 2004 White House race.

Other staffers called Mara Vanderslice the “church lady” and reminded her that the loudest cheers at Dean rallies followed attacks on the Religious Right. But what really stung were her candidate’s answers to religious questions.

Round one: Dean confessed that he left the Episcopal Church when his parish blocked the construction of a bike path. Round two: He names the Book of Job as his favorite New Testament book. Round three: Asked about his plans to woo religious believers, Dean said he was waiting until the campaign hit the Deep South.

Ouch. That was business as usual until the “values voters” carried President George W. Bush back into office, said author Dan Gilgoff, who dissected the trials of Vanderslice in “The Jesus Machine,” his book on James Dobson and the Christian right. That election shook the Democrats and helped them realize that they needed some candidates who were not afraid of faith.

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Well, I say what about the absolutely amazing good thing God has done in New Hampshire and is doing in the Episcopal Church as we take stands to totally legitimize gay people, lifting the shame of centuries of oppressive views toward those who are a bit different from the norm of society. I just don’t get it. Why can’t we get over this terrible injustice right in our own faces? Why can’t people of the same sex love each other and be faithful and true to each other””upheld by church and society””just like the majority?

It would be great to have public leaders not only prize the unity of the church but also prize the movement toward lifting the oppression of gays that KILLS people in Africa, just as it does and has in America and all over the world. I say Jesus would prize this movement toward healing and “seeing things from a different angle.” All the parables turn people’s assumptions upside down so to see new grace in unexpected places. Who would sanction more “Matthew Shepherds”?

Every time a leader speaks in a conservative way, for the cause of unity, without also acknowledging the need to move away from the long held prejudices and stereotypes that kill people, another sword pierces the heart of all of us who are gay or who know and love someone who is gay. Lord, how long?

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Some Christian congregations, particularly in lower income, urban areas, are turning to an unlikely source for help — the Church of Scientology.

Scientologists do not worship God, much less Jesus Christ. The church has seen plenty of controversy and critics consider it a cult. So why are observant Christians embracing some of its teachings?

Two pastors who spoke recently with CNN explained that when it comes to religion, they still preach the core beliefs of Christianity. But when it comes to practicing what they preach in a modern world, borrowing from Scientology helps.

The Rev. Charles Kennedy, of the Glorious Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal church in Tampa, Florida, and the Rev. James McLaughlin, of the Wayman Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, are among the theological hybrids.

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A story appearing on the Religious Intelligence Web site on Monday said the west-central Illinois diocese’s “enthusiasm for an immediate break” was “dampened by a report from a diocesan task force” on insurance concerns.

However, the Rev. John Spencer, diocesan press officer, said there was no task force. Rather, diocesan financial officers have been looking at health and liability insurance alternatives for more than a year for financial reasons, Spencer said. Their findings were discussed at the synod.

If the diocese does decide to break away from The Episcopal Church, it would need to have an insurance alternative ready, Spencer said.

The main reason the diocese didn’t take definitive action at its annual synod on Oct. 19-20 was to wait until other dioceses, which are also considering leaving The Episcopal Church, make its decisions in coming weeks, Spencer said.

“We really are serious about the fact that we’re trying to move in concert with several other dioceses, not just be mavericks,” he said.

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From here:

I am pleased to announce that the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, has accepted my invitation to be our guest and speaker January 16-20, 2008. I am especially grateful to Assistant Rector Wes Wasdyke for helping invite Bishop Robinson. Wes is canonically resident in the Dioces eof New Hampshire where he served the church and medical communities for many years.

Bishop Robinson is an astute speaker and spiritual leader with a passion for shared ministry and well known for his pastoral support of clergy and congregations in New Hampshire. While he is the focus of much attention in the Anglican Communion, his visit to us is a personal one where he will be able to share his own journey of faith and encourage each of us in ours.

As is always the case in the visit of a bishop from another jurisdiction, Bishop Smith was consulted, and has given permission for Bishop Robinson to be our speaker in residence. Bishop Smith has encouraged us by describing this visit as an important part of the listening process which is key to the Windsor and Lambeth recommendations for the Anglican Communion.

The Boniface Speaker series was created to bring the brightest and best in religion to this parish and community. Among our other speakers in recent years we have welcomed The Rev. Frank Wade, Chancellor David Booth Beers, Professor Kathy Grieb, Bishop Johannes Seoka, and Brother Robert Hugh. The speaker in residence program includes times to preach and teach both parishioners and diocesan clergy, to speak to the public, and to enjoy some sabbath time in our beautiful area.

The New Testament also forbids sexual relations outside marriage. Hebrews 13:4 commands everyone to honor the institution of marriage. In 1 Timothy 4:3, Paul warned that a sign of the end times would be an abandonment of the divine institution of marriage.

