The future Anglican Communion leader got a warm reception from Catholic quarters, including Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster.

“I am sure that his ministry, like that of his predecessor, Archbishop Rowan Williams, will provide an important Christian witness to this country over the coming years,” said the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

The president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch, welcomed Bishop Welby’s appointment and will travel to England for his installation on March 21, 2013.

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This is the first of two articles in which we will address issues arising in South Carolina. We consider below issues of good faith and canonical integrity. In particular:

–TEC’s actions in South Carolina raise troubling questions about the good faith of many church leaders in their dealing with Bishop Lawrence, including the Presiding Bishop, the Disciplinary Board, other TEC bishops
and some diocesan clergy.
–TEC’s position is canonically incoherent; either its actions in South Carolina are in open contempt of its own canons or it has undermined the basis on which it has spent millions of dollars on lawsuits.

In a second post later this week we will consider issues of ecclesiology and pastoral care. We are concerned that: TEC is acting contrary to basic principles of Anglican ecclesiology and ancient norms of the universal church; and it is subordinating the genuine pastoral needs of its members to further doubtful litigation goals.

But we begin with a detailed summary of facts that are not widely known outside South Carolina. It is important that these be placed in the record for the maintenance of public trust. This is neither light nor pleasant reading. Please bear with us.

Read it all.

A Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, and then to football as a walk on–my goodness. Watch it all (about 5 3/4 minutes). I caught this by happenstance this morning while exercizing–deeply moving; KSH.

There’s a common military expression: “Somewhere out there is a bullet with your name on it.” Both soldiers in the line of fire and those farther from the front lines need spiritual counsel from people who understand the high-risk, high-stress environment of military life. The people who provide pastoral care and support for those who put their lives on the line for their country””and their families””are military chaplains.

Several dozen Candler alums serve as military chaplains, among them Chaplain Matthew T. Stevens 94T, who serves in the U.S. Navy. He says that chaplains must maintain “an active, visible, constant presence with the people they serve.”

“Even when things are at their worst, a chaplain being there represents God’s presence,” says Stevens. “It reminds people that God will never leave them or forsake them, that God will always be there with them. Chaplains are a visible representation of that.”

Read it all and join me today in prayer for military chaplains worldwide–KSH.

[Not many]…days ago, the citizens of this great land decided who would have the privilege of leading our Nation for the next four years. It is a time-honored process reflecting both the wisdom and the power of the American people. Today, America honors the men and women whose profound acts of citizenship ”” service in the armed forces of the United States of America ”” have safeguarded our country for 237 years and guaranteed our rights as Americans to choose our leaders.

Twenty-two million living Americans today have distinguished themselves by their service in uniform. Their devotion and sacrifice have been the bedrock of our sovereignty as a Nation, our values as a people, our security as a democracy, and our offer of hope to those in other lands, who dream our dreams of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

For the past 11 years, the men and women of our armed forces have stood watch in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Europe, Korea, and more than 150 other countries around the globe. More than 1.5 million Veterans have served in the combat theaters of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa. Since 9/11, nearly 3 million Veterans have departed the military, having fulfilled their duty to the Nation, and become eligible for the benefits and services we offer here at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

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In a world tormented by tension and the possibilities of conflict, we meet in a quiet commemoration of an historic day of peace. In an age that threatens the survival of freedom, we join together to honor those who made our freedom possible. The resolution of the Congress which first proclaimed Armistice Day, described November 11, 1918, as the end of “the most destructive, sanguinary and far-reaching war in the history of human annals.” That resolution expressed the hope that the First World War would be, in truth, the war to end all wars. It suggested that those men who had died had therefore not given their lives in vain.

It is a tragic fact that these hopes have not been fulfilled, that wars still more destructive and still more sanguinary followed, that man’s capacity to devise new ways of killing his fellow men have far outstripped his capacity to live in peace with his fellow men.Some might say, therefore, that this day has lost its meaning, that the shadow of the new and deadly weapons have robbed this day of its great value, that whatever name we now give this day, whatever flags we fly or prayers we utter, it is too late to honor those who died before, and too soon to promise the living an end to organized death.

But let us not forget that November 11, 1918, signified a beginning, as well as an end. “The purpose of all war,” said Augustine, “is peace.” The First World War produced man’s first great effort in recent times to solve by international cooperation the problems of war. That experiment continues in our present day — still imperfect, still short of its responsibilities, but it does offer a hope that some day nations can live in harmony.

For our part, we shall achieve that peace only with patience and perseverance and courage — the patience and perseverance necessary to work with allies of diverse interests but common goals, the courage necessary over a long period of time to overcome…[a skilled adversary].

Do please take a guess as to who it is and when it was, then click and read it all.

