“Then the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.
Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.
For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them;
but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.
As the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.
But at midnight there was a cry, `Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’
Then all those maidens rose and trimmed their lamps.
And the foolish said to the wise, `Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’
But the wise replied, `Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’
And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast; and the door was shut.
Afterward the other maidens came also, saying, `Lord, lord, open to us.’
But he replied, `Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’
Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

–Matthew 25:1-13

A new federal report shows that the percentage of American high school students who smoke marijuana is slowly rising, while the use of alcohol and almost every other drug is falling.

The report raises concerns that the relaxation of restrictions on marijuana, which can now be sold legally in 20 states and the District of Columbia, has been influencing use of the drug among teenagers. Health officials are concerned by the steady increase and point to what they say is a growing body of evidence that adolescent brains, which are still developing, are susceptible to subtle changes caused by marijuana.

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The Christmas holiday brings peak attendance for most churches, and an increasing number of U.S. religious groups are using the boom time to wow parishioners with virtual choirs on YouTube and Instagram advent calendars.

More than 500 churches will stream Christmas sermons online this year, up from just a handful in 2007, said DJ Chuang, host of the Social Media Church, a podcast with church leaders about social media. Hundreds more started Instagram and Pinterest accounts this year to post photos of baptisms and quotes from the gospel, he said.

“Instagram is like the modern day stained glass window,” Chuang said. “They use it to tell the stories of the church.”

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…we might be able to glean some clues as to what was agreed, and what is being planned, by looking at communications sent by Bishops in response to letters sent in by clergy and laity expressing concern about the Pilling Report. Here is an extract from one such letter, from a senior Bishop to one of his clergy:

We’re entering a period of discussion. It starts with the House of Bishops meeting this week and goes on to the College of Bishops in January. Each diocese will also be formulating its own way of pursuing the conversation. We can’t pretend there’s no conversation to have; the Church of England has many mansions and we need to step out of our own mansion and entrust our thinking to one other.

So here it is. We will be entering the period of “indaba” ”“ or “facilitated conversation” advocated by the Pilling Report, and it will be done Diocese by Diocese, much as the discussions on women Bishops took place (see below). The vital subject of Christian teaching about sex and relationships will be decided by focus groups….

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Pageantmaster, a UK-based church commentator well known to Anglican Ink, has penned an evaluation of the situation within the inner councils of the Church of England ”“ and it is not a pretty sight.

Shortly before last week’s meeting of the House of Bishops of the Church of England, he wrote the fix was in:
…those persuaded that we are just having a ”˜conversation’ just need to note the way TEC was undermined using the same game plan. Justin under the guise of a sheep has got away with things Rowan never could have.

No that is the plan, and what unless the Evangelical Bishops are prepared to stand up and those others who are concerned, then that is what we are headed for – funded by TEC, organised with materials from US organisations used for the first Continuing Indaba – both in the CofE and the Communion.

It is a high risk policy. Certainly in the Global South the game has been rumbled, and it will break apart the Church of England.

How do I know it will break apart the Church of England? I have been watching it happen this week and reading peoples’ blogs as they explain what they are doing as they start to divide – including many who are in between. I grieve for that. It is heartbreaking.

Hubris, Disobedience, Deception – the Father of Lies is hard at work.

However, God is in charge, and I have seen Him move in power in answer to prayer in ways I could never have imagined, so please join me in prayer. Your will be done, O Lord.

2 John 1:1-11

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Last month marked the 50th anniversary of a bizarre day in history. Three men of significant importance each died on November 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy, author Aldous Huxley, and author and scholar C.S. Lewis.

On that day, the developed world (appropriately) halted at the news of the assassination of the United States’ 35th president. The front page of The New York Times on Saturday morning, the day after the tragic shooting, read, “Kennedy Is Killed by Sniper as he Rides in Car in Dallas; Johnson Sworn in on Plane,” and virtually every other news service around the world ran similar coverage and developed these stories for days and weeks following.

