A cathedral dean rarely chooses to return to a former parish as priest-in-charge, but for the Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III that transition was an answer to prayer. Lloyd, dean of Washington National Cathedral since 2005, will return in October to Trinity Church, Boston, where he was rector from 1993 to 2005.

“My fundamental calling is as a priest ”” a preacher and teacher and pastor,” he said. “And the decision for me was to let go of this large, complex, exciting place” and to focus on a pastoral ministry. While he said that returning to his former parish “was a surprise” and “not part of the plan,” the possibility began to emerge as he thought about and prayed about his perceived calling to return to parish ministry.

“I’m not in this business to step up,” he said. “Every step has been to ask what with my gifts I’m being called to do.”

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This is an idea whose time has come. It is easy, simple, saves money, and I think it seeds the mission of God in N America for generations to come: STOP FUNDING TRADITIONAL CHURCH PLANTS and instead fund missionaries to inhabit contexts all across the new mission fields of N America.

Traditionally denominations have funded church plants. They do this by providing a.) a full time salary plus benefits for three years, and b.) start-up funds for equipment, building rental etc. to a well-assessed church planter (read entrepreneur). The goal is a self-sustaining church in three years paying its own pastor’s salary and assorted sundry costs of running the church’s services. The costs are astounding, perhaps 300-400,000 dollars or more to get a church plant going.

Today, in the changing environments of N American post Christendom, this approach to church planting is insane. For it not only assumes an already Christianized population to draw on , it puts enormous pressure on the church planter to secure already well-heeled Christians as bodies for the seats on Sunday morning. This in itself undercuts the engagement of the hurting, lost peoples God is bringing to Himself in Christ.

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Next year marks the one hundredth anniversary of Roland Allen’s small book Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? In that landmark text in mission studies, Allen argued that Western missionary methods had little in common with Paul’s missionary practices in the New Testament. The apostle and his partners did not establish large, permanent institutions, nor did they stay in one place for a decade or a career.

Allen wrote during the height of Western optimism, paternalism, and colonialism, and it took time for his ideas to gain traction. Yet the book eventually grew in influence and helped spur the shift toward contextualization and indigenization in world mission.

David Fitch wants to do something similar for North American missions and church planting. Fitch is Lindner Professor of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary and the author of several books, most recently The End of Evangelicalism….

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…a quick, informal selection of voices from across the country over the weekend found both pessimism and cynicism about the state of negotiations in Washington, resignation about the partisan jousting and more confusion than conniption about what exactly will happen if the president and his Republican opponents cannot make a deal to raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2.

And neither side, they say, looks good.

“They’re all boneheads,” said Steve Ruzika, 55, an entrepreneur from Boca Raton, Fla., who added that while he is politically conservative, he is fed up with both ends of the political spectrum.

“This has been brewing for a long time,” Mr. Ruzika said. “They should have solved it before now.”

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Michael W. Higgins: It is difficult actually to identify him as either conservative Catholic or liberal Catholic. If they think of him at all as Catholic which is not largely the case I think and that is most unfortunate I think because it is to miss one of the major components of his thinking and is constitutive of his life, they tended to think of him as conservative: regular practising Catholic of the old way, fairly conventional, came into the church as he says himself in his twenties on his knees…

Marshall McLuhan: I had no religious yearnings or needs of any sort but I was quite aware of the claims of the church and I wanted to know what the claims were about.

Margaret Coffey: This Encounter shifts McLuhan out of that confining box, to complicate things, not to simplify them. And it’s necessary. At the big Barcelona McLuhan fest in May, no-one talked about McLuhan’s faith. Sociologist Chiara Giaccardi was there from the Catholic University of Milan.

Chiara Giaccardi: I was quite impressed to notice that McLuhan’s Catholic identity was not mentioned at all. And I think this is a very crucial point for the misunderstanding of McLuhan’s thought, because faith for McLuhan is the ground against which the figure of the work can be understood.

The audio of this was posted yesterday. It is a must not miss–read or listen to it all.

Your grocery bill isn’t catching much of a break this summer.

The Consumer Price Index for food at home ticked up 0.2 percent from May to June. Although the rise was the smallest of the year, the food-at-home index has jumped 4.7 percent over the past 12 months.

Friday’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was a mixed bag. Prices for meat, poultry, fish, eggs, fruit and vegetables fell slightly from May to June. But other major food groups, including cereal and dairy products, continued to inch up.

