Category : * Christian Life / Church Life

(Church Times) Justin Welby says slavery reparations would amount to ‘group punishment’

Reparations for slavery would amount to a “vast fine on the entire British people for a crime they did not commit”, the former Archbishop of Canterbury the Rt Revd Justin Welby said this week.

“You may be able to fine individual people for their conduct, but not everyone for their nationality,” he wrote in The Independent on Tuesday. “Group punishment is a moral evil. It mixes up the guilty and the innocent even when it is about contemporary times, let alone two centuries past.”

The article was published on the same day as a speech made by the King at the opening of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in St John’s, Antigua. The transatlantic trade in enslaved persons was a “shameful chapter of history” that “fills my heart with horror and my soul with the most profound personal sorrow”, the King said.

The UK Government has so far resisted calls for reparations, although the Prime Minister has indicated that a formal apology may be forthcoming.

Read it all.

Posted in Anthropology, Church History, Church of England, England / UK, Ethics / Moral Theology, Race/Race Relations, Religion & Culture, Stewardship, Theology

A prayer for the day from the Church of England

God of glory,
touch our lips with the fire of your Spirit,
that we with all creation
may rejoice to sing your praise;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Posted in Church of England, Spirituality/Prayer

(Church Times) We are still a relatively wealthy Church, C of E General Synod members are told

New General Synod members are reminded of the “relative wealth” of the Church of England in a paper produced for the opening session (17-18 November) of the quinquennium.

Funding our Church’s Mission has been produced by the Archbishops’ Council and the Church Commissioners to help members to engage with the National Funding for Diocesan Ministry Review that is currently under way. It provides an overview of finances, attendance, and clergy numbers.

“In financial terms, the Church of England is exceptionally well-resourced in comparison with many other provinces of the Anglican Communion,” the paper states. “Its historic endowments, investments, and institutional resources give it a financial capacity that much of the Communion simply does not share. That relative wealth brings both opportunity and a particular stewardship responsibility.”

At a briefing on Thursday, the Synod’s secretary general, William Nye, said that it was “salutary just to be reminded of that occasionally”. It was a point often made by bishops, who, on returning from visits elsewhere in the Communion, were “often buoyed up, joyful, encouraged about what they’ve seen and what God is doing through those dioceses and provinces in places of extraordinary poverty”.

Read it all.

Posted in Church of England, Parish Ministry, Stewardship

The Latest Edition of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina Enewsletter

Clergy Retreat November 9-11
Pray for our clergy as they gather in Flat Rock, NC, November 9-11 for a time of rest and renewal. Dr. Jerry Root, professor emeritus at Wheaton College, as well as a visiting professor at Biola University, Talbot Graduate School of Theology, and Moody Bible Institute, will be the keynote speaker.  

Read it all.

Posted in * South Carolina, Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), Media, Parish Ministry

Richard Hooker on Richard Hooker’s Feast Day

But I am besides my purpose when I fall to bewail the cold affection which we bear towards that whereby we should be saved, my purpose being only to set down what the ground of salvation is. The doctrine of the Gospel proposeth salvation as the end, and doth it not teach the way of attaining thereunto? Yes, the damsel possessed with a spirit of divination spake the truth: “These men are the servants of the most high God who show unto us the way of salvation” [Acts 16:17] — “a new and living way which Christ hath prepared for us through the veil, that is, his flesh,” [Heb 10:20] salvation purchased by the death of Christ.

–Learned Discourse on Justification (my emphasis)

Posted in Christology, Church History, Church of England, Soteriology

A Prayer for the Feast Day of Richard Hooker

O God of truth and peace, who didst raise up thy servant Richard Hooker in a day of bitter controversy to defend with sound reasoning and great charity the catholic and reformed religion: Grant that we may maintain that middle way, not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Posted in Church History, Church of England (CoE), Spirituality/Prayer

(Church Times) Bishop Philip North–Money alone will not solve C of E’s woes

Professors John Craven and Robin Gill are to be thanked for bringing to our attention in their report, Wasted Money in a Diminishing Church (News, 23 October), the serious financial issues that will face the Church of England over the next few years, and the unsustainable deficits faced by many diocesan boards of finance (DBFs). This is why the church economy will be the subject of a major debate early in the new General Synod.

So much of their report is inaccurate or unrealistic, however, that I fear that it will skew that debate in unhelpful directions. I, therefore, want to push back in three areas.

First, the report reaches a strange conclusion. The authors decide that the way to address what they diagnose as fundamentally a financial problem is to make the deanery the heart of the Church’s administrative life.

Most area deans, however, want to be pastors, not middle managers, and I can readily see why. With an eviscerated diocesan structure, area deans would have to take on, alongside their parochial responsibilities, duties now fulfilled by archdeacons and bishops.

