When some of us think of Sunday school, we envision a group of children in child-size chairs listening to an adult read a Bible story. Behind them is a bulletin board filled with maps of the Holy Land and the children’s art work, with a chart on the wall boasting lines of gold stars for each child’s attendance. Everyone colors in a workbook and can’t wait to take home the handout that the teacher distributes.

The reality is much more varied and uncertain. As an editor and Christian formation specialist, I hear teachers report that “faithful families,” those that used to attend once a week, now attend only once or twice a month. The children are less willing to sit quietly listening to one adult and are eager, accustomed to and restless for programs that involve them in active, participatory roles. And no more two-sided text-heavy handouts. Any hands-on materials must compete or coordinate with technological and media entertainments. Now we see Sunday school curricula marketed with pop music CDs, cheesy videos, Internet companion sites and cheap trinkets””all to make the lesson entertaining and easy to use.

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Archbishop Justin visited HEAL Africa in Goma today with the Archbishop of Congo and the UK’s Minister for Africa, Mark Simmonds, to learn more about the devastating impact of sexual violence in conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and see how the Anglican Church is working to end it.

HEAL Africa, a hospital which provides medical, psychosocial, spiritual and economic support to survivors of sexual violence, is run in partnership with the Anglican Church of the Congo and Tearfund.

The Archbishop is on the final day of a week-long visit to Anglican leaders in South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda and the DRC.

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CHARLESTON, SC, February 6, 2014 ”“ The Diocese of South Carolina today asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to intervene in an appeal filed “primarily for the purpose of delay” by The Episcopal Church (TEC) and its local subsidiary, The Episcopal Church in South Carolina (TECSC).

TEC’s appeal challenges a lower court ruling on the process both sides may use in discovery leading up to a trial that will decide whether the denomination may seize South Carolina property, including churches and the diocesan symbols. The diocese argues that TEC is appealing a court order that is “unappealable”.

“[TEC and TECSC] are misusing the judicial system to delay resolution of this case,” says the diocese’s request for Supreme Court action. “Their strategy of appealing an interlocutory order is evidence of that intent. This is the same strategy that caused eight months to be wasted at the start of this case in federal court where they asked the federal court to override the state court injunction.”

How do Americans feel about the economy? That depends on how you ask.
A strong majority of Americans think the U.S. economy remains troubled, but they also are growing more optimistic about their personal financial situations, an NBC News/Marist Poll released Wednesday found.
About six in 10 Americans””up from 54% last July””say the U.S. is still in a recession, and 63% think the country is moving in the wrong direction. (Officially, the recession ended in June 2009.)

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The new Flow feature in Amazon’s mobile app epitomizes just how aggressively the retail giant is pressing its technological advantage to win the market for everyday merchandise. Need more ketchup or dish soap? Just aim your camera at the empty bottle. Suddenly your whole house is an Amazon showroom.

In a way, Flow is gimmicky: Most of this stuff has barcodes you could already scan at home, too. But every step Amazon takes to make buying smoother equals one more reason to skip a trip to the store. Says WIRED’s Roberto Baldwin: “It’s all part of the company’s goal to take you from ”˜I need that’ to ”˜I bought that’ in less than 30 seconds.”

That’s especially threatening to a store like CVS, which sells consumer packaged goods ”” commodity products that everyone else stocks, too. CVS can’t compete with Amazon on selection or price. It can’t even compete on consumer desire to see and feel before they buy: Do you really need to hold that tube of toothpaste? The only advantage left is getting something right when you want it ”” what retailers call the “top-off.” The closer Amazon gets to on-demand ”” imagine combing Flow with same-day delivery or vending machines ”” the more CVS loses its last justification for maintaining physical stores.

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O God, who by thy Spirit didst call Cornelius the Centurion to be the first Christian among the Gentiles: Grant to thy Church, we beseech thee, such a ready will to go where thou dost send and to do what thou dost command, that under thy guidance it may welcome all who turn to thee in love and faith, and proclaim the Gospel to all nations; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Blessed Lord, who for our sakes wast content to bear sorrow and want and death: Grant to us such a measure of thy Spirit that we may follow thee in all self-denial and tenderness of soul. Help us by thy great love to succour the afflicted, to relieve the needy, to share the burdens of the heavy laden, and ever to see thee in all that are poor and destitute; for thy great mercy’s sake.