Despite the arguments of some, the odds of a successful marriage do not increase because a couple lives together before marriage. In fact, studies reveal the opposite is true.

Where do professing Christian couples find justification for living together without marriage? Their own desires and an immoral culture provide support, but God’s Word is neither vague nor confusing on this point: A personal commitment between a man and woman is not the moral equivalent of a biblical marriage.

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Moments before a Mississippi prisoner was scheduled to die by lethal injection, the Supreme Court granted him a stay of execution on Tuesday evening and thus gave a nearly indisputable indication that a majority intends to block all executions until the court decides a lethal injection case from Kentucky next spring.

There were two dissenters, Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr., but neither they nor the majority gave reasons for their positions. Because only five votes are required for a stay of execution, it is not clear whether all the remaining seven justices supported it.

The stay will remain in effect until the full court reviews an appeal filed Monday by lawyers for the inmate, Earl W. Berry, who is on death row for killing a woman 20 years ago.

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At the same time, I can’t help thinking of friends from Montana whom I first met at Hope and a Future in 2005. Then members of an Episcopal parish, they now belong to Christ Church Anglican in Butte, a mission of Uganda. They saw the writing on the wall and left without their property to begin the work of converting the world in another place. I ask myself, how catholic it is for those of us in hitherto ”˜safe’ jurisdictions to praise them for their faith, yet offer them nothing in the way of institutional support. A few years ago it was accepted that an ACN bishop who offered pastoral care to such a group was likely to find himself facing a presentment for boundary crossing; hence, the African ”˜incursions.’ It does not seem right that we should continue to stand apart from them indefinitely. The International Convocation was a good beginning, but it left such parishes isolated from their brethren still within The Episcopal Church. So on Friday, I expect to vote in favor of the proposed changes to constitution and canons, but I will do it without the conviction that I would wish at such a time as this. Not because I feel it is disloyal to my commitment to The Episcopal Church, for loyalty must be to doctrine as well as discipline, but because, in so doing, I have taken it upon myself to advance a course that will move American Anglicanism away from the catholic model that defined The Episcopal Church from the struggles of the 1870s to the struggles of the 1970s.

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RealtyTrac made public its Q3 2007 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows a total of 635,159 foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 446,726 properties nationwide during the Q3, a 30% increase from the previous quarter and nearly a doubling of the rate from 3Q06. The report also shows a foreclosure rate of one foreclosure filing for every 196 U.S. households for the quarter.

Books on faith, on God, on the absence of God, on morality and immorality arrive monthly, not so much articles of faith as a library of books on them or a lack thereof.

Virtue and vice have always duked it out for supremacy. Now two volumes arrive simultaneously to spread the word, good and bad….

[Alan] Jacobs never joins a temple, a minyan, a discussion group. (He does have a list of advisers as spiritual Phone-a-Friend Lifelines.) He robs himself of religion’s great gift of community. In a city teeming with Jewish residents, Jacobs tries to become literally observant in isolation, like a hermit, which makes the whole thing appear like a stunt, a stunt with a sizable book contract.

Jacobs’ strategy is about act and word, as if he were cramming for his God boards. “In the final stretch, I’ve been frantically trying to read every single book on religion, trying to interview every religious leader, trying to figure out how to obey every rule. What if I miss an insight?”

Year is rarely about belief. What is religion if not that? So what if you avoid winking (“He who winks his eyes plans perverse things”; Proverbs 16:30) if you never spiritually or historically bother to investigate the Bible’s relevance.

So, which is better, virtue or vice, Year or Vice? Jacobs is more ambitious, though sorely misdirected. Both men are agile writers and, at times, truly funny. They’re sit-down comics. [Peter] Sagal’s Vice is fun, though hardly comprehensive. Then again, there are enough potential vices to fill an encyclopedia. What Sagal fails to do, when lying and venality are epidemic, and consumption (if that is a vice) is synonymous with identity, is differentiate vice, sin and crime, what society will tolerate and what it will not. Now, that would make some book.

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Hundreds of students walked out of a Rockland County High School Wednesday, voicing their concern about vermin, filling the school’s athletic field and banging on the fence that surrounds it in protest.

Students at Clarkstown North High School claim the “three R’s” have been supplemented with two more: roaches and rats. Some held signs reading, “”Clean North” and “Rams not roaches,” according to the Journal News.

Cases of rat sightings have been widespread of late. According to football player Steven Jean-Baptiste, when he took his shoe out from his locker, three big roaches crawled out.

Another student used a camera phone to snap a picture of a rodent outside the high school door.

The district, located just north of New York City, removed three dead rats, including a decomposing one that was crawling with maggots, at the high school’s annex building, officials said.