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Posted in Church of England (CoE), CoE Bishops, Ecclesiology, Ethics / Moral Theology, Parish Ministry, Pastoral Theology, Stewardship, Theology

(Telegraph) ‘The clergy are stupider than ever’: The lost art of the inspirational sermon

Congregations are “less biblically literate” than in the past, [Fergus] Butler-Gallie argues. For this reason, modern churchgoers require “more extrapolation and more zoning in on what the readings actually mean” in order for the Bible to be brought alive. But this, he says, is something “fewer and fewer clergy are prepared to do”.

Bishop North is pragmatic about what people take away from a sermon. “People remember very little about the content of the sermon: all that they remember is what a sermon makes them feel,” he says.’

When preaching, he is “trying to create an environment in which I make the scriptures speak to today, such that there is a genuine encounter with the God of Jesus Christ.”

“The last thing I’m looking for is originality. I’m not trying to say something new: it’s all been said.”

Read it all.

Posted in Ministry of the Ordained, Parish Ministry, Preaching / Homiletics

A prayer from the Church of England for all Souls Day

Almighty and merciful God, we remember before you all the faithful departed, those we have loved and all who have died in the hope of the resurrection. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. Comfort those who mourn, and fill us with the hope of your promises. May they rest in your peace and rise in glory. Unite us with them in your love, that we may join together in the joy of your eternal kingdom. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the resurrection and the life. Amen.

Posted in Death / Burial / Funerals, Ecclesiology, Spirituality/Prayer

A prayer for the day from the Church of South India

Grant, O Lord, that as thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ prayed for his enemies on the cross, so we may have grace to forgive those that wrongfully or scornfully use us; that we ourselves may be able to receive thy forgiveness; though the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

Posted in Spirituality/Prayer

From the Morning Bible readings

Then I looked, and lo, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder; the voice I heard was like the sound of harpers playing on their harps, and they sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who had been redeemed from the earth.

Revelation 14:1-13

Posted in Church History, Spirituality/Prayer

A prayer for the day from the Church of England

Almighty God,
you have knit together your elect
in one communion and fellowship    
in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord:
grant us grace so to follow your blessed saints
in all virtuous and godly living
that we may come to those inexpressible joys
that you have prepared for those who truly love you;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Posted in Church History, Ecclesiology, Spirituality/Prayer

A Prayer for the day from the Pastor’s Prayerbook

Jesus, our Master, do thou meet us while we walk in the way and long to reach the heavenly country; so that, following thy light, we may keep the way of righteousness, and never wander away into the darkness of this world’s night, while thou, who art the Way, the Truth, and the Light art shining within us; for thy mercy’s sake.

–Robert W. Rodenmayer, ed., The Pastor’s Prayerbook: Selected and arranged for various occasions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960)

Posted in Spirituality/Prayer

(WSJ Houses of Worship) Faith Bottum–The Days of the Graveyard May Be Numbered

The rituals of grief are enduring, their meanings familiar across many cultures: We remember those who have died, we mark the places where their bodies lie, we sense that our relationships with those we love don’t end when their lives do, and we pray for their condition in the afterlife.

Catholics remember the dead on All Souls Day, Nov. 2—the second day after Halloween, the day following All Saints Day. We visit the places where the dead rest, bringing flowers and standing before the names etched in stone. There in the graveyard, we pray for them and ask them to pray for us in the afterlife.

But what happens when those places disappear? America is rapidly drifting away from traditional burial. The norm has increasingly become cremation. The National Funeral Directors Association reported that 63.4% of Americans who died in 2025 were cremated, and the rate is expected to rise to 82.3% by 2045.

The old, earthy connection of death to a particular location—the tie of grief and memory to physical place—is loosening. Only 20% to 40% of cremated remains are buried or interred at a cemetery, according to the Cremation Association of North America.

Read it all.

Posted in Death / Burial / Funerals, Parish Ministry, Religion & Culture

(JE) Anglican Church in North America Dioceses Report Attendance Growth

New diocesan data for the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) released this past week shows a 2.55 percent jump in churchwide Average Principal Sunday Attendance in 2025, an increase of 2,509 from 96,009 in 2024 to 98,514 in the most recent reporting year. The data is viewable below in the PDF form it was provided in.

The numbers, drawn from the 2025 congregational report, place the ACNA among a small number of U.S.-based denominations including the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Assemblies of God (AG), each of which report annual growth of 2-3 percent. It does, however, mark a slowdown from the double-digit growth reported for each of the prior three years rebounding from the period of COVID restrictions at the beginning of the decade.

ACNA Executive Director Deborah Tepley announced in June at the denomination’s annual Provincial Council held at Cornerstone Church in Tulsa an attendance increase of 1,402 persons (1.5 percent) from 97,032 persons in 2024 to 98,434 in 2025. Numbers from that 2025 mission index have since been adjusted by a data analyst who corrected 2024 figures, revising them downward from 97,032 to 96,009, accounting for the greater percentage attendance increase in 2025 compared to the initial announcement. The ACNA previously reported a 13.4 percentage increase for 2024.

