By his own admission, San Antonio youth minister Gavin Rogers has a knack for making his parents worry.

In 2012, as minister to youth and families at Trinity Baptist Church, he observed Lent by living as a homeless person, dodging cops, sleeping under bridges and wrestling with hunger.

Rogers, 31, has pushed the envelope of parental stress again, this time by making a five-day visit to Egypt just a few weeks after violent, deadly riots swept over the nation.

“When I told my parents about the homeless journey, my mom was really worried,” Rogers said. “With this one, my dad wasn’t too happy.”

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THE decision by the Church Commissioners to join a new banking consortium marks a new hands-on approach to investment, the Commissioners’ Secretary and chief executive, Andrew Brown, said this week.

Mr Brown spoke to the Church Times after the banking giant Royal Bank of Scotland…announced that a Commissioners’ backed consortium had been selected as the preferred bidder for 314 of its branches, which will be spun off from the bank to comply with European Union state-aid regulations. The plan is for a new ethical bank under the old Williams & Glyn’s brand.

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Young Christians need encouragement to see their calling as scientists as a valuable Christian vocation. Though there are painful exceptions, the work environment for most Christian students in science today is not hostile. In fact, there are many young Christians in training in the sciences. Christian fellowship groups for graduate students are beginning to form and flourish on many campuses, and a large percentage of these Christian graduate students and postdocs are scientists.

It is during these formative years that young scientists are faced with some weighty decisions. For example: What kind of thesis research should I pursue? My advisor has asked me to do fetal tissue experiments; should I refuse and risk my position in graduate school? (This really happened to one student.) How do I explain my faith to my advisor and my fellow graduate students? Wouldn’t it be more valuable to God for me to join some of my Christian friends who are planning careers as evangelists or in direct ministry to the poor rather than to spend my life, for example, evaluating molecular spectra? Traditional Christian churches and circles do not always recognize the unique environment that the young Christian scientist faces. Science is sometimes viewed with misunderstanding and suspicion or ignored as unspiritual. These reactions are discouraging to young people who want to choose a career path that glorifies God. Hearing encouraging talks from older Christian scientists can be a great encouragement to younger people seeking guidance.

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Most high, omnipotent, good Lord, grant unto thy people grace to renounce gladly the vanities of this world; that, following the way of blessed Francis, we may for love of thee delight in thy whole creation with perfectness of joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O God, who hast made the earth so fair, and written thy glory in the heavens: Help us inwardly to respond to all that is outwardly true and beautiful, so that as we pass through things temporal we may never lose the vision of the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Of old thou didst lay the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They will perish, but thou dost endure; they will all wear out like a garment. Thou changest them like raiment, and they pass away; but thou art the same, and thy years have no end.

–Psalm 102:25-27

The little-reported fact is that TEC has filed more than 80 lawsuits seeking to seize the property of individual parishes and dioceses that left the denomination. TEC itself has admitted to spending more than $22 million on its legal action. These efforts have largely succeeded when TEC attempts to seize the property of individual parishes. Parishes across the country have been evicted from their churches.

TEC’s policy is simple and punitive: No one who leaves TEC may buy the seized church buildings. In several cases where TEC has succeeded in seizing a church, it has evicted the congregation and shuttered the building. In some cases, the church has been handed over to remnant groups that remained loyal to TEC. In other cases, the church has been sold to another religious group.

However, TEC has had less success with the lawsuits it has filed against dioceses. Recently, an Illinois Circuit Court judge decided that TEC had no grounds to seize the endowment funds of the Diocese of Quincy. The Texas Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision supporting TEC over the separated Diocese of Fort Worth. And in South Carolina, a federal district court judge decided that the Circuit Court of South Carolina is the proper court to decide the fate of our property, upsetting TEC’s efforts to get the case heard by the federal judiciary.

Read it all from the Charleston Mercury, or alternatively here if that link does not work for you.

Richard Rodriguez begins his latest book, Darling, with an unfussy dedication to the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, a Catholic women’s group committed to helping the sick and destitute. This Baptism, if you will, is the first and surely the most straightforward indication within the book that Rodriguez intends to delve into his complex relationship with religion. Because though the path that lies beyond that dedication is weird and wonderful, readers will find that it’s far from a direct route.