Current approximate United States veteran population 22,234,000

World War II veterans 1.7 million

Korean War veterans 2.3 million

Peacetime only veterans 5.7 million

Gulf War veterans 5.9 million

Vietnam War Era veterans 7.4 million

(Please note–Categories are not mutually exclusive. Veterans may serve in multiple periods).

I highly recommend the 2012 Veterans Day Teacher Resource Guide. You may find a list of the wars there on page 17. Also helpful is this quick statistics at a glance.

Governor of Nations, our Strength and Shield:
we give you thanks for the devotion and courage
of all those who have offered military service for this country:

For those who have fought for freedom; for those who laid down their lives for others;
for those who have borne suffering of mind or of body;
for those who have brought their best gifts to times of need.
On our behalf they have entered into danger,
endured separation from those they love,
labored long hours, and borne hardship in war and in peacetime.

Lift up by your mighty Presence those who are now at war;
encourage and heal those in hospitals
or mending their wounds at home;
guard those in any need or trouble;
hold safely in your hands all military families;
and bring the returning troops to joyful reunion
and tranquil life at home;

Give to us, your people, grateful hearts
and a united will to honor these men and women
and hold them always in our love and our prayers;
until your world is perfected in peace
through Jesus Christ our Savior.

–The Rev. Jennifer Phillips

He stood for many years alone””he was long opposed, ridiculed, shunned””his doctrines were misrepresented””his little peculiarities of voice and manner were satirized””disturbances were frequently raised in his church or he was a person not taken into account, nor considered in the light of a regular clergyman in the church.

–as quoted in William Carus, Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. Charles Simeon (New York: Robert Carter, 1848), p.39

The agency of Satan in the affairs of man cannot be doubted by any one who really believes the representations given us in this inspired volume. His great employment from the very first has been to seduce men to sin.

—-Charles Simeon, Horae Homileticae MCCLXXVI

England, of course, is the nation that once gave us preachers the likes of Charles Simeon, Charles Spurgeon, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Now, with the rare and blessed exception of some faithful evangelical churches, preaching has fallen on desperate times.

Some observers of British life now estimate that in any given week Muslim attendance at mosques outnumbers Christian attendance at churches. That means that there are probably now in Britain more people who listen to imams than to preachers.

This raises an interesting question: Is the marginalization of biblical preaching in so many churches a cause or a result of the nation’s retreat from Christianity? In truth, it must be both cause and effect. In any event, there is no hope for a recovery of biblical Christianity without a preceding recovery of biblical preaching. That means preaching that is expository, textual, evangelistic, and doctrinal. In other words, preaching that will take a lot longer than ten minutes and will not masquerade as a form of entertainment.

Read it all.

He grew downward in humiliation before God, and he grew upward in his adoration of Christ.

Handley Moule captures the essence of Simeon’s secret of longevity in this sentence: “‘Before honor is humility,’ and he had been ‘growing downwards’ year by year under the stern discipline of difficulty met in the right way, the way of close and adoring communion with God” (Moule, 64). Those two things were the heartbeat of Simeon’s inner life: growing downward in humility and growing upward in adoring communion with God.

But the remarkable thing about humiliation and adoration in the heart of Charles Simeon is that they were inseparable. Simeon was utterly unlike most of us today who think that we should get rid once and for all of feelings of vileness and unworthiness as soon as we can. For him, adoration only grew in the freshly plowed soil of humiliation for sin. So he actually labored to know his true sinfulness and his remaining corruption as a Christian.

I have continually had such a sense of my sinfulness as would sink me into utter despair, if I had not an assured view of the sufficiency and willingness of Christ to save me to the uttermost. And at the same time I had such a sense of my acceptance through Christ as would overset my little bark, if I had not ballast at the bottom sufficient to sink a vessel of no ordinary size. (Moule 134f.)

He never lost sight of the need for the heavy ballast of his own humiliation. After he had been a Christian forty years he wrote,

With this sweet hope of ultimate acceptance with God, I have always enjoyed much cheerfulness before men; but I have at the same time laboured incessantly to cultivate the deepest humiliation before God. I have never thought that the circumstance of God’s having forgiven me was any reason why I should forgive myself; on the contrary, I have always judged it better to loathe myself the more, in proportion as I was assured that God was pacified towards me (Ezekiel 16:63). . . . There are but two objects that I have ever desired for these forty years to behold; the one is my own vileness; and the other is, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ: and I have always thought that they should be viewed together; just as Aaron confessed all the sins of all Israel whilst he put them on the head of the scapegoat. The disease did not keep him from applying to the remedy, nor did the remedy keep him from feeling the disease. By this I seek to be, not only humbled and thankful, but humbled in thankfulness, before my God and Saviour continually. (Carus, 518f.)

Please do read it all.