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation which addresses you as sons? –“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are punished by him. For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time at their pleasure, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

–Hebrews 12:3-11

The outpouring of grief all around the country, but especially in the environs of New York City where “Phil” lived and worked, has been extraordinary and has, perhaps, taken some observers by surprise. The acute pain of my own grief has not abated for days; indeed, it has grown. I loved this actor beyond all others. There was a core of sensitivity and empathy at the heart of everything he did, even when playing the most unattractive characters. I was collecting his films, but in a desultory way, assuming that there was no particular urgency. Like many others who knew his work but not his personal story, I had no idea of the struggle he’d had. The idea that there will be no more performances is almost unbearable. He wasn’t just a “character actor,” though he certainly played a lot of characters; he had a range that, the more I think about it, was Shakespearean in its humanity. I can’t even name a favorite performance; it was true of him across the board (or boards). I was looking forward to whatever he did next; now we can only play his old movies and suffer our loss. Now we will never see him play King Lear, a dismal thought that has occurred to several theatre critics who have lamented in print.

James Lipton, dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York City, widely known as the creator and host of Inside the Actors Studio on Bravo, was interviewed by CNN (I think it was). I don’t remember ever seeing a scheduled television appearance at the time of a death that was so ferociously in the moment, not studied, not thought out ahead of time, just pure rage and grief. He seemed to be gripping the table (he may not have been, but it seemed that way) as he almost spat out his fury at “god-damned drugs.” He was liberal on most things, he said, but when it came to drugs he felt nothing but implacable opposition and hatred. It was good to hear that. We don’t hear it often enough. I remember when Amy Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning after years of drug abuse. Someone said, “She made bad choices.” As if a person in the throes of addiction has a choice! This isn’t about choices or “free will.” This is about the bondage of the will by demonic powers.

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Primates from across Africa are meeting in Lagos, Nigeria, this weekend to discuss the Church’s role in promoting stability across the continent.

The meeting has been organised by the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA) to enable Primates to “positively engage with each other in their various contexts of their calling, to become drivers of dialogue around pertinent issues in their respective countries.”

“Africa [is] a land of great promise but we are still riddled with all kinds of challenges,” said CAPA General Secretary, Canon Grace Kaiso. “The Church in my view is indispensable in finding solutions to Africa’s problems. So am anticipating some deep reflection to take place and clear mechanisms to be developed for the Primates to carry the agreed tasks forward….

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[Mark] Riley’s frustration is widely shared. More than one in six men ages 25 to 54, prime working years, don’t have jobs””a total of 10.4 million. Some are looking for jobs; many aren’t. Some had jobs that went overseas or were lost to technology. Some refuse to uproot for work because they are tied down by family needs or tethered to homes worth less than the mortgage. Some rely on government benefits. Others depend on working spouses.

Having so many men out of work is partly a symptom of a U.S. economy slow to recover from the worst recession in 75 years. It is also a chronic condition that shows how technology and globalization are transforming jobs faster than many workers can adapt, economists say.

The trend has been building for decades, according to government data. In the early 1970s, just 6% of American men ages 25 to 54 were without jobs. By late 2007, it was 13%. In 2009, during the worst of the recession, nearly 20% didn’t have jobs.

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Thou who hast made me see many sore troubles wilt revive me again; from the depths of the earth thou wilt bring me up again. Thou wilt increase my honor, and comfort me again. I will also praise thee with the harp for thy faithfulness, O my God; I will sing praises to thee with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel.

–Psalm 71:20-22

Come hear Baroness Cox live on Friday, February 7
7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Thy Kingdom Come – A Call to Action
Charleston Music Hall – 37 John Street

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There’s a strong possibility the fusillade from the UN panel may backfire, however, by blurring the cause of child protection with the culture wars over sexual mores.

In several sections of its report, the committee joins its critique on abuse with blunt advice to Rome to jettison Church teaching on matters such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and contraception. At one stage the panel even recommends repealing a codicil of Church law that imposes automatic excommunication for participating in an abortion.

Not only are those bits of advice deeply unlikely to be adopted, they may actually strengthen the hand of those still in denial in the Church on the abuse scandals by allowing them to style the UN report as all-too-familiar secular criticism driven by politics.

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While I doubt that pastors and leaders intentionally hang up the phone on individuals who disagree with them or lack power and influence, that’s often what the experience feels like. True diversity”“of race, gender, education, and economic means”“distributes power and creates a more balanced system. A church that invites a diverse group of individuals to govern it and then affirms their voices prevents toxic leaders from gaining inordinate power in the first place.

