Of the 36 Anglican churches in the City of London, only 12 should stay open for worship with full-time clergymen, a commission under Lord Templeman recommended in 1994. The rest might be put to other ecclesiastical use or "appropriate secular purposes".

How close we often run to disaster. The plan might easily have been implemented, leaving only four parishes in the whole City to administer the remaining dozen churches.

Worse things had already befallen City churches. Wren churches had been demolished in Victoria's reign to improve the traffic flow: St Benet Gracechurch in 1868, St Mary Somerset the year after, St Dionis Backchurch in 1878, St Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street in 1887, St Olave Jewry in 1888.

As it happened, Bishop David Hope of London did not implement the Templeman report, and his successor, the present Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, proved to be in favour of preserving all the City churches for active worship.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry

Inside Mifflin Hall at Fort Lee, Va., 11 students gather in a room that could pass for a pre-med class. A model skeleton stands on wheels in one corner; a partially dissected plastic torso rests on a table in the rear. The instructor, Sgt. 1st Class Alisa Karr, begins the lesson with a review of the body's bones.

But these soldiers are not studying anatomy to become medics. They are learning to care for the dead.

When these 11 students graduate from training at the U.S. Army's Mortuary Affairs Center, they will earn the title 92M — military code for mortuary affairs specialist. Some of those who have volunteered to work with the dead will serve at collection points in Iraq and Afghanistan; others will work in the port mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. They will help recover, identify and prepare the remains of fallen soldiers.

The 92Ms have cared for the majority of the more than 4,500 military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. They operate under a code of conduct that's part scientific and part symbolic....

I happened to catch this story this week during a run via NPR's story of the day podcast--very worthwhile I thought; see what you make of it.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces • * Economics, Politics • Iraq War

Most Americans believe the choice to end one's life is a personal decision and that physician-assisted death should be legal, according to a new survey.

More than 80 percent of adults questioned in the poll by Knowledge Networks said the right to die should not be decided by the government, church or a third party, yet only 50 percent of Americans over 60 and less than 25 percent of younger people said they have a living will.

"People put that off. They're in denial and they have their heads in the sand," said Dave Bunnell, editor-in-chief of ELDR magazine, which commissioned the poll.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Life Ethics

A bell ringer broke his collarbone after becoming entangled in a rope at the top of a church tower.

Tony Merry was hoisted 3ft off the belfry floor when the rope caught his trousers. Stuck fast in the cramped upper reaches of St Mary's Church in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, he had to be rescued by firefighters and paramedics. They used a pulley to lower him through a trap door 15ft above ground and down on to a stretcher below.

Recovering at home yesterday, Mr Berry, 58, said: "Nothing like this has ever happened before – it gave me a real shock. I think a bunch of keys got caught in the rope and I was pulled about 3ft off the floor. The shock made me black out and I lost consciousness and fell to the ground and bashed my shoulder. The paramedics gave me morphine to help with the pain and then I was conscious throughout the rescue."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry

[Anne] Hjelle was taken by helicopter to Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo. After surgery, Hjelle felt helpless as the attack replayed in her mind in an endless loop.

"It was like watching a horror movie," she said. "Except it really happened to me."

Her pastor, Phil Munsey of Life Church of Mission Viejo, arrived the next morning and felt the urge to pray for her emotional health, worried that she would be plagued by flashbacks and nightmares.

"As a pastor," Munsey said. "I prayed for a miracle and received one."

Her pastor gave her a New Testament verse from 2 Timothy 4:17 to inspire her: "... the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength ... And I was delivered from the lion's mouth."

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

I would like to reflect on a particular aspect of the Holy Spirit, on the intertwining of multiplicity and unity. The second reading speaks about this, treating of the harmony of the different charisms in the communion of the same Spirit. But already in the passage from Acts that we have listened to, this intertwining reveals itself with extraordinary evidence. In the event of Pentecost it is made clear that multiple languages and different cultures belong to the Church; they can understand and make each other fruitful. St. Luke clearly wants to convey a fundamental idea, namely, in the act itself of her birth the Church is already "catholic," universal. She speaks all languages from the very beginning, because the Gospel that is entrusted to her is destined for all peoples, according to the will and the mandate of the risen Christ (cf. Matthew 28:19). The Church that is born at Pentecost is not above all a particular community -- the Church of Jerusalem -- but the universal Church, that speaks the language of all peoples. From her, other communities in every corner of the world will be born, particular Churches that are all and always actualizations of the one and only Church of Christ. The Catholic Church is therefore not a federation of churches, but a single reality: The universal Church has ontological priority. A community that is not catholic in this sense would not even be a Church.