In closing, permit me to highlight three areas of Simeon’s ministry which have greatly challenged me in my reflections and which, if we were to follow them, would have the potential to rejuvenate our ministry.

1 Giving priority to an effective devotional lifestyle, with a commitment to spending ”˜quality’ time in Bible study and prayer.

2 A commitment to living a holy life, recognizing the need of the renewing and cleansing power of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.

3 That, along with Simeon, our understanding of the purpose of our preaching would be: ”˜Sir, we would see Jesus’ (John 12:21).

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O loving God, who orderest all things by thine unerring wisdom and unbounded love: Grant us in all things to see thy hand; that, following the example and teaching of thy servant Charles Simeon, we may walk with Christ in all simplicity, and serve thee with a quiet and contented mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

O Eternal God, our heavenly Father, who hast given to us thy children an abiding citizenship in heaven, and, in the days of our pilgrimage, a citizenship also upon earth: Give us thine aid, as we journey to that heavenly city, so faithfully to perform the duties which befall us on our way, that at the last we may be found worthy to enter into thy rest; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The word of the LORD that came to Joel, the son of Pethu’el: Hear this, you aged men, give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers? Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten. Awake, you drunkards, and weep; and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth. For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and without number; its teeth are lions’ teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vines, and splintered my fig trees; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white. Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth. The cereal offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD. The priests mourn, the ministers of the LORD. The fields are laid waste, the ground mourns; because the grain is destroyed, the wine fails, the oil languishes. Be confounded, O tillers of the soil, wail, O vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley; because the harvest of the field has perished. The vine withers, the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are withered; and gladness fails from the sons of men. Gird on sackcloth and lament, O priests, wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because cereal offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.

–Joel 1:1-13

Dr Welby, currently the Bishop of Durham, was ordained in 1992 after a successful career as an oil industry executive.
He was working in the small Warwickshire town of Southam when he was headhunted for his role on church peace missions, which set him on the road to Lambeth Palace.
Canon Andrew White, who led the International Centre for Reconciliation at nearby Coventry Cathedral, talent-spotted Welby after visiting him at his vicarage.
Canon White, who is now based in Baghdad, said: ”˜It was obvious that he was of a different calibre from everyone else. He was a man who could make things happen.

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Hearing, in short, is easy. You and every other vertebrate that hasn’t suffered some genetic, developmental or environmental accident have been doing it for hundreds of millions of years. It’s your life line, your alarm system, your way to escape danger and pass on your genes. But listening, really listening, is hard when potential distractions are leaping into your ears every fifty-thousandth of a second ”” and pathways in your brain are just waiting to interrupt your focus to warn you of any potential dangers.

Listening is a skill that we’re in danger of losing in a world of digital distraction and information overload.

And yet we dare not lose it. Because listening tunes our brain to the patterns of our environment faster than any other sense, and paying attention to the nonvisual parts of our world feeds into everything from our intellectual sharpness to our dance skills.

Read it all.

The Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) warmly welcomes the appointment of the Right Revd Justin Welby to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. We recognize in him a man of deep devotion to God, exceptional intellectual and leadership qualities, and a range of experience which like the Prime Minister we see as a breath of fresh air for the Church’s ministry to real people facing the demanding situations and decisions of contemporary life.
In the run up to the appointment much has been made of Justin Welby’s old Etonian background, and his limited experience as a bishop, as if these factors would automatically disqualify him for this most senior role. Yet anyone who knows him recognizes his excellent and non prejudicial way with people of all kinds of backgrounds, and his wide-ranging hands on experience in all aspects of practical church ministry as a parish priest, residentiary canon, Dean of Liverpool, and his most recent post as Bishop of Durham. Add to that his experience in the oil industry in Paris and London, in Coventry his expertise in reconciliation, and his knowledge of ethics and finance about which he has written widely, all this spells a fresh and relevant additional skill set for the many challenges which will face him in his new role as Archbishop.

We’re glad as a recognition of his orthodoxy, the wider Anglican Communion is already welcoming the new Archbishop’s appointment. Significantly also his experience in Africa has been welcomed by one of Nigeria’s most prominent Muslim politicians, which says much about Justin’s Welby’s interpersonal and communication abilities, and is also hopeful perhaps for some contribution to reconcilliation in the troubled relationships between Nigeria’s Christians and Muslims.

Clearly this is a man committed firmly to the message of the Bible, and truth and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to transform persons, communities and the nation. He, Caroline and their five children deserve the commitement of all our prayers. This is a good moment for our church and nation, and the wider world too. It’s a good moment also, to thank God, and pray that he will pour forth his blessing on his modest but gifted servant, Justin Welby that he may in the grace of God lead this Church of England out of its present moribund state to have a significant impact for Christ and the gospel on all the communities of our nation.