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.

A report setting out a road map for theological training in the wake of substantial government cuts was ”˜overwhelmingly carried’ by Synod on Sunday.

The result followed a lively debate on a report by the Ministry Council suggesting areas where the Church could save money.

Introducing the report, the Bishop of Sheffield, the Rt Rev Steven Croft, said: “Last September, the government announced far-reaching changes to the funding of Higher Education in England. It is not my purpose this afternoon to comment on the broad thrust of those proposals. They have significant consequences for the training of ordinands in the Church of England and also for other forms of formation for ministry.”

He said more than £900,000 per annum was likely to be lost in resources for pre-ordination training from 2012, as a result of cuts to the Higher Education Funding Council….

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Grant us, O Lord, not to mind earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to cleave to those that shall abide; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown; when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word which is sown in them. And these in like manner are the ones sown upon rocky ground, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the ones sown among thorns; they are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the delight in riches, and the desire for other things, enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown upon the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

–Mark 4:13-20

Americans’ levels of exercise have tapered off slightly in 2011, after partially rebounding in 2010, and are still not as high as in 2008. The 53.4% of adults who reported exercising for at least 30 minutes three or more days per week in June trails the 54.3% in the same month in 2008.

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The U.K. capital’s top police official resigned Sunday, and the former chief of News Corp.’s U.K. newspaper unit was arrested, as the country’s tabloid newspaper scandal raced uncomfortably into the top ranks of Britain’s law-enforcement and media worlds.

Late Sunday, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, known as Scotland Yard, resigned due largely to connections between the police and the phone-hacking scandal. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson cited intense media scrutiny and the hiring of a former News Corp. tabloid editor to advise police on public relations; that editor, Neil Wallis, was arrested in connection with the criminal investigation last week.

Sir Paul’s resignation came hours after U.K. police arrested Rebekah Brooks, News Corp.’s former top U.K. newspaper official and a key figure in the rapidly evolving investigation.

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[BOB] ABERNETHY: But the common good. This idea of the common good, very important in religious and ethics. How do you define it? And who says what the common good is?

[JIM] WALLIS: Well, this week we’ve organized 5,000 pastors to say let’s look at the real people in our congregations and our communities, what’s going to happen to them as opposed to the Washington, D.C. question, who’s up who’s down, who’s going to be the Speaker of the House next time, who’ll win the next election. The common good is about the real people, the people we have to always take into account. And pastors, I think, I wanted to talk to people whose job it is to have re-read the Bible. To get to, to focus on who the real people are here.

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They never gave up–congratulations to them.

Clarke, 42 years old, of Northern Ireland, was the clear local favorite. He has won 14 times on the European Tour and will almost certainly one day be the European Ryder Cup captain.

But he’d never won a major, despite playing in 53 of them before this week, including 19 previous British Opens, and there was a prevailing sense that this may be his last, best chance. After shooting opening rounds of 68, 68 and 69, he said Saturday that he was playing some of the best golf of his life.

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Amid the din of warnings about modern technology’s impact on the soul, Kevin Kelly sounds like the happy evangelist from Geekdom. “[W]e can see more of God in a cell phone than in a tree frog,” the Wired magazine cofounder claims in his most recent book, What Technology Wants. A provocative title, to be sure, introducing a more provocative thesis: All human artifacts, from words to wheels to Wikipedia, together act like a living, breathing organism that reflects something of the Divine. “Technology has its roots in God’s work through the universe,” Kelly told CT associate editor Katelyn Beaty as she sat down with the San Francisco native at this year’s Q conference, where Kelly was speaking. He believes that as participants in the technium””Kelly’s word for this tech-ecosystem”””when we try to increase the options in the world, we are part of something godly.”

Kelly came to Christ in 1979, when he got locked out of a Jerusalem hostel and ended up sleeping on a stone slab in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He talked with CT about the Amish, his vision of heaven, and why he doesn’t own a smart phone.

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I am not worried that IRS agents are about to descend on the nation’s churches, mosques, and synagogues to force a new government-endorsed theology on our places of worship. I am very concerned, however, that this kind of argument, left unaddressed, implies a power that the government does not and should not possess.

More than that, I can only wonder how an article addressing religious liberty concerns can be passed for publication in a national newspaper like USA Today while failing even to mention the First Amendment. Of course, Christians do not ground religious liberty in the U.S. Constitution, but in the fact that every single human being bears the image of God. Nevertheless, Americans enshrine and protect that liberty by the means of our national charter of liberties. No serious argument about matters of religious freedom in the United States can be made without reference to that charter and its First Amendment.