Huxley’s death, meanwhile, made the front page of The New York Times the day after Kennedy’s coverage began. The English-born writer spent his final hours in Los Angeles, high on LSD. His wife, Laura, administered the psychedelic drug during the writer’s final day battling cancer, honoring his wishes to prepare for death like the characters in his novels Eyeless in Gaza and Island. Huxley’s Brave New World depicts a haunting futuristic world where a sovereign, global government harvests its tightly controlled social order in glass jars; the Times obituary writer declared that Huxley’s well-known book “set a model for writers of his generation.”

The news of Lewis’s death, though, didn’t appear in print until Nov. 25, and it appeared in the normal obituary section of The New York Times weekday paper.

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For all of my cockiness about non-belief when I was young, I had a sneaking suspicion that as I grew older and the prospect of Crossing the Rainbow Bridge grew ever closer, I would start moving back to belief. Better take out an insurance ticket just in case God exists, although if He exists and turns out to be a Jehovah’s Witness then all bets are off. At least I will have the compensation of seeing the Pope trying to dig himself out of an even deeper hole than mine. The funny thing, however, is that as I grow older (I am now in my seventies), if anything my feeling that non-belief is right for me grows ever stronger. I am sure that at least in part it is psychological. Having had one headmaster in this life, I don’t want another one in the next. But I think my feeling is also bound up with what my work on the books on atheism have taught me, together with the insights of Clifford about the morality of belief. I truly don’t know if there is anything more, but that is okay. What would not be okay, morally, would be pretending that there was something more even though I didn’t really think there was adequate evidence, or conversely pretending that there is nothing more, perhaps rather pathetically trying to win the approval of today’s very public atheists.

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Christmastime in America’s megachurches is a middle-class utopia. Jesus’ coming rewards the faithful with more than enough, a whole-life prosperity that can be seen as much in the Xbox One under the tree as in the worship at the altar of children’s Christmas pageants. So much the better if your church can assemble a living Christmas tree or a nativity scene that doubles as a petting zoo.

But perhaps this has more to do with what Tewaldi, an Ethiopian refugee member of our evangelical Mennonite church, observed after his first year in Canada: “At this church, I can’t tell the difference between Good Friday and Easter.”

Coming out of the ceremonial richness of his Coptic background, Tewaldi couldn’t feel among us the liturgical lows of the Christian calendar. And so he couldn’t feel the highs either. The flattening effect of North American Protestantism came at a theological price. Without that temporal economy of up and down”” sanctified periods of celebration and discipline, light and darkness, feasting and fasting””it was hard to tell spiritual time at all.

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THE Church of England has been accused of falling short of what is needed by campaigners wanting a public inquiry into the extent of child abuse.

The Stop Church Child Abuse alliance, which represents church abuse survivor groups, said it had been informed by Bishop of Durham elect Paul Butler in a meeting last week that the Church of England would not support an independent inquiry into child sex abuse in the Catholic Church and Church of England.

The Church confirmed last night it would instead support a “wide ranging” public inquiry into institutional child abuse in the church and other key national institutions ”“ but not one specific to the churches.

Campaigners say this is a u-turn on the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s statement at the General Synod in July…

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Nine-in-ten Americans say they celebrate Christmas, and three-quarters say they believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. But only about half see Christmas mostly as a religious holiday, while one-third view it as more of a cultural holiday. Virtually all Christians (96%) celebrate Christmas, and two-thirds see it as a religious holiday. In addition, fully eight-in-ten non-Christians in America also celebrate Christmas, but most view it as a cultural holiday rather than a religious occasion.

…while about seven-in-ten Americans say they typically attended Christmas Eve or Christmas Day religious services when they were children, 54% say they plan to attend Christmas services this year.

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The distinctive mission of the Church of England, while based upon the principle of inculturation, cannot endorse uncritical acceptance of the totality of English culture. And yet it operates a territorial ”˜church in community’ type of ecclesiology which works with the state to define its worship, and through dioceses, parishes and chaplaincies to effect its pastoral care and compassionate service. Establishment commits the Church of England to full involvement in civil society and to making a contribution to the public discussion of issues that have moral or spiritual implications.