Rodriguez says the impetus for Darling, a collection of 10 essays about spirituality, was the Sept. 11 attacks. While much of America turned into itself in the wake of the tragedy, searching for meaning and refuge in patriotism and familiarity, Rodriguez did the opposite. “It was in the weeks following the terrorist attacks of September 11 that I came to the realization that the God I worship is a desert God,” he writes in the first chapter. “It was to the same desert God the terrorists prayed.”

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Listen here if you wish to this service recorded yesterday

Introit: Holy is the true light (Gabriel Jackson)
Responses: Leighton
Psalms: 19 (Hopkins)
First Lesson: Hosea 14
Canticles: The ‘Great’ Service (Parry)
Second Lesson: James 2 vv14-26
Anthem: Give unto the Lord (Elgar)
Hymn: Let all the world in every corner sing (Luckington)
Organ Voluntary: Fantasia Op.136 (Bowen)

Explore in 360 degrees here

South Carolina Circuit Judge Diane S. Goodstein released her decision yesterday that the Episcopal Church (TEC) and its local remnant, the Episcopal Church in South Carolina (ECSC) cannot expand their counterclaims against the Diocese of South Carolina to include almost two dozen parishioners who voluntarily serve as diocesan Trustees and members of the Diocese’s Standing Committee.

In her decision, Judge Goodstein wrote, “This court finds that the individual leaders whom Defendants seek to join as Counterclaim Plaintiffs are entitled to immunity” under state law. She also wrote that “adding the additional defendants would be futile.”

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They’re rarely at worship services and indifferent to doctrine. And they’re surprisingly fuzzy on Jesus.

These are the Jewish Americans sketched in a new Pew Research Center survey, 62 percent of whom said Jewishness is largely about culture or ancestry and just 15 percent who said it’s about religious belief.

But it’s not just Jews. It’s a phenomenon among U.S. Christians, too.

Meet the “Nominals” ”” people who claim a religious identity but may live it in name only.

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“The Anglican Church in North America says that the Church’s mission is chiefly done through its mission agencies, and those agencies are chiefly local congregations. That’s how the transforming love of Jesus Christ reaches the local community. That’s how the transforming love of Jesus Christ reaches the nations.

What holds the Anglican Church in North America together? What’s the coherence? That’s the question I’m often asked, and the question I am going to answer.”

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Pope Francis’ highly publicized recent interview with an Italian Jesuit magazine has ushered in a new era for the Roman Catholic Church – an era of record levels of misinterpretation of the pontiff’s words, both by the liberal media and by conservative Catholics who have been grousing about Francis ever since he washed the feet of a Muslim girl during Holy Week….

In fact, Francis, as he made clear in his interview, isn’t likely to deviate from any aspect of traditional Catholic teaching. He reiterated that God doesn’t “condemn and reject” anyone, including gays, but loves them, is cognizant of the pain they feel and yearns for them to repent of their sins and confess them. The very day after the interview was published, Francis, in an audience with Catholic gynecologists, vociferously denounced abortion as a symptom of today’s “throwaway culture.”

But that is in some ways beside the point. The Catholic Church really is changing, although not exactly in the fashion liberals would like. The church is changing because the world itself is changing. The hegemony of the West, technologically advanced but in demographic, economic, cultural and religious decline, may well be over.

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Biologist Louis Burnett had to move his lab students to a conference room across the parking lot at Fort Johnson. His federal lab, animals and cell cultures are under lock and key.

Burnett’s dilemma is a case example of the ripple effect of the ongoing federal shutdown. As the shutdown enters its third day, the clock keeps ticking insistently for any number of people who don’t work for the federal government but find themselves on the outs because of the political standoff.

Burnett is a research professor at the College of Charleston. But like others in a cadre of college and state researchers, he collaborates on studies, shares office space and makes use of the equipment at the Hollings Marine Lab and the Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research.