In this regard it is necessary to add another aspect: that of the theological vision of the Acts of the Apostles in respect of the journey of the Church from Jerusalem to Rome. Luke notes that among the peoples represented in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost there are also "foreigners from Rome" (Acts 2:10). At that time Rome was still distant, "foreign" for the nascent Church: It was a symbol of the pagan world in general. But the power of the Holy Spirit will guide the steps of the witnesses "to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8), to Rome. The Acts of the Apostles ends precisely when Paul, by providential design, arrives at the empire's capital and proclaims the Gospel there (cf. Acts 28:30-31). Thus the journey of God's Word, begun in Jerusalem, arrives at its goal, because Rome represents the whole world and thus incarnates the Lucan idea of catholicity. The universal Church is realized, the catholic Church, which is the continuation of the chosen people and makes its history and mission her own.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Pentecost • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

With the economy down and needs up for the homeless, the hungry and the elderly, donations to South Florida churches and other religious institutions are straining to keep up with soaring needs, leaders say.

At the Miami Archdiocese, collection-plate revenues are steady, but assessments that individual parishes pay are slow in coming or are down, and needs are up sharply, resulting in the layoff of 49 of the 182 staff members at its Pastoral Center on Biscayne Boulevard, said spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta.

In a letter to parishioners, Archbishop John C. Favalora said: ``Each year, a greater number of parishes and programs are seeking our financial help, and, therefore, we must prioritize. We can only work with what we have.''

South Florida's Jewish, Methodist, Episcopal and other faithful face similar problems.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The pillar that continually returns as obviously of greatest importance to Sanneh is that of "translatability." Some readers may wonder what more there is to say that Sanneh has not already said in his pathbreaking academic study Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (Orbis, 1989) and more recently in a cheeky volume of self-interrogation, Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West (Eerdmans, 2003). Yet this theme is so important for what Sanneh believes about the nature of God, about human cultures under God, and about Christianity as an intrinsically world religion that he continues to find new meaning in the process by which the scriptures—and then the whole of Christian faith—move from one language-culture-mental framework to another.

Sanneh writes that God exists "at the center of the universe of cultures, implying equality among cultures and the necessarily relative status of cultures vis-à-vis the truth of God." Translatability shows why "no culture is so advanced and so superior that it can claim exclusive access or advantage to the truth of God, and none so marginal and remote that it can be excluded." It takes flesh in "the ethical monotheism Christianity inherited from Judaism" in such a way that it "accords value to culture but rejects cultural idolatry." And it shows why "in any language the Bible is not literal; its message affirms all languages to be worthy, though not exclusive, of divine communication." If the faith embodied in Jesus Christ resounds in its essence "with the idioms and styles of new converts," it was then inevitable that Christianity would become "multilingual and multicultural." Sanneh has previously faced the question of whether one activity can bear all of this interpretive weight. This book provides his most convincing answer.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Missions • * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Theology • Ecclesiology

Pentecost was anything but the privatization of piety. Christians who spent yesterday in a holy huddle missed the point entirely! For Pentecost was anything but that. Out of a prayer gathering sprung a radical egalitarianism. For as the inaugural sermon made it patently clear this movement was to be typified by a fundamental re-alignment of human relationships and concepts of justice. Both old and young would become visionaries; women were included in the movement. And God would pour his liberating Spirit on every culture under the sun.

Yesterday thousands of Christians relived that moment as they met for a Global Day of Prayer in Millwall football stadium joining half a billion people around the world - not just to pray for other Christians, but to celebrate and pray about the problems in our world. They prayed about war and famine and asked searching questions about their responsibility as UK citizens.

