In 1995, Mark Noll opened his The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind with an unflattering observation: “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”

Now, almost two decades later, has anything changed? In a new roundtable video, three Christian higher education presidents””Michael Lindsay, Albert Mohler, and Philip Ryken””consider evidences of a recovered and maturing evangelical mind in the years since Noll’s landmark work.

“We’re no longer trying to prove ourselves, trying to get a seat at the table,” observes Lindsay, president of Gordon College in Massachusetts. “I think evangelicals have demonstrated they can do the highest level of scholarship in fields like history, philosophy, and sociology.”

Read it all and watch the video also.

Blot out, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord, our past transgressions; forgive our negligence and ignorance, our mistakes and misunderstandings; and uplift our hearts to thee in new love and dedication; that unburdened from the grief and shame of past faithlessness, we may henceforth serve thee with renewed courage and devotion; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

A Song of Ascents. Of David. O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother’s breast; like a child that is quieted is my soul. O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and for evermore.

–Psalm 131

A proposal from Sen. Susan Collins is emerging as one potential way to dig lawmakers out of a government shutdown and possibly also avoid a potentially catastrophic debt default.

The moderate Maine Republican, whose vote will be essential to any fiscal deal, is circulating a rough plan to reopen the government, repeal the medical device tax and provide agencies with greater flexibility in implementing the sequester. The initial reception has been positive and may be the beginnings of a bipartisan solution to end the intractable impasse between House Republicans and Senate Democrats.

Collins said Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who are also being watched as potential GOP votes to end the fiscal standoff, have signed onto the proposal. And Collins said she has spoken to “several Democrats” about her plan, which she hopes “at least provides concepts that could be the basis for us reopening government.”

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As the government shutdown enters its second week, some religious groups are starting to feel the pinch, and they’re also finding ways to reach out.

More than 90 Catholic, evangelical and Protestant leaders have signed a statement rebuking “pro-life” lawmakers for the shutdown, saying they are “appalled that elected officials are pursuing an extreme ideological agenda at the expense of the working poor and vulnerable families” who won’t receive government benefits.

Starting Wednesday, evangelical, Catholic and mainline Protestant leaders will hold a daily “Faithful Filibuster” on Capitol Hill with Bible verses on the poor “to remind Congress that its dysfunction hurts struggling families and low-income people.”

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The United States is a great place. From New York to Los Angeles and covering everything in between, the U.S. boasts unprecedented diversity, natural wonder and opportunity. Americans love freedom so much, they have hot dog-eating contests on Independence Day to prove it. And good luck finding something better than a cronut.

Despite that general awesomeness, though, the U.S. isn’t the best at everything. That’s not dinging the land of the free and the home of the brave for no reason, but rather, to say that Europe just does some things better.

Here are a few arenas where the U.S. could learn a thing or two from the old country.

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The 2012 office and working costs of bishops in the Church of England are published today. Figures for individual bishops were first published, for the year 2000, in December 2001.

The costs of their offices and the work of the bishops for 2012 was £20.0 million compared to a cost of £19.5 million in 2011, an annual increase of 2.5%.

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Mary MacGregor, who heads the diocese’s Iona School, said programs like theirs and the Bishop Kemper School are what the church needs. She noted that in the Diocese of Wyoming, one of the Iona partners, 90 percent of their priests are bivocational. And the need for local education programs will only grow, she said.

“This is the movement that is going on in the church. There will be more internal schools in the Episcopal Church,” she said. And while quality content is essential, it isn’t the only requirement, she said. “We have to have a mix of quality, accessibility and do-ability.”

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The Archbishops says he will now carefully consider his position….if you take the first part of the resolution – it says the diocese ‘recognises diversity within the diocese of Perth, both in our sexual identities and our theologies of human sexuality’.

“What I said last time is that I thought that this was theologically flawed. I am speaking to you as a human person made in the image of God. I don’t see you or engage with you on the basis of your sexual identity.

“The other big issue for me, with the royal commission [into child abuse] clearly attentive to how we use language and words, what this resolution says is that I must formally accept people with an open ended recognition of diverse theologies on sexual identity.

“I think we have to be very careful there….”

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there are 15 slides in all–check them out (and note there is an autoplay slideshow option).

It is the first time that a royal christening has been marked with coins.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s son will be christened on 23 October, just over three months after his birth.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, will perform the christening at the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace.

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It has been almost six months since the Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and left many others horribly injured. the phrase, “Boston strong” with are heard a lot in the days after the tragedy. and recently we saw just how strong are some of them who took the next big steps in their lives….

Watch it all.