If you are part of a leadership team, look around the room and ask the simple question, “Who’s missing?” Are the diverse voices of the Body of Christ truly represented by your team? In addition to the “visible” minorities, have you made space for the single parent, the disabled, the elderly, or other folks who are often pushed to the margins?

When a leader or organization begins to exhibit symptoms of toxicity, our voices can serve as a powerful antibiotic. Silence often empowers toxic leaders. (This is not to imply that any abuse of power is the fault of the victim or that speaking up will necessarily go well. It often goes so poorly we may regret that we didn’t simply keep quiet.) By raising thoughtful questions”“What would be the long-term impact of that change be on our congregation?”“and sharing concerns”“I don’t think those expectations are realistic”“parishioners and co-leaders eliminate the possibility of silence being interpreted as agreement.

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An American family was able to live out their Olympic dream thanks to the generosity of their community.

Watch it all–heartwarming stuff.

Claiming that the mere thought is an “absolute nightmare,” WR 67c, a terrestrial planet from the distant Gamma Velorum star system, expressed its profound terror Wednesday at the possibility of one day gaining the capacity to sustain human life.

The 5.2-billion-year-old celestial body, which is located roughly 1,100 light years from Earth, said that for both its own sake and that of its entire solar system, it can only hope to never possess the necessary planetary characteristics and chemical elements needed to support either a deep-space human outpost or, more gravely, an entire human colony.

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It was the 1980s, the Cold War was at its height, the Russians were the enemy, and even today Nick cannot talk about the work he did during his four years at Government Communication Headquarters, except to say that it involved his skills as a Russian linguist.

Move forward three decades and that very same Nick Baines is now in a different job. He is in fact the Right Reverend Nicholas Baines, who this week has been announced as the new Bishop of Leeds and put in charge of the newest and biggest diocese in the whole of England. You have to admit, it’s quite the change.

As to how it happened, well that’s a big question.

Bishop Nick, as he is now known, was an active church member but it was his experience of GCHQ that made him question the world more deeply.

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A gentler way to conduct one of the most uncomfortable medical examinations may soon be available after a pill containing a camera that transmits images of internal organs was cleared for use.

The technology could avoid the need for hundreds of thousands of patients to have colonoscopies.

The device, created by the Israeli company Given Images, contains a tiny, battery-powered camera to help doctors to check for early signs of colon cancer.

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Don’t let all the suits and ties fool you. Almost everyone at Year Up has faced almost unimaginable hardship in getting here. Poverty, drugs, foster care, men’s and women’s shelters””you name it.

Gerald Chertavian: We are going into a professional skills course.

This all out corporate training blitz is the brainchild of Gerald Chertavian — a Wall Street veteran who believes that he’s discovered an untapped source of talent among the poorest in the country.

Gerald Chertavian: A majority of the young adults growing up in isolated poverty, in our inner cities, want opportunity, want to be challenged, want to be held to higher expectations, and are motivated to actually get a good job. They haven’t had any exposure as to how do you do that.

Read it all or watch it all.

Modern societies are still at the dawn of understanding what kind of news they need in order to flourish. For most of history, news was so hard to gather and expensive to deliver, its hold on our inner lives was inevitably held in check. Now there is almost nowhere on the planet we are able to go to escape from it. It is there waiting for us in the early hours when we wake up from a disturbed sleep; it follows us on board airplanes making their way between continents; it is waiting to hijack our attention during the children’s bedtime.

The hum and rush of the news has seeped into our deepest selves. What an achievement a moment of calm now is; what a minor miracle the ability to fall asleep or to talk undistracted with a friend; what monastic discipline would be required to make us turn away from the maelstrom of news and to listen for a day to nothing but the rain and our own thoughts.

We may need some help with what the news is doing to us: with the envy and the terror, with the excitement and the frustration; with all that we’ve been told and yet occasionally suspect we may be better off never having learnt. So I wrote a little manual that tries to complicate a habit that, at present, has come to seem a little too normal and harmless for our own good. In what follows, I play the role of my own interlocutor in order to make clear just why I believe this to be so urgent.

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Read it all and pray for Iraq this morning.