Wednesday, hundreds of kids cut class to protest the grotesque conditions.

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”˜Some 27,000,000 people are enslaved today,’ states Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu after a recent visit to the West Indies.

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Letter from the Presiding Bishop to Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan

The Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan
Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA

Dear Bob,

There have been numerous public references in recent weeks regarding resolutions to be introduced at your forthcoming diocesan convention. Those resolutions, if adopted, would amend several of your diocesan canons and begin the process of amending one or more provisions of your diocesan Constitution. I have reviewed a number of these proposed resolutions, and it is evident to me that they would violate the Constitutional requirement that the Diocese conform to the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church. It is apparent from your pre-convention report that you endorse these proposed changes. I am also aware of other of your statements and actions in recent months that demonstrate an intention to lead your diocese into a position that would purportedly permit it to depart from The Episcopal Church. All these efforts, in my view, display a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between The Episcopal Church and its dioceses. Our Constitution explicitly provides that a diocese must accede to the Constitution and Canons of the Church.

I call upon you to recede from this direction and to lead your diocese on a new course that recognizes the interdependent and hierarchical relationship between the national Church and its dioceses and parishes. That relationship is at the heart of our mission, as expressed in our polity. Specifically, I sincerely hope that you will change your position and urge your diocese at its forthcoming convention not to adopt the resolutions that you have until now supported.

If your course does not change, I shall regrettably be compelled to see that appropriate canonical steps are promptly taken to consider whether you have abandoned the Communion of this Church — by actions and substantive statements, however they may be phrased — and whether you have committed canonical offences that warrant disciplinary action.

It grieves me that any bishop of this Church would seek to lead any of its members out of it. I would remind you of my open offer of an Episcopal Visitor if you wish to receive pastoral care from another bishop. I continue to pray for reconciliation of this situation, and I remain

Your servant in Christ,

Katharine Jefferts Schori

Read it all.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on October 31 inhibited Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison from all ordained ministry pending a judgment of the Court for the Trial of a Bishop.
The Title IV Review Committee issued a presentment for conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy against Bennison on October 28.

The two counts of the presentment center on accusations that Bennison, when he was rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Upland, California, did not respond properly after learning sometime in 1973 that his brother, John, who worked as a lay youth minister in the parish, was having an affair with a 14-year-old member of the youth group. John Bennison was also married at the time, according to the presentment.

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I don’t need to remind you that there is a war on for the very soul of the Church. But your courage, if I may say this, humbly, and your steadfastness in the face of a new and speciously sophisticated manifestation of evil has won you many admirers all over the world.
And now I want to suggest to you ”“ it’s time to GO FOR IT. To put up your sails for the wind of the Spirit is blowing. Look after each other, look after Tory and Elizabeth, that family; and Tory and Elizabeth, look after them.

The wind is blowing, and the Lord’s promise is as real today as ever it was. As far as you can, put the unpleasant things behind you. The Lord is doing a NEW THING do you not see it? There are thousands out there waiting to hear that God loves them. There is a task to be done before the Lord returns. There are millions of people to be touched with that sense of joy and peace and purpose and grace and forgiveness and love which you carry as the messengers for God. But it starts, it continues and it ends with Peter’s cry from the heart ”˜Lord, you know everything’ ”˜You know that I love you’. And Jesus’ kind reply ”˜Feed my sheep’.

Let’s have a moment of quiet if we may and I would love to encourage any of you and each of you in your own way with the Lord to re-dedicate yourselves. Don’t get distracted now, time is short. Re-dedicate yourselves if you’d like to and I’m going to end with a little prayer in which you could do that. Re-dedicate yourselves to the service of God, to the welfare of the Church for whom Jesus is coming back and the glory of God’s name in this place.

Read it all.

I suspect the best course for our little institution within Christendom is to allow it to implode, which seems to be the course of the recent past and present. If we fall apart, then we can be reformed and changed. To put a theological spin on it, if we die, then we can be resurrected. Perhaps in such a setting our focus would be more upon the message of the gospel than the survival of an institution and power games among varying factions.

What would happen if we had to sell our church real estate and meet in our homes? What would happen if we spent all of our endowments? Suppose the average Sunday attendance continues to decline to one or two people? Can we imagine meeting on Sunday with others and talking about God’s presence and activity in our lives over the past week, rather than about sex? Is it possible to attend church on Sundays and not leave frustrated?

Perhaps The Episcopal Church is due for some time in Babylon. It will be good for us, just as it was for ancient Judaism. Then we can remember the gospel message over the institution. Sunday attendance will remain a problem, but perhaps as a matter of pews that overflow instead of being empty. Then visitors might just stay.

Read it all.

Read it all.