The Rev. Elizabeth Hoffman Reed, ordained for the Diocese of Virginia after graduation from Virginia Theological Seminary, has been licensed by Bishop Paul to serve in our Diocese. She will teach at Grace Montessori School, serve as its chaplain, and serve as a priest at Grace Allentown. Father Patrick Malloy will continue to serve as rector. Reed has published books, edited magazines and anthologies on the liturgy, is trained in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd and has extensive experience with Montessori education. Beth, her husband, Jeff, and their two children, Nathan and Julia, were received at Grace yesterday.
Western Kansas Bishop intends to continue as rector ... The Rev. Michael P. Milliken will remain rector of Grace Church, Hutchinson, when he becomes the Bishop of Western Kansas, a model of ministry that the Episcopal Church hasn't seen since it's earliest days. More here and here.
Spinning ... [Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org] (1) I came across a delightful phrase, "a herd of individual thinkers," but don't remember where. That's your assignment. :-) (2) The latest in technology from David Pogue at the NYTimes is available here. (3)
Remember tennis-prodigy Andrea Jaeger? Once ranked number two in the
world of tennis, she's now an Anglican Dominican nun in southwest
Colorado, dedicated to helping children with cancer. (4) Tomorrow will be the last day of August. Would you believe? (5) The only seminary founded by the Episcopal Church is General Theological Seminary in NYC. (6) Ads on 15 London buses, "Pope Benedict – Ordain Women Now!" will run during the pope's mid-September visit to Britain. (7) Stanley Hauerwas has written a memoir. (8) What are the happiest words in the
English language?
Teaching Justice at Harvard ... Michael Sandel has taught a famous course on Justice for two decades. More than 14,000 students have taken the course, making it one of the most highly attended in Harvard's history. The fall 2005 course was recorded. An abridged form of this recording is now a 12-episode series, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?, a co-production of WGBH and Harvard. Episodes, about one-hour each, two classes per episode, may be viewed here. See also Charlie Rose's October 2009 interview with Sandel.
From Risk to Opportunities: Congregational Renewal in the Diocese of Bethlehem ... This paper, composed by by Congregational Development Committee of the Diocese of Bethlehem "to discern the standards, practices and resources that will foster faithfulness of ministry in every congregation," will be discussed during our Diocesan Convention in October. Find a three-part commentary by Ty Welles and Andrews Gerns, here, here and here. The commentary had been published in three issues of Diocesan Life.
Children's chairs available
... Trinity Bethlehem, has a few dozen children’s chrome and plastic
chairs in three different small sizes to donate to a church that needs
them. Please contact:mlightwood@hotmail.com if you are interested in
some or all of them.
ENS Weekly Bulletin Inserts ... [Episcopal News Service] Sunday, Sept. 5: Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori calls on Episcopalians to join in the current debate on immigration. Download inserts here.
What does Glen Beck have against Christ the liberator? ... Jesuit priest James Martin attempts to put a small dent in Glenn Beck's vast ignorance on the subject of liberation theology in an essay at the Huffington Post. [H/T to Jim Naughton at Episcopal Cafe]
Need to know, with anchors Alison Stewart and Jon Meacham, is a new PBS TV- and web- newsmagazine. Friday, 8:30 to 9:00 on TV, check local listings, and renewing every day on the web. Need to Know is being produced by WNET.ORG in New York City as a bold new cross-media platform. It is not
a television broadcast with a secondary online presence. Rather, the
site and the TV program work together to complement each other. More here.
Lower Manhattan: Birthplace of Religious Freedom ... A 3:38 PBS video segment with Jon Meacham. View it here.
USA Today, the nation's second largest newspaper, is making the most dramatic overhaul of its staff in its 28-year history – some 130 layoffs this fall – as it de-emphasizes its print edition and ramps up its effort to reach more readers and advertisers on mobile devices. Like most newspapers, Gannett Co.'s USA Today has been cutting back in recent years to offset a steep drop in advertising that is depleting its main source of income. To compound the problem, fewer readers are paying for newspapers as free news proliferates on the Web. More here.Clergy, heal thyselves ... [Elizabeth E. Evans, Huffington Post] A few weeks ago, there was a rash of media coverage of a Duke University study that told a lot of us clergy what we already knew: those charged with shepherding the sheep are often not men and women who are good at taking care of themselves. More here. [Evans is priest-in-charge, St. Mark's, Honey Brook, PA]
Avoiding Mission Drift ... [Robert Steinke, Alban Institute] Limping along without a focus is called mission drift. It is what happens when people come together to support an objective but forget what the objective is. People lose their reason for being, even though they go through the motions. Many things contribute to the sidetracking, such as compromising ideals in succumbing to a pressure group, searching for instant viability or solutions, grasping for saviors, fooling themselves that they are vital or viable simply because they endure, preoccupying themselves with nonessentials, exchanging their core beliefs for more marketable ideas, or failing to attend to what God is calling them to do in their little corner of the world. More here.