O God our Father, who art the source of strength to all thy saints, and who didst bring the holy martyrs of Japan through the suffering of the cross to the joys of life eternal: Grant that we, being encouraged by their example, may hold fast the faith that we profess, even unto death; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Look upon our lives, O Lord our God, and make them thine in Lithe power of thy Holy Spirit; that we may walk in thy way, faithfully believing thy Word, and faithfully doing thy commandments; faithfully serving thee, and faithfully serving our neighbour; to the furtherance of thy glorious kingdom, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Diocese of York

For thou, O Lord, art my hope, my trust, O LORD, from my youth. Upon thee I have leaned from my birth; thou art he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of thee.

–Psalm 71:5-6

Among 1,068 Canadian adults who go to church at least once a month:

29% say they set aside time daily to pray.
22% say they pray at a set time a few times a week.
18% say they rarely or never set aside time for prayer.
55% say they pray at the spur of the moment throughout the day.

Read it all and follow the links also.

“Theologian in residence” is a provocative term that raises many questions””questions about the relation of pastoral work to theology, about the expectations and responsibilities of clergy, about class and privilege and about how theology grows out of a place. Designating a person in a particular place whose primary role is to think about theology may seem like a luxury. But for the church, making room for such work may be a necessity.

At Eastminster Presbyterian in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Brian Madison has served as theologian in residence for five years. He preaches once a month, presides at communion twice a month and leads several classes for adults drawing on his work as a professor at Western Theological Seminary. Ann Conklin, the church’s senior minister, deeply appreciates his role.

“It has been nice for me as a solo pastor to have a sounding board, a colleague, someone to talk to about theological questions,” she said.

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The Anglican Church in Gambella was begun by refugees who planted church communities in refugee camps. Since then, the church has grown at an astonishing rate and there are now church communities in local villages among several tribes.

Although there are 70 church communities, there are only 20 church buildings. These building are traditional structures made of mud walls, and thatch roofs. A few have only plastic tarpaulins as a roof, a few have upgraded to having tin roofs and stone and cement foundations. Those without a church building meet under a tree, braving the scorching sun in the dry season, and heavy rain during the wet season.

In 2012 most of the church buildings were destroyed by floods in an especially devastating rainy season. Many of the destroyed buildings have been re-built or partially re-built, but this work has depleted the available funds.

The need for buildings for church communities is acute …

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Skilled computer hackers, combined with weak law enforcement and a strong criminal underworld, creates a big problem in Russia.

Watch two reports from Richard Engel here and there.

Concern for ”˜right doctrine’ is not even present in the majority of evangelicals, argues Dr Anna Strhan; experience of God, being in community and speaking the language of hope are more important among charismatic Anglicans, according to her research.

Its easy to see where this is leading. The Pilling Report and the Bishops’ response is largely based on the reasoning we find here. The sociologists writing in the Church Times are describing reality, the “revolution” of which Archbishop Justin spoke last year. The old “Christendom” is gone, but what has replaced it is not a secular state with inevitable church decline but a new opportunity for preaching the Gospel in a new context. And the Gospel is: you can have your cake and eat it! You can have a relationship with God, be part of a warm welcoming community, but be relaxed about theological doctrine and sexual ethics. Those with a more conservative or puritanical streak can still have their congregations, and we do not need to immediately change liturgies or have damaging debates in Synod about official documents. Rather, Bishops and congregations can show by their words and actions that the church is listening and changing, including and affirming, “de-toxifying the brand”. It is this which will arrest decline and promote growth, not anxiousness about the Pilling Report.

There is a variation on this theme which is more acceptable to some conservative Anglicans. That is to say that we should teach heterosexual monogamous marriage and celibate singleness within the church to those who have accepted Christ, but we should not pronounce on sexual morality outside in the public square as if to fight a rearguard action in a culture war which as already been lost. It is too toxic, and Christians who do this are harming the mission of the church.

How to respond to such compelling arguments? Why does it matter that the Church holds on to traditional sexual morality? What has sex got to do with the Gospel, and how can the Church engage with a culture that considers this aspect of its teaching ridiculous and even harmful?

The answer is in the way we interpret the Bible, in how we understand God and the spiritual realm, and in whether we trust him and his word even if it seems foolish and offensive. When a main feature of prevailing humanistic philosophy is to deny God’s clear plan on gender, sexuality and marriage, a main feature of countercultural Gospel preaching and disciple making must be to talk plainly about sex. The idea taking root among some evangelicals that we can promote the biblical Gospel more effectively by not talking about sex and silencing conservatives who do, comes from a love of popularity and fear of offending, and becomes a capitulation to a false and deceptive philosophy.

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