By concerning itself with the pastoral dimensions of wholeness and healing, the mission of the Church of England accords with people’s quest for meaning and an assurance of identity which cannot be found without community, without fellowship. Its fundamental weaknesses, in common with many churches in Europe, is its tendency to demand that people do not merely acknowledge the Lordship of Christ but also abandon their former way of life in favour of that of a peculiar middle-class sub-culture. Notwithstanding some of the excellent work going on in some of the most impoverished parishes in the country, the public perception of the Church of England remains one of middle-class privilege and an élitism which has little relevance to a modern, pluralist, multi-ethnic society.

And it is also one which has very little relevance to most gays and lesbians, and therein lies the missiological challenge.

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Michael O. Emerson’s review begins this way:

So you want to have a multiracial, multicultural church. Music, you decide, is an important vehicle to get there.

But what type of music? This is the core question of Gerardo Marti’s fascinating new book, Worship Across the Racial Divide: Religious Music and the Multiracial Congregation (Oxford University Press), and one that occupies the minds of many a Christian leader attempting to do multiethnic ministry.

Marti’s answer is shocking….It doesn’t matter what type(s) of music.

This one looks very interesting–check it out.

While plenty of baby boomers, born from 1946 to 1964, have become affluent and many elderly around the U.S. face financial hardship, the wealth disparity of this father and daughter is emblematic of a broad shift occurring around the country. A rising tide of graying baby boomers is less secure financially and has a lower standard of living than their aged parents.

The median net worth for U.S. households headed by boomers aged 55 to 64 was almost 8 percent lower, at $143,964, than those 75 and older in 2011, according to Census Bureau data. Boomers lost more than other groups in the stock market and housing bust of 2008, and many also lost their jobs in the aftermath at a critical point in their productive years.

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“So are we Anglican or Episcopalian?” people ask. The answer is ‘both’ as it’s always been. The word ‘anglican’ just means English or England, which is where the Church was birthed over 400 years ago, and where the titular head, the Archbishop of Canterbury, resides. And ‘episcopal’ refers to being governed by bishops. The Anglican Communion is similar to an umbrella with the many spokes representing all the “Episcopal” churches worldwide (Churchof England, TEC, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, Anglican Church of Australia, etc.). But the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina is in a unique position. We are no longer a part of TEC nor of any province in the
Anglican Communion.

However, we are closely linked to and approved of by many of the influential churches of Africa and Asia. Bishop Lawrence has said we will join a group such as ACNA only by vote of the Diocesan Convention, thus there will be no decision before 2015.

Read it all (page 12).

A lot of fun–watch it all (15 seconds).

I stood there with my wife, Sandra, in 2004 and whispered to myself: here is where God began to save the Anglican Communion.

We were visiting Kabare in the central western part of Uganda. We were there to take a look at an Anglican theological seminary, and visit the grave of Bishop Festo Kivengere a remarkable African leader whom I had slightly known. There, near the seminary in a grove of trees lies a natural amphitheater. On its curved hillside hundreds gathered in 1935 to hear an African layman preach powerfully about his conversion to Jesus Christ, his repentance from sin, his breakthrough to victory over recurrent wrong behavior, and his overflowing love for other believers regardless of denomination.

This event, continuously recalled in recurrent festivals right up to this day, sparked a revival that has left an indelible imprint on the worldwide Anglican Communion and continues to bear fruit today.

The preacher that day, Simeoni Nsibambi, had only recently met in Kambala with a missionary from England with a most improbable name: Dr. Joe Church. The two men met for several days, reading the Bible and praying together. They lamented the sad state of Christianity in Nsibambi’s home country of Rwanda, and elsewhere throughout East Africa.

Read it all from 2013.

“Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean,” wrote Algernon Charles Swinburne. “The world has grown grey with thy breath.” Where, I wonder, did the Victorian poet get this picture of a Christ who draws the color out of life? Then it occurs to me: from Christians. He drew the image from observing people like me.

Those who follow Jesus have done a good deal to propagate an image of Christ as the cosmic killjoy, the divine naysayer, who never met a delight he could not dull or a dream he could not puncture. Puritanism, the 20th-century writer H. L. Mencken famously quipped, is “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Puritans or not, Christians have done their part to vindicate his statement.