In the ecumenical service where I preached yesterday morning there was nothing incongruous about our intercession for teenager, Jimmy Mizen who became the 13th victim of knife crime in London on Saturday night. And it seemed natural to redirect our giving in response to disaster victims in Burma.

As the German theologian, Jurgen Moltmann put it: 'no corner of this world should remain without God's promise of a new creation through the power of the resurrection.'

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Pentecost

The drama of Pentecost: mighty wind, flames of fire, the gift of tongues, can distract us from the more profound and lasting effect of the coming of the Holy Spirit: namely, the way this event transformed the apostles' - and through them, our - relationship with the Word of God, empowering these "uneducated and ordinary men" (Acts 4:13) to unlock the meaning of their ancient texts, the psalms and prophecies so familiar on one level but of which the deeper significance had, until then, remained veiled. Peter must have heard the words of the prophet Joel many times and had no doubt listened to many a rabbi expounding them, but on the day of Pentecost those "young men" who "shall see visions" and "old men" who "shall dream dreams" (Joel 2:28) appeared, not as pencil outlines on the faded page of the past but in full technicolour before him. Here we have the essence of lectio divina, to engage with a text in a living, life-transforming way, through the gift of the Holy Spirit; to perceive the Word in the words. This is what makes lectio more like prayer than study, and why we may have to broaden our vision of this term to include all contact with the Word of God. After all, a phone-call or voice message from a loved one is at least as, if not more, welcome than a text message or letter. No one has taught us this better than the Apostle John:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being" (John 1:1-3).

Today we tend to think of lectio divina as an almost exclusively individual activity; but it's important to realise that such personal reading of the Scriptures grew out of, and reinforced, their public proclamation in the liturgy.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Pentecost

A conservative legal-advocacy group is enlisting ministers to use their pulpits to preach about election candidates this September, defying a tax law that bars churches from engaging in politics.

Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Ariz., nonprofit, is hoping at least one sermon will prompt the Internal Revenue Service to investigate, sparking a court battle that could get the tax provision declared unconstitutional. Alliance lawyers represent churches in disputes with the IRS over alleged partisan activity.

The action marks the latest attempt by a conservative organization to help clergy harness their congregations to sway elections. The protest is scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 28, a little more than a month before the general election, in a year when religious concerns and preachers have been a regular part of the political debate.

It also comes as the IRS has increased its investigations of churches accused of engaging in politics.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • US Presidential Election 2008

For some people, of course, these events raise questions about whether there can be a God, or if there is a God could he is good. For them it is inconceivable that there could be a God who permits suffering. But nowhere in the Bible; and nowhere in the Christian tradition is it suggested that God is a sort of heavenly puppet master; the sort of god who treats us like robots, who is two steps ahead of us sorting out our lives in front of us.

Faith doesn’t promise us that. Think back to the psalm: ‘When you travel through the valley of the shadow of death I’ll be with you’. Not ‘if’, ‘when’ is what the scripture says.

John Polkinghorne, priest, author and former Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University puts it like this: God does not bring about everything that happens in the world. Because God is a God of love, he allows creatures to be themselves. That sort of valuable, worthwhile, independent creation has a cost. We see that in the terrible cruel choices of humankind. We also see it in the physical history of the world. Exactly the same bio-chemical processes that enable some cells to mutate and produce new forms of life - the very engine that has driven the amazingly fruitful history of life on earth – will also allow other cells to mutate and to become malignant. You just cannot have one without the other. The tragic fact that there is cancer in the world is not because God did not bother – it is a necessity in a world allowed to make itself.

The freedom that enables me to choose to give generously at the moment to Myanmar, the freedom which enables someone to give their love to someone, to go the extra mile to care; is precisely the same freedom which those rulers in Myanmar are using to stop aid coming in. It is part of the way the world is set up. It’s both a wonderful freedom but a terrible responsibility.