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What comes into your head when you hear the word “pilgrim” ”“ not, admittedly, a frequent occurrence these days? For some it may be the Pilgrim Fathers and the Mayflower, but for many it must be: “Hobgoblin nor foul fiend/Shall him dispirit”, or some other lines from John Bunyan’s great hymn ”“ “Who would true valour see/Let him come hither”¦”, which actually has an alternative first line, “He who would valiant be”¦” Anyone brought up in one of our Protestant churches will have sung that hymn, To Be a Pilgrim. As a child I always used to belt out the hobgoblin and foul fiend line, albeit tunelessly. Even today it’s a favourite, and sometimes appropriate, funeral hymn.

Now, a group in the Church of England is so concerned about the seeping away of our inherited Christian culture that, alarmed by the discovery that even the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments are unfamiliar to many, it is offering parishes what it calls “the Pilgrim Course” to teach “the basic tenets of Christianity”. “Give us each day our daily bread”, as you might say.

This seems an excellent idea, whether you are a believer and practising Christian or not.

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Having young Anglicans arrange and run their own camps could be the answer to an ageing Church population, according to a Japanese bishop.

Bishop of Kobe The Rt Revd Andrew Yatuka Nakamura, told ACNS that his diocese is seeing more young people going on to ordained ministry, which goes against the general trend in Nippon Sei Ko Kai (the Anglican Communion in Japan).

“We’re likely facing the same problem as other provinces of the Anglican Communion; an age problem,” he said, “and a lack of young people and children in the church. The congregation is generally 60 to 70 years of age.”

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‘When I say I’m a church recorder, people often look blank,” says Adrian Parker. “Others,” he adds with a chuckle, “seem to think I’m some sort of senior judge.”

It is a confusing moniker. When I first heard it, it conjured up an image of recorder players lining up alongside the choir in the church stalls. “I suppose there are worse titles,” concedes another of their number, Matt Smith, “but at least it intrigues people and that gets them asking more about what we do.”

Parker and Smith are both church recorders in the King’s Lynn area of north Norfolk. What they actually do is volunteer one morning a week to go along to a local historic church (of which Norfolk boasts more than its fair share) and compile for posterity a complete inventory in words and pictures of its fabric and internal furnishings.

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If you can hear church bells ringing in Manly on Sunday night, the NRL premiership trophy is likely on its way back to the northern beaches.

Reverend Bruce Clarke from St Matthew’s Anglican Church in Manly has cancelled his regular Sunday night service and will transform the house of God into an Eagles nest as a live viewing site for this year’s grand final.

More than 300 people are expected to flood into the church to watch the Sea Eagles do battle against the Sydney Roosters. It will be the second time in three years the church has cancelled its Sunday night service for a Manly grand final.

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Even though its most virulent critics raise the spectre of “Canadian-style” health care, “Obamacare” does little to change the enduring differences between the two health care system. What, exactly, does “Obamacare” look like compared to Canada?…

Not cost containment: The sharpest critics of Obamacare argue it does little to address the fundamental challenge of cost control. The new law includes a review of Medicare reimbursement and the expansion of Accountable Care Organizations to reward cost-effective care. But it doesn’t grapple in a systematic fashion with the overall inefficiencies in health care delivery and financing, the administrative burden of multiple payers, providers and plans, and the cost pressures of defensive medicine. Governments in Canada know that health care is a searing financial responsibility, but they have at their disposal cost containment measures ”“ monopoly fee negotiations with providers, global budgets for hospitals ”“ that remain unfathomable in the American context.

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A state university has become the first in Alabama to offer a faith-based dorm to students who meet certain requirements, such as a 2.5 GPA and a letter of recommendation from a minister or other community leader.

The dorm, which opened in August at Troy University, has brought both praise and criticism.

“Over time, our students indicated in surveys that their interest in faith and spiritual issues is very high compared to students across the land,” said John W. Schmidt, Troy’s senior vice chancellor for advancement and external relations. In building the dorms, Schmidt said, the university was “meeting a need for student housing but also satisfying some of our student requirements.”

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The change at St. James Church in Sonora is in some ways a microcosm of messy Anglican realignment and both the stark theological differences and litigation that usually accompany it.

The historic “red church” of St. James in the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin was turned over to the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin in July. Known for bold color and architecture, St. James is also the oldest standing Episcopal Church building in California, constructed in 1859.