Too much mission? [Jim Naughton, Episcopal Cafe] I have a question about mission, and one I hope our conversation won't reduce to semantics. When I hear the word mission, I hear the word work, or job. I work all week long. I get spiritually depleted. I go to church to be fed so I can resume that work. If instead of food, what I get is another set of assignments, I get tired. I suspect that I am not alone in this. I am all for mission. I spend a great deal of my time encouraging people to take one on. But the church's emphasis on mission in some ways makes me feel that it is just another task master. I certainly don't want to belong to a do nothing church, but there has to be some room in which we can own up to our own needs, weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I wonder if our church's emphasis on mission makes this difficult. Join the conversation here.Rowan Williams: Writing as Discovery ... "Something which will be familiar to anybody who has ever tried to do serious writing ... is the sense in which you only discover what you have to say in the doing of it. ... Writing isn't translating something in here onto the page. Writing is an act. If it were just transference, no doubt you could plug in the electrodes and something would neatly type up what was going on inside your head.... Writing is an act, it is an action of self-discovery and an action of trying to put something into being." More here.
Ex-gay ministry in financial trouble ... Exodus International, the controversial ministry that claims to turn GLBT
people straight is having significant and unexpected financial
problems. Their leadership was deeply involved in the notorious Ugandan legislation against gay and lesbian people.
According to a report in the Falls Church News, the attention engendered
by that activity led them to make some unwise financial decisions. More here. [H/T to Nick Knisely at Episcopal Cafe]
Ramadan lessons for all of humanity ... [Queen Noor of Jordan, Huffington Post] Ramadan is the holiest month of the Islamic year. We observe it this year against a backdrop of intensifying global human suffering, caused by economic hardship, human rights abuses, military conflict and terrorism, and the rapidly multiplying disastrous consequences of climate change. Muslims have an opportunity to use the days of this month as God intended: to reflect on our own humanity and our collective duty towards our fellow human beings. True religion isn't built of the manifestations of piety through prayer -- turning faces towards the east or west -- but requires good deeds and action that manifest and express the essential values of our faith. More here.
Google shakes it up again with free phone calls
...
here.
In New Orleans, Black Church face a long, slow return ... [NYTimes] Having lost his house and his church to the broken levees
in the Lower Ninth, Mr. Duplessis had managed by grit and will and
fathomless faith to reopen in early 2009, using his rebuilt home to
replace the sanctuary he couldn’t afford to replace, the sanctuary that
had stood in some grim coincidence on Flood Street. He installed an electric piano and a computer with a projector. He
collected several dozen copies of the Baptist Hymnal. He put out weekly
editions of the church bulletin; he put up a lawn sign declaring, “Our
Church Is Back!” What was not back was the bulk of his congregation. Of the 120 members
before Hurricane Katrina, only 40 had returned. The rest were still
strewn across the map ... and most of the Lower Ninth remained a ruin of buckled
roads, cracked foundations and swamp grass six feet high. More here.
Retargeting ads follow surfers to other sites ... [NYTimes] The shoes that Julie Matlin recently saw on Zappos.com were kind of cute, or so she thought. But Ms. Matlin wasn’t ready to buy and left the site. Then the shoes started to follow her everywhere she went online. “For days or weeks, every site I went to seemed to be showing me ads for those shoes. It is a pretty clever marketing tool. But it’s a little creepy, especially if you don’t know what’s going on.” Read more.
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Send this to friends you think may be interested ... newSpin is an electronic newsletter that includes news, information and commentary related to the Diocese of Bethlehem, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion and the world of religion ... with some spin, of course, from the editor. It is edited by retired communication minister Bill Lewellis and ordinarily published twice weekly, on Monday and Thursday. To have it emailed to you, you may subscribe at the "Get Connected" box on the right column of www.diobeth.org. Select newSpin under the groups. You may find samples of the newSpin newsletter at the newSpin blog, www.diobeth.typepad.com.
About the newSpin newsletter ... Composed at least weekly (usually twice a week) by Bill Lewellis, the newSpin newsletter appears as a post within the newSpin blog, but newsletter and blog are not identical. The newsletter currently goes to some 1,000 email addresses on a separate list. The newsletter comes, of course, with some spin from the editor, but the views expressed, implied or inferred in items or links contained in the newsletter or the blog do not represent the official view of the Diocese of Bethlehem unless expressed by or forwarded from the Bishop or the Archdeacon as an official communication. Comments may be addressed to Bill.
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