The death [of the] Archbishop (Emeritus) brings into focus the role of the church in community empowerment and mobilization. In the history of the Bible whenever God anointed a king, he also anointed a prophet; King Saul had Prophet Samuel while King David had Prophet Nathan. These two institutions worked hand in hand also ensuring that the leadership was held to account. Even today, God continues to call leaders into both offices. The late Archbishop Gitari was the Nathan and the Samuel of our time. He was called at a time when the government of the day needed to be put into check.

He did not hesitate to boldly criticize the government from the pulpit along with fellow clergymen such as Reverend Dr. Timothy Njoya, late Bishop Henry Okullu and late Bishop Alexander Muge. He carried the hearts of many Kenyans and was never afraid to speak his mind when the government went wrong. As such he was a true defender of democracy and a man who stood his ground on what he saw as oppressive and dictatorial leadership.

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The formula never changed: demand discipline, emphasize recruiting and increase resources. It was simple, but it also worked.

At Southern Illinois, Kill & Company saved a program on the verge of being dropped. They beat Indiana on the road. Kill drove into the rural communities near Southern Illinois and persuaded fans to return, one handshake at a time. When Mike Reis, the Salukis’ veteran play-by-play announcer, spent weeks in the hospital for colon surgery, Kill visited daily. When the university offered him a raise, he spread the money among his assistants.

At Northern Illinois, Kill and his crew replaced Joe Novak and began another turnaround. In his interview, Kill told Novak and Jim Phillips, now the athletic director at Northwestern, about the seizures and said he had a handle on them. Phillips said Kill’s health did not factor “an iota” into his decision.

Even then, a Big Ten job seemed far away. What school would take that kind of chance?

Read it all (Hat tip: Elizabeth Harmon).

The key question, however, is: Does this correction fundamentally alter the point of the story — that shortly after his election, Francis experienced some sort of brush with the divine that gave him a sense of peace?

The answer would appear to be no, and we have confirmation from at least two other sources.

First, I published a column Friday in which I quoted a cardinal on background (not an American) who recently had a private session with Francis. This cardinal said he’s been struck by the more freewheeling and spontaneous style Francis has demonstrated as pope in comparison to the fairly restrained and shy manner he exhibited in public in Argentina, and he told me he had said to the pope point-blank, “You’re not the same guy.”

According to the cardinal, the pope’s reply was more or less the following: “When I was elected, a great sense of inner peace and freedom came over me, and it’s never left me.”

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The Church of England has launched a fierce attack on the government, describing limited resources devoted to training religious education teachers as a scandal that is affecting “an essential part” of every child’s studies.

In an outburst that reflects the church’s deepening unease at the government’s perceived lack of support for the teaching of RE, it singled out the education secretary, Michael Gove, for implicit criticism, calling on him to work with religious leaders to improve the level of teaching in what is a core subject in the national curriculum.

The criticism comes as a damning Ofsted report, published… [recently], finds that more than half of all schools have been failing pupils in their religious education, a subject that the watchdog claims is increasingly important “in an ever more globalised and multicultural 21st century” because of the way it promotes respect and empathy.

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The small, quiet town in Fairfield County is a world away from the streets of Dorchester, but the two communities are, in a sense, linked: Both mourn the innocent children they have lost to gun violence.

Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, saw that connection when he and his staff were putting together a day of workshops aimed at helping church members ”” including many small-town dwellers and suburbanites ”” find ways to help end violence, part of the B-PEACE for Jorge campaign.

“When Newtown happened, it was three months after Jorge’s death, and it was so clear to all of us that this was not something that just happens in the city,” Shaw said in an interview in his office last month. “This happens everywhere.”

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Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that this day we may be dedicated to thy service, and may be used for thy glory and the good of thy Holy Name, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we should not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

–1 Corinthians 11:26-32

The Church of England today welcomed the decision by the Scout movement to keep a “Duty to God” in its core promise introduce and to introduce an additional alternative promise for those without a religious faith.

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Interested in church leadership? In changing not only conversation in our culture, but the way we converse? Ever wonder why changing leaders or programs often does not change results?

Episcopal Church executive Dr. Kay Collier McLaughlin has the answers and she’s sharing them in her new book, Becoming the Transformative Church.

“In all human relationships, from family to friendships to organizations, there is one thing that matters,” said McLaughlin, “and that how one person’s behavior impacts another. When all of the foundational theories and all of the advice books are culled down to the most basic issue, it all has to do with how we treat each other. Not how we think we treat each other. Not how we mean to treat each other. But how the other party or parties experience our behavior.”
– See more at: http://pressreleases.religionnews.com/2013/10/08/bluegrass-church-executive-launches-new-book-leadership/#sthash.4lLqjVqO.dpuf

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For most of us Ember Days go unno­ticed. With the excep­tion of sem­i­nar­i­ans writ­ing let­ters to bish­ops telling them of their progress, Ember Days have all but dis­ap­peared in the life of the Church. Even in farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing closer to the earth and to the cycles of seed-time, vin­tage and har­vest there is pre­cious lit­tle atten­tion given to Ember days. Such is our loss; for knowl­edge of the sea­sons has much to teach us and not just for lessons about the soil. Last week on Sep­tem­ber 18th, 20th, and 21st the Church’s cal­en­dar rubrics noted what used to be the “vin­tage” Ember days””that is the sea­son of the grape har­vest. As a native Cal­i­forn­ian I remem­ber it well””the grape har­vest that is not the Ember days.