Asra Nomani just called for the IRS to dictate theology to the nation’s churches, synagogues, and mosques. It was published in plain view in USA Today. Did anyone notice what was missing?

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Daniel Dalton, 46, a non-profit attorney in Farmington Hills, Mich., says the IRS has taken the position “it’s not going to look at ecclesiastical, doctrinal issues.” He grew up in the Missouri Lutheran Church, which limits women’s roles in leadership positions. “I don’t understand it. I don’t agree with it,” says Dalton. “But that’s a doctrinal issue.”

I understand the difficulties in having the state intervene in worship issues. I believe in a separation of church and state, but I’ve come to the difficult decision that women must use the legal system to restore rights in places of worship, particularly when intimidation is used to enforce unfair rules.

In our protest movement, we haven’t yet won national enforcement of gender equity in mosques. But we reached our youth….

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In view of the tragically difficult times that the whole Middle East, and especially Syria, is going through, H. B. Patriarch Gregorios III wrote a letter on 20 April 2011 to Western leaders, asking them to help boost social and political evolution in the region. He stressed that the current revolutions are unlikely to benefit Christians, and may even result in more Christians being obliged to flee the unrest. He believes that Western support for peace is very important for Muslim-Christian living together in the Arab region, for the Christian presence there, for the communion and witness of its Churches to be maintained and for the aims of the recent Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops to be fulfilled.

From April, but still relevant–read it all.

This week the shortcomings of this muddling-through were laid bare… Financial markets turned on Italy, the euro zone’s third-biggest economy, with alarming speed. Yields on ten-year Italian bonds jumped by almost a percentage point in two trading days: on July 12th they breached 6%, their highest since the euro was created. The Milan stockmarket slumped to its lowest in two years. Though bond yields subsequently fell back, the debt crisis has clearly entered a new phase. No longer confined to the small peripheral economies of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, it has hurdled over Spain, supposedly next in line, and reached one of the euro zone’s giants. All its members, but especially Germany, face a stark choice.

Consider the stakes. Italy has the biggest sovereign-debt market in Europe and the third-biggest in the world. It has €1.9 trillion ($2.6 trillion) of sovereign debt outstanding, 120% of its GDP, three times as much as Greece, Ireland and Portugal combined””and far more than the €250 billion or so left in the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the currency club’s rescue kitty. Default would have calamitous consequences for the euro and the world economy. Even if the more likely immediate prospect is sustained stress in the Italian bond market, that will surely prompt investors to flee European assets, making the continent’s recovery ever harder. Meanwhile in the background there is the absurd pantomime of Barack Obama and congressional Republicans feuding over how to raise the federal government’s debt ceiling to stave off an American “default”…. That may have distracted American investors briefly; once they realise how much is at stake in Italy, it will not help.

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The Very Reverend Doctor Guy Fitch Lytle III, Professor of Church History and Anglican Studies, Bishop Juhan Professor of Divinity, and Dean Emeritus of The School of Theology of the University of the South, died on July 15, 2011 in Winchester, TN, of complications of diabetes.

He was born on October 14, 1944, to Nelle Stuart Lytle and Guy Fitch Lytle, Jr., in Birmingham, AL. An avid tennis player, Dr. Lytle won the Alabama Youth Tennis Championship title and went on to compete in the National Youth Tennis Championship. Dr. Lytle graduated from Princeton University in 1966. He was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University in England, and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.

After teaching positions at the Catholic University of America, University of Texas: Austin, and the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Dr. Lytle joined the University of the South as Dean of the School of Theology. For eleven years he served the University of the South with creativity and distinction, during which time the School doubled in size, built a new chapel – The Chapel of the Apostles, found financial stability, and gained national prominence. During Dr. Lytle’s tenure, he was a significant supporter of theology and the liturgical arts, and vastly increased participation of Sewanee students in world mission outreach and cross-cultural experiences. With his wife Maria, he developed programs in Hispanic ministries and attracted significant numbers of Latino students to the School. Above all, Dr. Lytle was an Episcopal priest of unwavering commitment to his Lord, Jesus Christ.