The Christian gospel never says that there will not be suffering or evil. And it does not promise us that we will not go through it. And those of you being confirmed today, this isn’t some sort of talisman which will stop you ever experiencing evil. You and I will experience the same suffering that is the common lot of humanity.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Preaching / Homiletics • * International News & Commentary • Asia

The Spirit, the dynamic energy of God, the breath of the divine life, is often associated with random inspiration, with inspired prophets and enthusiasts who do their own thing. But in the Bible the Spirit is also the one who orders. The mighty wind that swept over the waters of chaos in the very opening verses of Scripture brings order and pattern and shaping life. Energy and order are not opposed in the order of the new creation of God’s life-giving Spirit any more than they are in the patterns of energy that make up the order of the universe. The church is to be and to live the order of the new creation. The Spirit is the Spirit of transforming holiness, shaping men and women in the pattern of the divine love in whose image they are made.

St Augustine knew that a fallen world was a world of disordered desire. He went so far as to say that all thefts, all murders and adulteries sprang from disordered love. “Shall we stop loving then?” he asks. “No, if you stop loving you will become a block of wood, a dead thing.”

Our calling is to “set love in order”, to be shaped and ordered, we might say, by the internet of the Spirit, the Lord and the Giver of life, who “alone can order the unruly wills and passions of sinful men”. And that grace and that life is at the heart of the Church’s being, and of what it is to be human, and so at Pentecost we pray: “Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, and lighten with celestial fire!” for “the Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world. Alleluia!”.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Pentecost

At first glance, the two men in monogrammed T-shirts and jeans with their rumbling generator could be mistaken for any of the hundreds of maintenance workers scattered across the vast public grounds of the city.

But Kirk Bockman, 52, and Jim Lee, 59, are highly skilled artisans whose specialized craft is cloaked in grief.

In a yearly ritual that began in 1991 with the dedication of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, Bockman and Lee have carefully etched 18,274 names of fallen officers into marbleized limestone.

This year, the engravers' burden was heavy as they prepared for the annual vigil for slain officers on Tuesday.

The pair has recorded the names of the 181 officers killed in 2007, one of the deadliest years for police in two decades. They also added 177 officers whose deaths had not been previously recorded, some dating to the 19th century, says Berneta Spence, the memorial's director of research.

"When we do this, we really feel like we become part of their family history," Bockman says, his voice hushed in deference to a victim's mother.

Read it all and don't miss the great story at the end about their visit to the White House.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Military / Armed Forces

When you dial 770-978-5717, you'll hear a recording that says "First Baptist Snellville is offering you the chance to win one of two $500 gas cards."

Pastor Dr. Rusty Newman says "we are beginning a revival, ah starting this Sunday. If you attend the service you are able to sign up for a drawing to place your name in at the end of the service stating you were there. Then on Wednesday evening at the conclusion of service we will be drawing for that ability to win the prize."

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Evangelism and Church Growth • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Energy, Natural Resources

Listen to it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

For millions of users, the World Wide Web has turned into a devil's den packed with urban legends, pop-up porn, Nigerian get-rich schemes and tidal waves of spam pushing medical products that make sailors blush.

That isn't how the Internet Evangelism Day team sees things. It notes that "over 1 billion people use the Web," the "Internet is changing the world" and "God is using the Web to transform lives."

"The Internet has become a 21st century Roman road, marketplace, theater, backyard fence and office drinks machine," proclaim the site's Web masters. "Web evangelism gives believers opportunities to reach people with the Gospel right where they are, just as Jesus and Paul did."

Tech guru George Gilder knows where the Web evangelists are coming from and offers a hearty "Amen." He remains convinced that cyberspace is territory that religious leaders have to explore and, hopefully, master.

"The Internet is very good for building communities and, obviously, churches are communities. It allows a particularly charismatic, or brilliant, church leader to reach potential followers not only in his community or in his immediate locality, but all across the country and the world," said Gilder, the author of two trailblazing books --"Microcosm" and "Telecosm."

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet

The average Roman Catholic priest being ordained in 2008 is 37 years old, white and born in the U.S. He was raised by two Catholic parents, attended Catholic elementary school, worked a full-time job before entering the seminary, and a friend or classmate has tried to talk him out of joining the priesthood.

Since 1998, the U.S. bishops' conference has been keeping tabs on men entering the priesthood through yearly surveys. This year's class, which includes 401 potential ordinands (335 responded to the survey), largely continues recent trends. Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate conducted the survey for the bishops.