Read it all.

Posted in Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), Evangelism and Church Growth, Parish Ministry

A Prayer for the Feast Day of John Wyclif

O God, whose justice continually challenges thy Church to live according to its calling: Grant us who now remember the work of John Wyclif contrition for the wounds which our sins inflict on thy Church, and such love for Christ that we may seek to heal the divisions which afflict his Body; through the same Jesus Christ, who livest and reignest with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Posted in Church History, Spirituality/Prayer

A prayer for the day from the Pastor’s Prayerbook

O Eternal God, who committest to us the swift and solemn trust of life; Since we know not what a day may bring forth, but only that the hour for serving Thee is ever present, may we wake to the instant claims of Thy holy will, not waiting for tomorrow, but yielding today.  Lay to rest, by the persuasion of Thy Spirit, the resistance of our passion, our indolence, or our fear.  Consecrate with Thy presence the way in which our feet may go, so that the humblest work may shine and the rough places may be made plain.  Lift us above unrighteous anger and mistrust, into faith, and hope, and charity.  In all things draw us close to our Saviour Christ, that Thy lost image may be traced in us again, and all men, looking at us, may know that we have been with Thee; Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Robert W. Rodenmayer, ed., The Pastor’s Prayerbook: Selected and arranged for various occasions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960)

Posted in Spirituality/Prayer

(Church Times) Church buildings and clergy well-being on agenda for inaugural sessions of new Synod

A plea for a new national plan to care for crumbling church buildings is on the agenda of the first meeting of the new General Synod.

A diocesan-synod motion from Blackburn is posited on the argument that cash-strapped parishes cannot be expected from donations and grants alone to foot the estimated £1-billion bill for outstanding church maintenance work.

Instead, the Synod will be asked to call for the national Church of England institutions to create a “national strategy for the preservation, maintenance, and development of our buildings”.

Updates on safeguarding and the clergy well-being covenant, as well as an overview of church finances, make up the rest of the short agenda for the two-day group of sessions.

Before the hundreds of newly elected and returning members begin debate in Church House, Westminster, they will attend a eucharist in Westminster Abbey on the morning of 17 November.

Read it all.

Posted in Church of England (CoE), CoE Bishops, Health & Medicine, Ministry of the Laity, Ministry of the Ordained, Parish Ministry, Stewardship

A Prayer for the Feast Day of James Hannington and the Martyrs of Uganda

Precious in thy sight, O Lord, is the death of thy saints, whose faithful witness, by thy providence, hath its great reward: We give thee thanks for thy martyrs James Hannington and his companions, who purchased with their blood a road unto Uganda for the proclamation of the Gospel; and we pray that with them we also may obtain the crown of righteousness which is laid up for all who love the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Posted in Church History, Church of Uganda, Death / Burial / Funerals, Spirituality/Prayer

A prayer for the day from Frank Colquhoun

Grant us, O Lord, the faith that rests not on signs and wonders but on thy love and faithfulness; that obedient to thy word and trusting in thy promises, we may know thy peace and healing power, both in our hearts and in our homes; for the honour of thy holy name.

Posted in Spirituality/Prayer

(Church Times) New General Synod members will seek change

Demands for a redirection of the Church Commissioners’ largesse to parish ministry will be widely and strongly voiced in the next quinquennium of the General Synod, election statements from successful candidates suggest.

Save the Parish (STP) reported this week that 77 candidates who had signed up to its manifesto had been elected, and about 20 others had told the group that they supported it. In addition to those advertising STP support, election statements calling for reform of church finances in support of parishes, read by the Church Times, transcended churchmanship, age, geography, and support for other causes and campaigns.

“We do not need any more top-down vision statements and shiny new diocesan led projects,” Paul Ronson (Blackburn), the treasurer of Together For the Church of England, wrote. “What we need is more full-time, parish-based clergy and staff to serve as the core critical resources in the local communities in which they are physically present.”

“I share much of the frustration of the Save the Parish movement with the frontline cuts, the creation of mega-parishes and the abandonment of the poor,” the Revd Jago Wynne (Southwark), one of the five directors of The Alliance elected, wrote. “There needs to be a reduction in centralised costs to allow for a focus on frontline ministry in parishes up and down the country.”

Read it all.

Posted in Church of England, Ethics / Moral Theology, Ministry of the Laity, Ministry of the Ordained, Parish Ministry, Stewardship

A Prayer for the Feast Day of Saint Simon and Saint Jude

O God, we thank thee for the glorious company of the apostles, and especially on this day for Simon and Jude; and we pray thee that, as they were faithful and zealous in their mission, so we may with ardent devotion make known the love and mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Posted in Church History, Spirituality/Prayer

A prayer for the day from the Church of England

Merciful God,
by your Spirit teach us to be faithful in change and uncertainty,
that trusting in your word
and obeying your will
we may enter the unfailing joy of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen (slightly edited;KSH).