He is survived by his wife, Maria Rasco Lytle, of Sewanee, TN; his brother, Stuart Lytle, Newburyport, MA; his daughter and son-in-law, Elizabeth Lytle Knowles and Joe Knowles, of Lynchburg, VA; his daughter, Ashley Lytle, of Atlanta, GA; and his grandchildren, Madeline, Sophia, and Jacob Knowles, of Lynchburg, VA.

The family will greet visitors on Monday, July 18, from 12:00-1:30 PM at the University of the South’s Chapel of the Apostles, Sewanee, TN. The funeral service will follow at 2:00 PM, with the Right Rev. Don Wimberly officiating. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Dr. Lytle’s memory to the School of Theology Dean’s Discretionary Fund for student financial needs.

I love the picture here. From a family member via Facebook:

We would like to thank everyone for the prayers and love we have received since the unexpected passing of The Rev. Dr. Guy Lytle…[Friday]. Please join us in a service celebrating Guy’s life on Monday, July 18 at 2:00pm at the Chapel of the Apostles in Sewanee. ALL CLERGY are invited to vest (alb & white stole) and process. Please help share this news with those not on Facebook. Blessings.

Marshall McLuhan was a committed Christian. How did he come to his faith and did it influence his ideas? And has his work any meaning for the Church today?

Listen to it all (about 48 1/2 minutes).

If Marshall McLuhan were alive today, there isn’t much that would surprise him ”” not the Internet, or Google, or Twitter, or WikiLeaks, or even the phone-hacking scandal now transfixing much of the U.K.

In broad outline, if not in precise detail, he predicted all of these and more.

“Rereading him, I still get new insights,” says Robert Logan, a former colleague of the Canadian media guru some now call The First Seer of Cyberspace. “The man was a total genius. If he came back today, on his 100th anniversary, he would say, ”˜Yeah, that’s about what I expected ”” and people haven’t learned a thing.”

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[John] Sloan has been Alabama’s bishop suffragan since 2008. Before that, he served as rector of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church in Huntsville, Ala., for 14 years, and at a number of churches in the Diocese of Mississippi.

Sloan founded the Special Session program in the diocese for summer campers with mental and physical disabilities. In the national church, he serves as a member of the Standing Commission for Liturgy and Music. He has participated in nearly 20 medical mission trips to Honduras.

Sloan, a native of Vicksburg, Miss., is married to Tina Brown Sloan. They have two children, McKee and Mary Nell.

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O God, who hast taught us that in thy mysterious providence suffering is the prelude to glory, and hast made much tribulation the entrance to thy heavenly kingdom: May we learn from this thy will, and also from creation around us, to wait for our deliverance from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of thy children; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.’

–Matthew 25:24-30

Mr. Schwartz weathered painfully dismissive reviews to see his shows prosper and live on for decades in syndication. Many critics suggested that they were successful because they ran counter to the tumultuous times in which they appeared: the era of the Vietnam War and sweeping social change.

Give or take a month or so, the original network run of “The Brady Bunch” coincided with two major upheavals in American society. The show, about a squeaky-clean blended family in California, began in 1969, shortly after Woodstock, and ended in 1974, soon after President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation following the Watergate scandal.

Mr. Schwartz’s work may have been seen as lighthearted entertainment, but some scholars of popular culture took it very seriously. David Marc and Robert J. Thompson, authors of “Prime Time, Prime Movers,” in which they advance an auteur theory of television, considered Mr. Schwartz an innovator who made a “surgical strike into the national psyche.”

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Check it out.

New York–After same-sex marriage becomes legal here on July 24, gay priests with partners in the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island will head to the altar. They have to. Their bishop set a nine-month deadline for them to marry or stop living together.

Next door, meanwhile, the Episcopal bishop of New York says he also expects gay clergy in committed relationships to wed “in due course.” Still, this longtime supporter of gay rights says churches in his diocese are off limits for gay weddings until he receives clearer liturgical guidance from the national denomination.

As more states legalize same-sex marriage, religious groups with ambiguous policies on homosexuality are divided over whether they should allow the ceremonies in local congregations. The decision is especially complex in the mainline Protestant denominations that have yet to fully resolve their disagreements over the Bible and homosexuality. Many have taken steps toward acceptance of gay ordination and same-gender couples without changing the official definition of marriage in church constitutions and canons. With the exception of the United Church of Christ, which approved gay marriage six years ago, none of the larger mainline churches has a national liturgy for same-sex weddings or even blessing ceremonies.

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