Though the survey did not mention it, the 2008 class--particularly its size--also exhibits the church's steep decline in vocations. In 2000 the church ordained 442 priests.

Men, especially those joining religious orders, are entering the priesthood later in life. Half of the ordinands are 34 or older; the average age is 37; among men joining religious orders it's 39; priests ordained for dioceses on average are 36.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

Grace Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina barely survived the Civil War, was seriously damaged by the earthquake of 1886 and withstood the ravages of Hurricane Hugo in 1989. No wonder the 162-year-old Gothic Revival building needs some serious restoration work. Cracks, settling and structural problems have taken their toll, especially in the steeple tower and clerestory walls.

Raising $12 million for repairs has been a challenge -- seven years into the "Saving Grace" project, the church's approximately 1,600 parishioners have raised about $4 million, enough to set up scaffolding and get started. Now a new challenge has appeared in the form of a pair of red-tailed hawks and their chicks nesting in the steeple tower -- a challenge that will cost an estimated $60,000 in construction delays.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * South Carolina

When Lynn and Roger Perkins married in 1983, they not only embarked on a marriage, they embarked on a spiritual journey together.

That journey took an unusual twist in the road in 2004, a twist which eventually lead the couple to a new vocation and a new life in Gallup.

Recently ordained as Episcopal priests in November 2007, the Perkins are the new, part-time co-vicars of the Church of the Holy Spirit. Although the Episcopal Church has been ordaining women as priests for about three decades, the Perkins said it is unusual for both a wife and a husband to serve together as co-vicars. Their arrival in Gallup is a boon to their small congregation, which has been shepherded for the last decade by a series of interim pastors. The church will officially celebrate the couple’s arrival with a ceremony later this month.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry

I have said before, that by this consolation all sorrow which we might conceive, because of Christ’s absence, is mitigated, yea, utterly taken away, when as we hear that lie shall return again. And also the end for which he shall come again is to be noted; namely, that he shall come as a Redeemer, and shall gather us with him into blessed immortality.

--John Calvin, commenting on Christ's Ascension in the Book of Acts

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship

Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God,
that we who believe
Thine only-begotten Son our Redeemer,
to have ascended this day into heaven,
may ourselves dwell in spirit amid heavenly things.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship

Standing in a sunlit church, the People's Gospel Choir of Montreal begin their song with slow formality. Then the tempo picks up, the piano rumbles, and the choristers dance and clap. One woman breaks loose in a kind of frenzy, boogying to and fro with her arms swaying.

All this in an online video to promote the 2008 Anglican-Lutheran worship conference, where the theme is (as you may have guessed) "Order and Chaos."

From June 25 to 28, 2008, Montreal, Que. will host the third biennial, national Anglican-Lutheran worship conference. Keynote speakers will be Gordon Lathrop, liturgical scholar from Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, and Karen Ward, pastor of Seattle's Church of the Apostles.

"These conferences are wonderful learning experiences. They bring together really good people who talk both intelligently and critically about liturgy," said Dean Peter Wall, the conference's Anglican co-chair. "I think we have a lot to learn from each other, both Anglicans and Lutherans."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Lutheran

Helpful devotional reading for today.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer

Angel Kreutzans has been hobbling around for a month since her minivan broke down and the vehicle ran over her left foot as a truck began towing it.

Her husband keeps telling her to go to the emergency room, but the mother of three reminds him that she is among the 1 million Michigan residents without health insurance.

"I refuse to go to the hospital because I cannot afford it," said Kreutzans, a Warren resident.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine

Food for thought.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry

The Rev. Bob Wickizer climbed the stairs and wooden ladders yesterday inside the steeple of historic St. Anne's Episcopal Church to reach Annapolis' town clock.

Eighty feet above the center of downtown, he and Kirsten Chapman, head of the church's environmental ministry, gingerly stepped over loose wooden planks coated with dust and ducked under the four metal arms of the clock mechanism to get to the 16 incandescent bulbs that illuminate the clock. Chapman slipped in front of one of the four faces and carefully replaced the bulbs with compact fluorescent ones.

