The Rev. Canon Lloyd S. Casson, clergyman and noted leader in the Episcopal Church, will be honored June 3 by the Wilmington, Delaware community and his parish as he officially retires after 43 years of ministry.

A native Delawarean, Casson has served for 10 years as the rector of the Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew, a unique parish formed out of the union of two historic Episcopal churches in Wilmington, Delaware—one with a predominantly white membership and the other predominantly black—committed to being an instrument of reconciliation and diversity.

For more information, visit the Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew web site at www.ssam.org.

Read it all here.

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A stalwart group at Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall's former parish, St. Augustine's in Southwest D.C., is fighting to keep his legacy alive.

In January 2006, the group petitioned the Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington to designate May 17 as Thurgood Marshall Day in the diocese, which it did. Last summer, at the group's request, the diocese also asked the General Convention of the Episcopal Church to include Marshall in its book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

Read more »

More news from the swirl of controversy surrounding Grace and St. Stephen's parish in Colorado Springs:

Faith at Altitude: Vestry says Don't Vote

"We ask that you not participate in this vote both because it is unlawful and because its outcome has already been determined," the vestry told parishioners in a May 3 letter. Grace's Web site states it's now part of CANA, and the banner in the sanctuary is that of CANA, too -- replacing the Episcopal flag.

The Grace Episcopal vestry called Grace CANA a "secessionist congregation now occupying our property," and argued the whole vote was anti-Episcopalian, and anti-Anglican, for that matter.

"We don't vote locally about parish migration," the letter read. "If Father Armstrong comes to disagree with Archbishop Akinola (who leads the Nigerian province) or if Bishop Minns (leader of CANA) investigates him for wrongdoing, what then? Another move to another bishop followed by another sham vote?"

There's much more, and also the text of the letter that was sent by the leadership of the "episcopalian" portion of the congregation, at the link above.

As the US and other countries move away from using cash and towards the use of automatic payment of bills, debit and credit cards, churches are joining the cashless society. The Dallas Morning News Sam Hodges, reports on Good Shepherd in Dallas that made the decision to offer parishioners the opportunity to pledge with automatic assessments on their credit cards.

"They want to get the points, and that's fine," said Bobby Brown, the church's business manager.

But is it really Christian to collect frequent flier points on the way to heaven? Are churches that take plastic contributing to the nation's credit card debt crisis? Does automatic assessment rob from the thoughtfulness and spirituality of giving?

One big benefit of automatic giving, the business manager of Good Shepherd and others said, is that it eases what's widely known in church circles as the "summer slump."

People go on vacation and often don't make their scheduled offerings. With automatic credit card or bank draft payment, the church tends to collect more and definitely collects more evenly.

Just as important at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Mr. Brown said, was the need to keep up with how church members prefer to handle their finances.

"We couldn't afford not to do it," he said of the decision to take credit cards.

Does your church use automatic withdrawals, credit or debit cards to collect offerings and tithes?

Read the article here

HT to epiScope

Good Shepherd of the Hills of Cave Creek, Arizona and its involvement in issues of migration and day laborers will be seen on ABC's Nightline. The program is scheduled to be aired tonight, October 18, at 10:30 p.m. in Arizona. Check local listings for the time in your area.

The Lead covered this church's ministry October 1:

Good Shepherd of the Hills Episcopal Church of Cave Creek, Arizona, describes itself as a "little church with a big heart." That big heart has drawn it into the heart of both local and national controversy about migration and day-laborers.

Anglicans Online muses on the subject of welcoming newcomers on Sunday morning. Comparing three different experiences they raise the issue of what makes us feel welcome in worship.

In the first church there was no welcome, no greeting, no invitation. In the second church the welcome was like an assault of the inquisitors. The third church was "just right." As they explain the experience:

It's been a week since we were at St Cantilupe, 8 time zones from home, and we now understand what they did so well: they were behaviourally inclusive. We visitors were treated neither as interlopers nor as freaks, but as ordinary people, indistinguishable from those standing next to us who might have been there for decades. Simply by being there, by standing in the nave and singing the hymns and eating the bread and drinking the wine, we became (at least for that one day) one of them. Neither the clergy nor the congregation projected any sense of ownership, any sense of possessiveness, any need to guard their faith or their church or their sacraments against interlopers.

We've seen this phenomenon in sports pubs for years: if you drop in to the Argyll Arms to watch football, and sit down next to someone who roots for your team, you become a full member of the group, and not a visitor. Until last week we didn't realize it could also happen in Anglican churches.

Read the October 21st essay here.

What about your church - is it too little, too much, or just right?