Posted in Church of England, Spirituality/Prayer

(Church Times) Dr Jitesh Patel appointed next Suffragan Bishop of Jarrow

The next Suffragan Bishop of Jarrow, in Durham diocese, is to be the Revd Dr Jitesh Patel, Assistant Director and Lecturer in Theology at St Mellitus College, East Midlands, Downing Street announced on Friday.

He succeeds the Rt Revd Sarah Clark, who was translated to Ely this year (News, 30 January).

Dr Patel was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, and obtained a Ph.D. through the Lambeth Research Degrees in Theology programme. He trained at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, before being ordained deacon in 2010, and priest in 2011.

He served his title at Christ Church, Abingdon, in the diocese of Oxford; in 2015, he became Associate Vicar of St Jude’s, Southsea, in the diocese of Portsmouth. From 2018, he was the Diocesan Director of Contextual Training in Leicester diocese, as well as Assistant Curate (Associate Vicar) of Holy Trinity with St John the Divine, Leicester, a post that he still holds. In 2019, he was appointed to his current post at St Mellitus.

Read it all.

Posted in Church of England (CoE), CoE Bishops, Ministry of the Ordained, Parish Ministry

(EF) How many forgotten ‘Tamars’ are there in our churches?

I have witnessed – and, sadly, continue to witness – that every time a serious case of sexual immorality or abuse committed by a Christian leader comes to light, a familiar scene seems to repeat itself.

First comes the scandal. Then come the explanations, the statements and the requests for forgiveness. After a while, a question begins to be heard: when will he be able to return to ministry?

But whilst we discuss his future, there is another question that is asked far less frequently:

Who is restoring the victims? Who has listened to them? Who has protected their dignity? Who has taken an interest in the emotional, family and spiritual consequences that may accompany them for years to come?

I am concerned that, at times, we are extraordinarily quick to proclaim the restoration of the leader and extraordinarily slow to care for the people who were hurt.

Read it all.

Posted in Anthropology, Ethics / Moral Theology, Health & Medicine, Ministry of the Laity, Ministry of the Ordained, Parish Ministry, Pastoral Theology, Psychology, Sexuality, Spain, Theology, Violence

A prayer for the day for the feast of Saint Cedd

O Everlasting God, whose servant Cedd carried the good news of your Son to the people of Essex: grant that we who commemorate his service may know the hope of the gospel in our hearts and manifest its light in all our ways; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen (moved from yesterday; KSH).

Posted in Church History, England / UK, Spirituality/Prayer

A prayer for the day from the Leonine Sacramentary

Grant us, O Lord, so to enter on the service of our Christian warfare, that, putting on the whole armour of God, we may endure hardness and fight against the spiritual powers of darkness, and be more than conquerors through him that loved us, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Posted in Spirituality/Prayer

(Church Times) Southwell Minster to run out of funds next year, Dean warns

Southwell Minster will run out of funds next year, and needs £20 million “just to catch up on works that have not been done over many years”, the Dean, the Very Revd Stephen Evans, warned on Friday.

It could face closure, he said, describing the situation as “the most critical point in the Minster’s history”.

Dr Evans took up his post in April this year, following the retirement of the previous Dean, the Very Revd Nicola Sullivan, in July 2024 (News, 12 July 2024), and the interim tenure of Canon Neil Evans (no relation). The 2024 accounts had been produced 156 days late, he said, and it was during the “forensic process” of trying to close the accounts for 2025, and approach the end of 2026, that the true extent of the problem had become clear.

There are still no accounts for 2025. The Dean said that a succession of interim finance staff had been one of many factors that had contributed to the situation with the accounts, but that, overall, this was “just a sad tale of a cathedral among many other cathedrals” running out of money. 

Read it all.

Posted in Church of England (CoE), England / UK, Parish Ministry, Religion & Culture, Stewardship

A Prayer for the Feast Day of Alfred the Great

O Sovereign Lord, who didst bring thy servant Alfred to a troubled throne that he might establish peace in a ravaged land and revive learning and the arts among the people: Awake in us also, we beseech thee, a keen desire to increase our understanding while we are in this world, and an eager longing to reach that endless life where all will be made clear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Posted in Church History, Spirituality/Prayer

A prayer for the day from the Pastor’s Prayerbook

O God, who hast sent thy servants to prepare thy way; fill our hearts with love and strengthen our hands to work, that we may make ready the way of our King; for Jesus Christ’s sake.

–Robert W. Rodenmayer, ed., The Pastor’s Prayerbook: Selected and arranged for various occasions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960)

Posted in Spirituality/Prayer