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show seven principal virtues.

The case in favour of four of them – the “pagan” or “aristocratic” or “political” virtues of courage, justice, temperance and prudence – was made by Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. In the early thirteenth century, St. Albert the Great summarized Cicero’s claim that every virtuous act has all four: “For the knowledge required argues for prudence; the strength to act resolutely argues for courage; moderation argues for temperance; and correctness argues for justice.” In sophisticated ruminations on the virtues until the eighteenth century, these four persisted – as, for example, in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments….

The other three virtues for a flourishing life, adding up to the principal seven, are faith, hope and love. These three so-called “theological” virtues are not until the nineteenth century regarded as political. Before the Romantics and their nationalism and socialism, they were thought of as achieving the salvation of an individual soul, as achieving the City of God, not a city of humans.

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Stir up our hearts, O Lord, we beseech thee, to prepare the way of thine only begotten Son; so that when he cometh we may be found watching, and serve thee with a pure and ready will; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

After this I looked, and lo, in heaven an open door! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up hither, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was in the Spirit, and lo, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne! And he who sat there appeared like jasper and carnelian, and round the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald. Round the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clad in white garments, with golden crowns upon their heads. From the throne issue flashes of lightning, and voices and peals of thunder, and before the throne burn seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God; and before the throne there is as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And round the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

–Revelation 4:1-8

Belgium’s Catholic bishops have criticised a parliamentary vote paving the way for sick children and dementia patients to choose euthanasia.

“The voices of religious leaders have plainly not been listened to,” said Jesuit Father Tommy Scholtes, bishops’ conference spokesman.

“While everyone wants a gentle death, public opinion appears unaware that euthanasia is a technical act that ends life abruptly. This is why we reject it and believe palliative care offers a better solution,” he told the Catholic News Service.

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The Religion Newswriters Association (RNA) in the United States has chosen the Top Ten religion stories of 2014. The online ballot of RNA members was conducted over the past weekend and announced on Monday.

Please guess what the ten are before you read it all.

Anyone seeking evidence of how the western mind is snapping shut and how insult is steadily replacing evidence and reason need only watch this instructive altercation on BBC TV’s Newsnight last night. Ostensibly a discussion about the efficacy or otherwise of drug courts, it fast descended into a row between actor and self-confessed former drug addict Matthew Perry and journalist Peter Hitchens over the nature of drug addiction itself.

Hitchens argued that addiction was not, as is almost universally assumed, a disease over which the sufferer has no control but a form of willed self-indulgence which drug users could end if they really wanted to do so enough. A controversial proposition, indeed, and surely one of which few have previously been made aware.

But Hitchens did not encounter scepticism and a reasoned counter-argument. Instead, an incredulous Perry scoffed at him as ”˜Santa’ and frothed that his argument was crazy, ”˜as ludicrous as saying Peter Pan was real’. All of this, however, merely served to highlight the fact that when asked for evidence to support his claim that addiction was an illness Perry could not do so, resorting instead to the lame response that ”˜doctors say it is’, that he himself was proof of his own argument and that addiction was an ”˜allergy of the body’ (eh?)

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Recently, LifeWay Research conducted a study on video venue/multisite churches. I have always been interested in this technology and the phenomenon of live-streamed sermons in churches in place of a present, physical preaching pastor. I have written about multisite churches before here, here, here, and other places as well.

In addtion to this research, I have reached out to Bob Hyatt and Geoff Surrat, two pastors who have helpful, however differing, views on multisite churches and their use of video preaching. Be sure to read both of their articles and learn from what each one of them thinks about video venues.

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When you think about Nelson Mandela, you probably think about freedom ”” free people, free country, free speech. What may be overshadowWhen Mr. Mandela was released from prison in 1990, he told his followers in the African National Congress that he believed in the nationalization of South Africa’s main businesses. “The nationalization of the mines, banks and monopoly industries is the policy of the A.N.C., and a change or modification of our views in this regard is inconceivable,” he said at the time.

Two years later, however, Mr. Mandela changed his mind, embracing capitalism, and charted a new economic course for his country.

ed by Mr. Mandela’s extraordinary legacy was his complicated journey to support free markets and a free economy.