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[Update 21 Nov 2007]
Correction by The Rev. William A. Greenlaw Rector, Church of the Holy Apostles Executive Director, Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen:

There were several unfortunate and very misleading errors of fact in the recent article in The Living Church, “Soup Kitchen Bowls Over Parish,” November 25, 2007 (print version):

1. The soup kitchen’s annual operating budget is $2.6 million. The soup kitchen does not “contribute” $2.6 million to parish income, as claimed by the article: rather the soup kitchen contributes $130,000 allocated by our auditors to various non-religious shared expenses and $71,000 depreciation to the building fund to offset the wear and tear on the physical plant. These facilities costs are small considering that this is for several thousand squarefeet of handicapped accessible ground floor space in Midtown Manhattan.

2. The church suffered a very serious fire in 1990. In substantial part, because of the church’s reputation in sponsoring the soup kitchen, a large number of people and institutions contributed to the restoration of our landmark building. That restoration was completed in 1994 and the nave of the church, now a flexible usespace, was able to double as the main dining room of the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen.

3. The person who envisioned and established Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen was the Rev. Randolph Lloyd Frew, rector from 1978-84, not the Rev. Paul Coleman Cochran, priest in charge from 1975-77.

ORIGINAL POST

This is one of those man bites dog stories:

“We owe our existence as a parish to the Soup Kitchen,” said the Rev. William A. Greenlaw, rector. “It has put us on the map. Many who are now vestry members began as Soup Kitchen volunteers.”

Thirty years ago, the congregation and the facility were both worn out. Fr. Greenlaw said his predecessor, the Rev. Paul Cochran, was sent to Holy Apostles’ to preside over its closure. Instead, Fr. Cochran decided to launch the Soup Kitchen. Holy Apostles’, which reports average Sunday attendance of about 120, recently completed a $7-million renovation. Some individuals who contributed did so because of the Soup Kitchen.

In addition to drawing traffic to the parish, the Soup Kitchen also contributes to net parish income.

To the annual tune of $2.6 million net.

Read it all here in The Living Church.

Holy Apostles Episcopal Church in Manhattan "has fed the hungry for 25 years now without missing a single weekday, including the morning after the fire, when the church lay in ruins, still smoldering, and 943 meals were served by candlelight." So writes Anna Quindlen in Newsweek.

She concludes:

If elected officials want to bring God talk into public life, let it be the bedrock stuff, about charity and mercy and the least of our brethren. Instead of the performance art of the presidential debate, the candidates should come to Holy Apostles and do what good people, people of faith, do there every day—feed the hungry, comfort the weary, soothe the afflicted. And wipe down the tables after each seating.

Read it all here.

An earlier post on the Soup Kitchen at Holy Apostles that was based on a Living Church article contained significant factual errors. Please the corrected version the post here.

John Animasaun is a pharmacist and a member of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Albany. He was born and raised in Nigeria, the eldest of six children. St. Paul's supports Animasaun in his ministry to Nigerians with HIV/AIDs.

The Times Union (Albany) interviewed Animasaun:

With help from St. Paul's parishioners, I was able to set up two merit-based scholarships for high school students. Each is about $100 and pays a full year of tuition and books.

It is difficult to separate an African man from his beliefs. It is common in Nigeria to say AIDS stands for American Idea of Discouraging Sex. Many people don't realize it is a real disease.

What happened when you returned?

I spoke at St. Paul's at a coffee hour discussion. I said I would like to do more. The church sponsored a second trip and I went back for about a month. By this time, I had a bigger network and had established World Care International Organization.

Read more »

During its first half-century, the church's founder was killed in a plane crash. The first full-time vicar was defrocked, and the priest who replaced him was an alcoholic. The Rev. Ken Trickett finally brought some stability to the church in 1984, but he died within three years. The priest who replaced him disappeared in the middle of the night at Christmastime, never to be heard from again.

By 1991, the son of the church's founder returned to shepherd the flock, and congregants were convinced their troubles were finally over. But 18 months later, the Rev. Tim Kazan and his wife were killed in an auto accident.

"The person who offered me this job did not tell me one of those stories until after I said I would come," the Rev. Keplinger recalls.

The Episcopal Diocese of Utah had annexed Page into its boundaries after one official there approached church officials in Phoenix, who said they had no way to provide the resources needed in the border town.

The Rev. Keplinger and his wife were charged with giving the ministry a final go, after church officials in Salt Lake City had decided to give the experiment six months to succeed or they would shut it down.

Many Episcopal Church buildings are found in urban or downtown settings. A century ago this was were their parishioners lived. But that's not the case today. St. Bartholomew's parish on Park Avenue in New York City is one of the premier examples of how congregations need to transform the way they function in order to survive and flourish.

An article in the New York Times today profiles the congregation and their rector, The Rev. Bill Tully.

Speaking about why Tully accepted the call to St. Bart's:

"“I came here for the risk of it,” he says. His job as rector of St. Columba’s, the largest parish in Washington, “was getting too cushy after 14 years.”