The congregation of St. James’ joined the majority of the Episcopal (Now Anglican) Diocese of San Joaquin in departing the Episcopal Church in 2007 over theological differences and the direction of the U.S.-based Episcopal Church. After temporarily coming under the oversight of the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone (South America), San Joaquin Anglicans later helped establish the Anglican Church in North America in 2009.

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Teach us, O gracious Lord, to begin our works with fear, to go on with obedience, and to finish them in love, and then to wait patiently in hope, and with cheerful confidence to look up to thee, whose promises are faithful and rewards infinite; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.3This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to our food and drink? 5 Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Who tends a flock without getting some of the milk?

Do I say this on human authority? Does not the law say the same? For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not speak entirely for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of a share in the crop. If we have sown spiritual good among you, is it too much if we reap your material benefits? If others share this rightful claim upon you, do not we still more?

Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have any one deprive me of my ground for boasting.

–1 Corinthians 9:1-15

‘Capitalism With A Human Face’ was the title of a well-known book written by Sir Samuel Brittan, a leading economic commentator, shortly before the year 2000.

Sadly, the financial calamities of the first decade of the 21st century have revealed that ”“ sometimes at least ”“ capitalism has a very far from human face. Indeed, more than occasionally it has seemed to have the countenance of a monster.

But now, under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, it looks as though the Church of England is attempting to give capitalism the opportunity to develop a new appearance ”“ even a Christ-like face.

The start of this month has seen the news that Justin Welby is hoping to draw up a ten-year action plan with the aim of forcing payday lenders such as Wonga out of business.

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Days after the attack, a man who manages a clothing store in the Westgate Mall sorts through damaged shoes, shirts and ties. He’s visibly shaken from his trip back into the place he escaped under gunfire. Much of the damaged clothing is from bullet holes.

“These are all waste now,” he says. “Even it if it is small hole, it is waste.” He says there’s no insurance for a terrorist attack, and some of the most expensive suits and shoes are missing.

Other shop owners reported Rolex watches, diamond jewelry and mobile phones looted, allegedly by Kenyan soldiers during the fight against the terrorists. The allegations have shaken people in Nairobi, who just a week ago were hailing the soldiers as heroes.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has sent a message of support to an anti-human trafficking conference organised by the Christian organisation Hope for Justice.

In a message sent to the Hope Conference 2013, which took place last Friday and Saturday in Leicester, Archbishop Justin said that trafficking was ‘one of the greatest scandals and tragedies of our age’. He prayed that the conference ‘might help to transform awareness, as the world urgently needs to wake up to the scale of human trafficking that is modern day slavery’.

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I write to you at a time when the question of the values that underpin society are under active discussion in Quebec in response to the proposed Charter of Quebec Values. The churches of Synode Montréal & Ottawa Conference are in my prayers, as are all the people in Quebec in all their diversity.

The debate about the charter offers our church the opportunity to clearly express its values and beliefs””to state publicly our commitment to creating inclusive and respectful communities with our neighbours of all faiths and of no faith. Therefore, I am grateful to Synode Montréal &Ottawa Conference for its open letter to Quebec Premier Pauline Marois and to Montreal Presbytery for its news release on the matter. I am aware that Quebec-Sherbrooke Presbytery and the Consistoire Laurentien are also discussing responses.

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Here is a sampling of the thoughts of the 94-year-old evangelist in his newest book:

Sin

“The truth is that every last one of us is born in sin, and while some may not think of themselves as sinners, God does. He hears every word we utter and knows the deepest secrets we lock away in the vaults of our hearts.”

”˜Trendy religion’

“Many churches of all persuasions are hiring research agencies to poll neighborhoods, asking what kind of church they prefer; then the local churches design themselves to fit the desires of the people. True faith in God that demands selflessness is being replaced by trendy religion that serves the selfish.”

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….before taking part in the elaborate liturgy, Hougland and Jefferts Schori took a tour Friday of Grand Rapids landmarks: historic St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Heartside Ministry and a luncheon at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. They also got an up-close glimpse of ArtPrize in the full glory of a classic Michigan autumn.

All of it assured Hougland he made the right choice in choosing Grand Rapids as his home along with his wife, Dana, an educator and autism specialist.

“This is a beautiful part of the world,” Hougland said in an interview at St. Andrew’s. “I had no idea how wonderful western Michigan is.”

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