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Thanks to Julia, I see how much being a good wife and a good friend to my husband is intrinsically linked to the feminine gifts I possess. While many might contend that Julia Child’s legacy lies in the gender stereotypes she broke, for me, her legacy shines through the feminine strengths she mastered. Like my grandmother, Julia would cook in the heels and pearls, always looking fabulous. Like my mother, she would make silly holiday cards and pound the meat with abandon. There is no contradiction, just a great woman.

While Tim Keller shows me that my femininity is a godly asset in my relationship with my husband, Julia demonstrates that feminine strengths come in all shapes and flavors. Together, they remind us life is most pleasurable when we extend those strengths to their fullest, particularly in marriage. Feminine expression is not something we do merely in anticipation of that day we don a white dress. Femininity is a gift through which we exemplify some of our Creator’s greatest strengths and have fun while we’re at it.

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“There is not and never will be a ”˜definitive’ interpretation of the coming of war: each writer can only offer a personal view”, Hastings contends. The three under review describe in ever more detail what it was like, but only consider in the most broad terms what the war was about and why Europe’s people engaged so wholeheartedly in it. After reading them, one despairs of ever being able to break the distorting lens of the Second World War that prevents our understanding the First. Churchill’s legacy in particular, both as Britain’s successful later war leader and as a contentious popular historian of the war in which he did conspicuously less well, remains pernicious.

The war’s course and outcomes were rooted in the events of 1914 ”“ the French victory on the Marne, Serbia’s repulse of Austria’s invasion, Russia’s defeat at Tannenberg, the Royal Navy’s hold on the North Sea and the decision to expand the British army. There is much more to be said, although it remains to be seen what impact extensive historical revisionism on popular motivation and the military conduct of the war, which has been developing for several decades, will have on the history wars. It does not seem to be riding the crest of the first wave, and perhaps it will not be until the centenaries have passed that a more nuanced understanding of the war will be established. Should Great War historians despair? Boredom may set in, and publishers may feel they have done enough by 1918. Until then, the revisionist view will certainly vie for credibility and acceptance with the over-familiar story vividly retold here. Hastings and Mallinson both acknowledge its existence and dabble with it, but there is an obvious reluctance to waver from familiar paths.

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Cue the giant FedEx trailers rumbling onto military bases stateside; or planes landing in the Middle East, Afghanistan or Guam. Their cargo is a precious one this time of year: thousands of Christmas trees donated by 450 tree farms across the United States.

All help put the spirit of the holidays front and center, in spite of circumstance.

This massive effort is organized by Trees for Troops, an organization that has given out more than 139,000 trees in the eight years they’ve been in existence — with FedEx traveling more than 475,000 miles to deliver them.

Read it all (Video highly recommended).

Not only did the British Columbia Court of Appeal rule recently to uphold the Criminal Code section banning assisted suicide and euthanasia, key parts of the majority decision echoed the actual words of pro-life intervenors in the case.

“To see the court reflect very closely the language we introduced in our oral arguments concerning the Charter values of the sanctity and dignity of human life is incredibly satisfying,” says Evangelical Fellowship of Canada legal counsel Faye Sonier.

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Those who see social robots as a dystopian threat to humanity therefore face a problem in acting on their belief. The reason they are a threat is that they may become superficially more attractive to us than other people. But that is also why it is hard to see how they can be stopped. I suppose one could imagine passing laws against humanoid looking robots working in the home. But such a law would be a rather pathetic defence of humanity. It would mean making a decision not only to reject our robot future, but also to reject our present commitment to the idea of a free society in which we allow our norms and values to evolve dynamically from the cumulative free choices of free individuals.

It’s hard to see how such a law, or anything else short of full blown Luddism, could prevent the development of robots that perform care and emotional labour outside the household (in hospitals, nursing homes, schools, customer service desks, brothels, restaurants, and so on). The technology would always be one short hop away from the home, and thus more or less immediately available if humanity’s suspicion of robots were ever to soften as we become more accustomed to relying on them in more and more situations.

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