And after 14 years at St. Bartholomew’s? Cushy address, certainly, Park Avenue at East 50th, but the luster stops there. “There was a question of whether we should even be here, of whether it is too costly to be running a world-class landmark in the middle of New York City, a place where real estate is one of the religions,” he says. “We exist in a city where it takes a lot of trouble and expense — $8 million a year — to keep the door open.”

But open it is. As is Café St. Bart’s, an upscale restaurant in the church’s community house with a menu more sybaritic than ecclesiastical. Mr. Tully introduced it in 1995, and even performed waiter duties on Day 1. “As I told our board, ‘If you think running a church in New York City is hard, you should try running a restaurant!’” The cafe is bustling, as is the 10-bed shelter, the food pantry and the soup kitchen, which served 80,000 meals to the needy this year."

The article lists the challenges facing the congregation today now that it has rebuilt a healthy congregational life. Specifically it details the costs of maintaining the historic building and fundraising efforts that are just beginning.

You can read the rest here.

It's common during the first week of January to see Christmas trees lying naked by the side of the road. For some, including the congregation at St. James Episcopal Church in Leesburg, Va., disposing of the trees has become an occasion for gathering for an Epiphany bonfire, bringing to life the light that is the promise of Advent and Christmas. The event, which drew about 100 people from the church and the community, was featured in a Washington Post video this week.

"We bring that light and warmth into what is often a very cold and dark night," says the Rev. John Dohmer, rector of St. James. (It bears noting that temperatures in the D.C. region have been unseasonably warm this week.) The bonfire commemorates and celebrates the light of Christ coming into the world, he continues.

Camp Quixote, a tent city for homeless residents that began illegally on city property but now is celebrated by city leaders, marked its first anniversary Friday, February 1, according to The Olympian.

The camp is a "safe place to stay after losing a 23-year marriage," said Ani Otto, one of three residents who were part of the original camp.

It started on a city lot near State and Columbia streets as a protest of the city's then-new Pedestrian Interference Ordinance, which prohibits sitting on portions of downtown sidewalks.

Olympia police evicted the camp, and it moved to property owned by Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation, followed by United Churches of Olympia, St. John's Episcopal Church, First United Methodist Church and First Christian.

For more on the Tent City movement read here and how to get involved here.

In other news of churches reaching out to the homeless comes this story of a Whittier, California Coalition and the development of a shelter and programs:

Gilbert said the inspiration for the shelter came when he and other students were sitting in a Quaker meeting on the Whittier College campus, and a homeless man burst in on the meeting asking for help.

"That just got me thinking," Gilbert said. "That really affected me profoundly."

So, Gilbert and his friends found support in the Whittier Area Ecumenical Council, and several churches agreed to help host a

shelter during winter months.

The churches decided that the shelter would rotate to different locations on a weekly basis, and a few supervisors would always be on hand for safety's sake.

Bea Comini, a parishioner at St. Matthias Episcopal Church, was one of the first church volunteers to sign on to the project

"What a testament to the spirit of this town, that they're willing to put church buildings and church volunteers into use in such a way," Gilbert said. "It's hard and it's basically thankless, but it's also important and critical."

In the years since Gilbert and his friends helped start the shelter and staff it overnight, many changes have been made. Now, churches in the area partner with the local mosque and synagogue.

Read it here.

The Jewish Daily Forward reports:

An influential Episcopal church in Pasadena with long-standing ties to the Jewish community is coming under fire from local Jews for hosting a Palestinian Christian activist group’s conference.

The conference, “From Occupation to Liberation: Voices We Need To Hear” slated for February 15 and 16 at All Saints Church, a 3,500-member church in the San Gabriel Valley, caught the attention of members of Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center last month, after a Boston-based media watchdog group sent out alerts that the conference’s sponsor promoted an anti-Israel agenda.

The conference is sponsored by the American arm of Sabeel, a Jerusalem-based organization that promotes itself as seeking a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Southern Baptist pastor Wiley Drake said Wednesday that he is being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service for endorsing GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee in a press release written on church stationery.
...
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State filed a complaint with the IRS. The group says Wiley lashed out against them with a press release on Aug. 14.

“I commend the IRS for investigating Pastor Drake's flagrant abuse of church resources,” Barry Lynn, executive director for Americans United, said in a prepared statement.

“Americans go to church to grow spiritually, not be lectured on which political candidate to vote for,” he said.

Drake defended the release and his comments on the talk show, saying that he was only offering his personal endorsement of Huckabee – not the church's.

“I think I'm perfectly within my rights and I am upset,” he said in an interview.
...
In September, the IRS closed a lengthy investigation of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena without revoking its tax-exempt status.

