St. John’s, Florence, Creates New Magazine
for Parish News

St. John’s, Florence, raised the communications bar in the diocese with their new magazine.This September, they, transitioned their newsletter from Publisher to Canva and they’ve had great feedback.  “Our newsletter came to life!” says Ginnie Raines, Communications Director. “In Canva we use an 8.5×11 booklet format and editable template. Members and staff send in articles and photos we’ve taken are added in (stock photos when needed) to the template.  After it’s all together, Canva offers a downloadable digital flipbook option through Heyzine.  We send this out first by email and everyone also receives a copy in the mail.  The publication is printed bi-monthly.” View the magazine.

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Bishop Chip Edgar welcomes men to the 2023 Christian Men's Conference, February 24-26. The theme for this year's Christian Men's Conference is Faith in the Home | Beacon of the Light. Learn more and register at https://t.co/laRWKSmFOB. pic.twitter.com/73QxLfh3JQ

— Anglican Diocese of SC (@anglican_sc) January 17, 2023

Bishop Joanne, who will attend the House of Bishops, will work closely with the national director of safeguarding, Alexander Kubeyinje, who took up the role in September.  As the Church continues to develop its safeguarding practice, there will be a particular focus on responses to and implementation of the recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, IICSA and the Church’s second Past Cases Review, PCR2, published at the end of 2022.

Bishop Joanne will chair the National Safeguarding Steering Group (NSSG), the delegated House of Bishops body responsible for making national safeguarding decisions, and will work closely with the deputy lead bishops for safeguarding, the Bishop of Bristol, Viv Faull and the Bishop of Birkenhead, Julie Conalty.

Both as a former archdeacon and currently as an area bishop in London Diocese, Bishop Joanne has chaired a number of safeguarding reviews and currently is the diocesan safeguarding lead, working closely with the Bishop of London. Bishop Joanne also chairs the national working group looking at the Seal of the Confessional.

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Bishop of Stepney, Joanne Grenfell, is to become the Church of England's new lead safeguarding bishop.

Read more at https://t.co/9sH1n0BZQU.

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) January 16, 2023

Today, as the once-cherubic choristers start to become grandmas and grandpas themselves, grandparenting has changed dramatically. Two big demographic trends are making nana and gramps more important. First, people are living longer. Global life expectancy has risen from 51 to 72 since 1960. Second, families are shrinking. Over the same period, the number of babies a woman can expect to have in her lifetime has fallen by half, from 5 to 2.4. That means the ratio of living grandparents to children is steadily rising.

Surprisingly little research has been done into this. The Economist could not find reliable figures for how many living grandparents there are, so we asked Diego Alburez-Gutiérrez of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany to produce some estimates by crunching un age and population data with models of kinship structures in each country.

We found that there are 1.5bn grandparents in the world, up from 0.5bn in 1960 (though the further back one goes, the fuzzier the estimates become). As a share of the population they have risen from 17% to 20%. And the ratio of grandparents to children under 15 has vaulted from 0.46 in 1960 to 0.8 today.

By 2050 we project that there will be 2.1bn grandparents (making up 22% of humanity), and slightly more grandparents than under-15s. That will have profound consequences. The evidence suggests children do better with grandparental help—which usually, in practice, means from grandmothers. And it will help drive another unfinished social revolution—the movement of women into paid work.

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As lifespans stretch and fertility falls, the ratio of grandparents to children is higher than ever before. That has big consequences https://t.co/2bkUFA4NUi

— The Economist US (@EconUS) January 17, 2023

The world’s most populous country has reached a pivotal moment: China’s population has begun to shrink, after a steady, yearslong decline in its birthrate that experts say is irreversible.

The government said on Tuesday that 9.56 million people were born in China last year, while 10.41 million people died. It was the first time deaths had outnumbered births in China since the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment that led to widespread famine and death in the 1960s.

Chinese officials have tried for years to slow down the arrival of this moment, loosening a one-child policy and offering incentives to encourage families to have children. None of those policies worked. Now, facing a population decline, coupled with a long-running rise in life expectancy, the country is being thrust into a demographic crisis that will have consequences not just for China and its economy but for the world.

Over the last four decades, China emerged as an economic powerhouse and the world’s factory floor. The country’s evolution from widespread poverty to the world’s second-largest economy led to an increase in life expectancy that contributed to the current population decline — more people were living longer while fewer babies were being born.

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“Government handouts like cash for babies and tax cuts, have failed to change the underlying fact that many young Chinese people simply do not want children.” https://t.co/RcBTHwCW7O

— Marc Porter Magee 🎓 (@marcportermagee) January 17, 2023

O God, who by thy Holy Spirit didst enable thy servant Antony to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil: Give us grace, with pure hearts and minds, to follow thee, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today the Church of England celebrates Antony of Egypt, Hermit, Abbot, 356 https://t.co/JTIoTE2J8G

Image: A panel in the St Antony Window in Chartres Cathedral showing a demon speaking to Antony; see: https://t.co/Qdl2pDK3wL. Photo by Lawrence OP, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, via flickr pic.twitter.com/VZR9lzXJza

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) January 17, 2023

O Thou, who givest to thy children liberally and upbraidest not: Preserve us from all envy at the good of our neighbour, and from every form of jealousy. Teach us to rejoice in what others have and we have not, to delight in what they achieve and we cannot accomplish, to be glad in all that they enjoy and we do not experience; and so fill us daily more completely with love; through him in whom thou hast promised to supply all our need, our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Enjoy your day!😊❄️💕❄️ pic.twitter.com/3lssILq8hq

— Anne Grete Hagby (@AHagby) January 17, 2023

Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, “He is beside himself.” And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Be-el′zebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.” And he called them to him, and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man; then indeed he may plunder his house.

“Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

–Mark 3:19-35

Good morning, Charleston! 🙂 pic.twitter.com/2bDRiUfhf2

— Trooper Bob (@TrooperBob_SC) January 17, 2023