Monday morning and it’s a Zumba class for the over 50s at St Stephen’s Church, Westminster. This class is part of St Stephen’s Second Half Club, a weekly day of classes that looks to build community, keep people active in mind, body and spirit, and ultimately combat social isolation. St Stephen’s is one of two London churches, the other being St Paul’s, North Marylebone running a pilot of this programme.

It is well-known that loneliness is a serious concern, with over half of adults in England saying they experience feelings of loneliness.

Although there are many different ways Anglican churches are addressing loneliness in their communities, what is truly exciting about the Second Half Clubs is the partnership that they can create with other organisations looking to achieve the same goals.

Read it all from Joseph Friedrich.

With Gavin Ashenden

With thanks to Kevin Kallsen at Anglican TV

Joshua Ryan Butler, pastor of local and global outreach at Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon

I want to change the world. But in the process, I’m tempted to see people as a means-to-an-end rather than servants to be discipled deeper into life with Jesus.

When this happens, I find myself using manipulation and guilt as tools to mobilize volunteers. Instead, I want to emphasize the beauty and grandeur of Christ, and use the tools of celebrating who he is and what he has done to draw others to embody his love and serve the world””because they want to, not because they have to.

Read it all.

Outspoken Bishop North – who has previously accused the Church of England of failing to notice the poor – said the clergy had ‘lived with the reality of decline for a long time’.

“It has made us a bit nervous and reticent,” he added.

“I would love to see some fresh confidence in Christians in living out their faith.”

Read it all (and the video is available as well).

We have no respect for a surgeon who goes in but does not cut deeply enough to cure nor a patient who backs out of an operation because it may hurt; yet people can go through their whole lives attending church, listening to searching exposures of human sin, without ever taking it to themselves, or meeting anyone with skill and concern enough to lay the challenge right in their own laps.

—Experiment of Faith (New York: Harper&Row, 1957), p.22 (emphasis mine)

Read it all.

It was America’s enemies within that interested Shoemaker most. After the country entered World War II, the cleric addressed the nation’s cause in several sermons, eventually published in Christ and this Cause. In one of those sermons, “God and the War,” he lashed out at the nation’s immorality.

“This nation has had the greatest privileges ever given to any nation in all time. America has been God’s privileged child. But America has become a spoiled child. We have been ungrateful to the God under whom our liberties were given to us. I believe it is high time for someone to say that this war today is God’s judgment upon a godless and selfish people.”

Shoemaker did support the war effort; in his sermon, “What Are We Fighting For?” he admitted that the war was a “grim necessity,” the means by which nations would once again have the opportunity to choose democracy. But he abhorred any self-righteous cause:

“No war can ever be a clear-cut way for a Christian to express his hatred of evil. For war involves a basic confusion. All the good in the world is not ranged against all the evil. In the present war, some nations that have a great deal of evil in them are yet seeking to stand for freedom ”¦ against other nations which have a great deal of good in them but yet are presently dedicated to turning the world backwards into the darkness of enslavement.”

Read it all (emphasis mine).

Bishop Philip studied history at the University of York, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1988 when he started to explore a vocation to priestly ministry. He spent a year working as a pastoral assistant in Redhouse, Sunderland, before preparing for ordination at St Stephen’s House, Oxford. He graduated from the University of Oxford with a BA degree in 1991. He was ordained as a priest in 1993. Bishop Philip then went on to serve as curate at Saint Mary and Saint Peter’s in Sunderland until 1996, after which he became the vicar of Holy Trinity in Hartlepool until 2002, during which time he was also Hartlepool’s area dean (2000-2002).

In 2002 he moved to Norfolk where he spent six years as Priest Administrator of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, ministering to pilgrims and overseeing the regeneration of the Shrine’s buildings and grounds. In 2008 he became team rector in the Parish of Old St Pancras and team vicar at St Michael’s Church, Camden Town.

He was consecrated as Bishop of Burnley in February 2015.

Read it all.

Christmas message from @cofelancs @BpBurnley Philip North watch now on our YouTube Channel https://t.co/74Fc9BmbXi @c_of_e #joytotheworld pic.twitter.com/prFV2RC84q

— CofE in Lancashire (@cofelancs) December 23, 2016

Holy God, we offer thanks for the vision of Samuel Shoemaker, priest and co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous; and we pray that we may follow his example to help others find salvation through knowledge and love of Jesus Christ our Savior; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(recoveryspeakers.com)

O Our God, we believe in thee, we hope in thee, and we love thee, because thou hast created us, redeemed us, and dost sanctify us. Increase our faith, strengthen our hope, and deepen our love, that giving up ourselves wholly to thy will, we may serve thee faithfully all the rest of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

—The Narrow Way, Being a Complete Manual of Devotion with a Guide to Confirmation and Holy Communion (London: J. Whitaker and Sons, 1893)

Brethren, I beseech you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong; you know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first; and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. What has become of the satisfaction you felt? For I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me. Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? They make much of you, but for no good purpose; they want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. For a good purpose it is always good to be made much of, and not only when I am present with you. My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you! I could wish to be present with you now and to change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

–Galatians 4:12-20

A week after the presidential election, while walking through the farmers’ market in Union Square, I came across a young woman giving out free hugs to strangers. I gladly accepted one. Balm.

A day later, a friend told me that a Lutheran pastor on the Upper East Side has been dispensing free counsel on the sidewalk on Tuesday mornings while sitting in a wooden booth that he had made to the exact specifications of Lucy’s in the comic strip “Peanuts,” complete with a sign reading, “Spiritual Help, 5 cents. The pastor is in.” (Nickels are provided.)

Street preachers. Huggers without portfolio. If stores and restaurants can pop up, why can’t the helping professions?

Read it all.