What brought this to mind was our lat­est dioce­san Clergy Day. Not that we in the Dio­cese of South Car­olina are in what I would call a “vin­tage season”””though cer­tainly some may feel this past year they have been like grapes in the wine press trod­dened and squeezed. No, as I looked out on the assem­bled broth­ers and sis­ters, rather than see­ing brethren in the vin­tage month, what came to mind was that more than a few had passed through or per­haps were still in a fal­low season.

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At an interfaith summer camp in northern New Jersey, two dozen children explored a swamp to learn how creatures depend on safe water.

In Southern California, a Unitarian Universalist congregation installed a dry well so water from its church rooftops drains into underground pipes to replenish the water table.

In Vermont, members of a Lutheran church removed cars and appliances that had been dumped in a nearby stream and restored its banks with local willows and oaks.

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The Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Accra, Rt. Rev. Dr. Daniel S. M. Torto, has condemned excessive alcoholism among Christians, especially Anglicans, in public.

According to the Who Health Organisation (WHO), the harmful use of alcohol results in 2.5 million deaths each year, and 320 000 young people, between the age of 15 and 29, die from alcohol-related causes, resulting in 9% of all deaths in that age group.

Alcohol is the world’s third largest risk factor for disease burden; it is the leading risk factor in the Western Pacific and the Americas, and the second largest in Europe.

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“I walked in Wednesday night for a prayer meeting and the chairs were there, and they were beautiful,” she says. “I thought, ‘Nancy Shane, even at 68 years old, young woman, you can change.’ ”

She isn’t the only churchgoer being asked to take a stand on new Sunday seating arrangements. Pews have been part of the Western world’s religious landscape for centuries, but now a growing number of churches in the U.S. and U.K. are opting for chairs, sometimes chairs equipped with kneelers.

At bottom: churches want to trim remodeling costs, maximize space flexibility with stackable seating, or create a more approachable atmosphere to draw in unchurched young people.

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The Commonwealth Bank has frozen several of the Bathurst Anglican diocese’s accounts as it moves to recover as much of the $36 million debt owed as possible.

The sale of the Orange Anglican Grammar School and the Macquarie Anglican Grammar School in Dubbo, finalised last Monday, “crystallised” the amount of debt hanging over the head of the troubled diocese, according to Bishop Ian Palmer, but has left it in a “very difficult place”.

“I am unable to see clearly what the diocese may look like in the future,” Bishop Palmer said in a letter read out to parishes across the diocese.

“[The debt] is large and we cannot repay the bank in full.”

Read it all and the diocesan website is there.

The church synod voted by a two-thirds majority to call for legal acknowledgment of civil unions between people of the same sex.

Rector of Darlington-Bellevue Anglican parish, the Reverend Chris Bedding, presented the motion to the synod.

“We presented a motion saying that the Anglican Church and the Diocese of Perth would like to acknowledge that legal recognition of same-sex relations can coexist with legal recognition of marriage between a man and a woman,” he said.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury will visit Nairobi on 19 and 20 October as a guest of the Archbishop of Kenya, the Most Revd Eliud Wabukala.

The purpose of the visit, which has been arranged at short notice, is to be in solidarity with the Kenyan people following the attack on the Westgate shopping mall last month.

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One swing from No. 22’s bat could tie or win the game, a tantalizing proposition that grew more likely with each pitch from Mr. Rosenthal. The count moved to 3-0, and Mr. [Andrew] McCutchen showed great restraint by taking a strike.

“Because I knew he still had to come to me,” Mr. McCutchen said.

At 3-1, he liked his chances of being able to rifle a ball to right-center field. The pitch came to the outside, and he swung, uncorking those wrists through the hitting zone. But the wood simply did not touch enough of the ball.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-city/bucs-mvp-moment-was-not-to-be-706636/#ixzz2h7dXgwp8

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In September 2010, The New York City Leadership Center in partnership with Redeemer City to City hosted the inaugural Movement Day congress at Calvary Baptist Church in New York City. Since then, cumulatively 3,200 catalytic leaders representing Christian ministries, churches, businesses, seminaries, universities and foundations have convened at Movement Day to collaborate on urban ministry and leadership, to hear from the best Christian thinkers, to study effective models of urban Gospel Movements, and to find new ways to reach and renew metropolitan communities….

You can find out about it here and there. A good place to focus your prayers–KSH.