This is what it took, on Earth Day, to turn a 150-year-old landmark into a beacon for thinking green.

The new lights promise to keep an estimated 2.5 tons of carbon out of the atmosphere every year by using 75 percent less energy, and save energy and money by lasting 10 times longer. Wickizer hopes that the change will encourage the community to reduce its carbon footprint. Church officials say they believe this is part of God's will.

"Having dominion over [the Earth] doesn't mean trashing it," Wickizer said. "It may have taken the church a while to wake up to that."

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Epiphany • Parish Ministry • * Economics, Politics • Energy, Natural Resources

I ran into a young minister friend of mine during Easter week in the checkout line at Target. His name is Isaac Villegas, and he is pastor of a small Mennonite congregation in Chapel Hill, N.C. Isaac told me he had gotten up early to finish his Maundy Thursday homily, and now he was waiting to pay for two large plastic tubs to be used in the foot-washing ritual that evening. Not an untypical swing of duties for him or any small-church minister -- from the solitary study of Scripture to the public drama of a high holy day, with the running of errands in between.

Isaac's congregation cannot afford to pay him a full salary. He and his wife tithe much of what they do get back to the church. Despite eight years of higher education, including a degree from Duke Divinity School, he has always had to supplement his income with other work. He assists in teaching theology courses at Duke, including one of mine. Before that he combined ministry with carpentry (for which there is precedent in Christianity).

Mostly he works for his church. When he is not preparing Bible studies and sermons, he is in the jails and hospitals counseling the troubled or praying with the dying. Like the duties of most pastors, Isaac's touch every notch on the life cycle, from baptism to last rites. Some of his best pastoral care is delivered on park benches in verdant Chapel Hill. And since Isaac's congregation prefers renting space, he doesn't have an office. This is OK: The ministry itself is called an "office," giving the office-holder a privileged place in the lives of those who accept him as their shepherd. And all the shepherd has to do in return is model a life of service and apply the assorted symbols of God to every occasion or dilemma known to humankind.

Isaac's improvisational ministry reflects the realities of a shrinking Protestant church in America.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

For Oden, and for "How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind," the "Africa" he speaks of is anything that happened on the African continent and anyone who lived and ministered on that continent. This avoids the endless debate, for instance, about which Church Father was or was not "African." How does one define that? By skin color? And by what amount of pigmentation? By nationality? Why wouldn't any nation in Africa be by definition African? By ancestry?

The ancestry issue coupled with geographical/cultural impact is Oden's most important contribution. In sum, he argues that even if Augustine, for instance, had a father whose ancestry was Greco-Roman, would that mean that Augustine, living his entire life in Africa was not African? Additionally, given that his famous mother, Monica, was almost definitely of Berber (north African) descent, would that not make Augustine African? And just as important to Oden, can we wipe out the impact on Augustine's parents and on Augustine of living in the African geography and partaking of the African culture?

So, for Oden, "African Christianity" is the Christianity of any person who was born and/or lived on the African continent. Thus, for Europeans to claim Augustine, Origen, Tertullian, and others is a robbery of immense proportion in Oden's thinking.

Given this perspective, Oden's entire book is actually a call for others to build upon his small start. It is a call to take seriously the oral and written tradition of material spoken and penned on the African continent. It is then a call to explore the past, present, and future impact of that legacy.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • Books • * International News & Commentary • Africa

A high-efficiency furnace seems like a good choice for any aging building. But two?

That's right, says Rev. Robert Lemon of St. John-in-the-Wilderness church.

When he and his congregation in Bright's Grove decided it was time to "go green" they opted for two new furnaces so that portions of the church, hall and office can be separately heated.

In one year, the church has saved about $700 in natural gas consumption, making the investment economical as well as ecological. "That's very good and over time it means the furnaces will pay for themselves," Lemon said.

St. John-in-the-Wilderness Anglican church is 152 years old and has had numerous upgrades over the years. But in 2006, when an office was added, the congregation began to take energy efficiency seriously.

"We realized we could do better and we began to make changes," Lemon said.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Canada • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Economics, Politics • Energy, Natural Resources

Peopl