In a sermon just days before the 2004 presidential election, All Saints' former rector, the Rev. George F. Regas, was critical of the Iraq war and President Bush's tax cuts, although he did not urge parishioners to support Bush or his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

2/19 UPDATE: the rest of the story -- the Diocese of Texas has cancelled services - which these people knew - until the safety of the priest and lay leaders can be assured. See more above.

If you have ever wondered what a protracted church fight, sometimes called a Level IV conflict does to a parish and what kind of witness this is to the community, here is a perfect example.

Worshipers at St. Joseph's Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas came to church yesterday to find a note taped to the locked gate telling them that services were canceled. The press was called, the priest who locked the gates was not at home and charges and counter charges abound.

Mark Garay of KTRK-TV/DT of Houston reported:

People went to their church for Sunday services and they were locked out. Now, they're left wondering if they'll have to find a new place to pray.

It all stems from an ongoing dispute with their church pastor. The St. Joseph's Episcopal Church is about 400 members strong. They're praying this will all get resolved and they'll be able to stay at the church and keep the congregation together.

They gathered to sing and pray on the outside drive, locked out by steel gates, where inside they have celebrated god every Sunday for years.

"We haven't seen anything like this before," said church member Paul Chukwujekwu.

The problems began at St. Joseph's Episcopal Church about a year ago. Members began complaining to local publications that the Rev. Nogozi Ehmehkah Agimm was ignoring his pastoral duties,; not helping troubled families, refusing to offer communion to hospitalized church members and neglecting visits and prayers for one 74-year-old church goer who was dying of cancer.

"This priest has never visited him or called his house to pray for him. And word just came to us that this man died last week," said church member Michael Onuogu.

Complaint letters went out to the Governing Bishop Don Wimberly. But members say Agimm then accused his own congregation of stealing money, and last week set off a burglar alarm during Sunday service before leaving with his family.

"His intentions were of course to for the fire marshals and the police to come here and arrest everyone. But of course, it didn't happen," said Chukwujekwu.

Last Wednesday, the congregation says he wrote a letter telling church members they were no longer welcome, and threatened to have them arrested.

"My faith has been tampered with," said church member Innocent Ohalete. "The church is a place of worship, where we come to seek salvation."

We went to Rev. Agimm's house for his side, but there but there was no answer. In fact, church members say their last contact from him was a note left on the front gate this morning.

Church members are hoping to arrive next Sunday and see the gates open. But they admit if they don't hear anything soon, they may have to find another place to worship.

Church members deny anyone has stolen from St. Joseph's. But they do say there have been at least two other break-ins at churches nearby.

Eyewitness News tried calling the Episcopal Diocese of Houston for a comment, but a taped message said the office was closed until Tuesday.

Here is the video.

According to Episcopal Life Online, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright will serve as revivalist for the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 28 and 29. This is the third consecutive year that Wright has led this revival but the first visit since his prominence in the presidential campaign rhetoric.

Wright is former pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), a mega church in Chicago, Illinois with approximately 10,000 members.

St. Thomas is the oldest African American Episcopal Church in the United States and the first black church in Philadelphia. It was founded by the Rev. Absalom Jones, the first person of African ancestry to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church.

Read more here.

PBS ran an interview with Wright on Bill Moyers Journal.

Wright also spoke at the National Press Club breakfast.

NYTimes reports on Obama campaign and Wright here.

And here is the transcript of today's press conference by Obama on Wright

Grace Episcopal Church in Allentown PA offers grace in the city for those who come seeking spiritual and physical sustenance. PBS39 features the work of Grace, its Montessori primary school, food bank, and other services. The church is committed to serving the community in which it finds itself.

The rector, the Rev. Patrick Malloy tells Episcopal Cafe:

Grace Church is in a once-prosperous neighborhood that declined greatly with the death of the steel industry. While there were no factories in Allentown to be torn down, despite what Billy Joel's song claims, many residents worked in the nearby Bethlehem Steel Works: the largest factory in the world. As the neighborhood decayed and crime soared, the people of Grace Church voted to stay in the urban core and work to revitalize it, even as other mainline churches closed and moved to the suburbs.

Within the past five years alone, the parish has renovated part of a defunct retail space to create a 10-thousand-square-foot state-of-the-art Montessori pre-school and kindergarten (part of the city's urban redevelopment master plan), founded the first Montessori elementary school in Northeast Pennsylvania (and the first elementary school in the Diocese of Bethlehem). Grace Church partnered with the federal government to establish an employment agency for the neighborhood, turned over a significant part of its plant for GED classes, Monday through Friday, and has become the home of a rehabilitation program for fist-time juvenile offenders. Within the last year alone, both legal services and psychological counseling have been made available on-site to clients of all the parish outreach ministries.

Plans are underway for expanding the school into another abandoned downtown retail property, and converting a parish-owned house into apartments that will serve as transitional housing for homeless people.

Watch the video here.