The newSpin newsletter, Nov. 1, 2010
Diocese of Bethlehem
On the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude ... A sermon preached at Diocesan House by Archdeacon Stringfellow. Read it here.
Happening #19 ... [From Kim Rowles] November 11-14 at Kirby House. Registration closes Nov. 7. More here.
United Thank Offering application process ... Info here. Jane Teter says the applications for UTO grants are due in the Bishop's office by Wednesday, December 15. Though applications are due in the UTO office at the end of January, Diocesan House needs time to process them and get them to the UTO office on time. Questions: Jane.
Congregational Development Grants Deadline ... [From Canon Jane Teter] Just a reminder that the absolute deadline for Congregational Development Grants applications is Monday, November 15. No applications will be accepted after that date.
RC Diocese of Scranton Bishop will preach at St. Luke's Scranton. You are invited. More here.
Centering Prayer Retreat at the Cathedral, Saturday, November 13, 9:00 to 3:00. More here.
Interfaith Thanksgiving Choir Festival ... On Sunday November 21 at 4:00 p.m., Trinity Easton will host choirs from churches, synagogues, and meeting places of various religious creeds for the 11th annual Easton area Interfaith Choral Festival of Thanksgiving. More info here.
News/Info/Commentary sources from The Diocese of Bethlehem ... •The newSpin blog •The Diobeth website. Enter your name and email address in the "Get Connected" box on the right hand side. You will find quite a few public news and info lists there. You are welcome to subscribe to any or all of them. "Bakery" is the diocesan interactive list. •Twitter
Diocesan Convention ... Read Bishop Paul's address to the 2010 Diocesan Convention here. Read Bishop Paul's sermon at the 2010 Diocesan Convention eucharist here. Read Andrew Gerns' story on small groups highlighting the work of the Spirit at Convention here.
Kirkridge retreats for personal growth and healing ... For writers, for Christian gay and bisexual men, for women who have experienced sexual abuse, for sexual abuse survivors and their partners, and more.
One Communiy/One Voice ... A national day of mourning and solidarity for the LGBT community. Come together on November 12 at 6:15 p.m. at St Mary's Church in Reading and walk down Windsor to Centre Ave and then down Centre Ave to Calvary UCC where All Souls Church is hosting a 7:00 p.m. service of remembrance. The walk is less than a mile. No banners. No music. No rainbows. No stereotypes. No shouting. As a show of unity, please wear all black clothing. Download poster here.
Find earlier issues of the newSpin newsletter here and recent ones in the left column here.
The Episcopal Church/The Anglican Communion
Jon Meacham, author and Trinity vestryman, was the guest preacher and speaker for the kickoff of Trinity's 2011 stewardship campaign on October 24. Here, he shares his thoughts on stewardship, what he sees in the year ahead of us for the country, and how he navigates being a public figure and a person of faith. Interview here. Sermon here.
Florida Episcopal parish launches Prescription Assistance Program ... The Bay County Health Department and St. Andrew Episcopal Church announce the opening of the Prescription Assistance Program (PAP) –– an exciting new community service for the citizens of Bay County. PAP's purpose is to assist low-income individuals obtain necessary prescription medications through the various compassionate care programs offered by the pharmaceutical companies. More here. [H/T to Nicholas Knisely, writing at Episcopal Cafe]
Daughter of Muslim cleric ordained an Episcopal deacon ... "This has been a journey for me. I was born and raised a Muslim … my dad is an imam for a large congregation in my town," said Fatima Yakubu-Madus, who was ordained a vocational deacon Oct. 23 during the 173rd annual Indianapilis diocesan convention. More here.
Episcopal deacons fill vital rotes at small churches ... Bishop Nathan Baxter ordained six deacons for the Diocese of Central PA. More here.
VTS Chapel fire ruled accidental ... Read the Episcopal News Service story here.
A weekly roundup of Anglican Communion news plus opinion, reviews, photos, profiles and other things of interest from across the Anglican/Episcopal world. Find it here.
United against the Anglican Covenant ... Two English church groups have united against passage of the Anglican Covenant during next month's General Synod. Meanwhile, Bishop Alan asks if anyone, anywhere can say anything nice about the document--and if they can't why should it pass? More here.
Jubilee Ministry grants ... Info here.
Grants awarded for innovative leadership development programs ... The 2011 Roanridge Grants totaling $129,700 were recently awarded to seven Episcopal Church agencies actively engaged in developing new and creative models for leadership development in small communities across the Church. More here.
Studying Your Congregation and Community ... Free tool provides info on Episcopal Church congregational, diocesan trends. Myriad of uses includes stewardship, planning, strategic development. More here.
News/Info/Commentary sources from The Episcopal Church ... •NewsLine •News & Notices •Infoline •Episcopal News Service •Website •Twitter •Facebook •YouTube
News/Info/Commentary sources from other Episcopal sources ... •The Lead, Episcopal Cafe •Daily Episcopalian, Episcopal Cafe •AngicansOnline •
ENS Weekly bulletin inserts ... For November 7: In September, the United Nations held a summit meeting on the Millennium Development Goals to assess the progress of the 15-year plan, adopted in 2000. "In a nutshell, the summit asked the world to move from talk to action," write Devon Anderson and Bishop Ian Douglas. Full text of inserts may be found and downloaded here.
Beyond the Bounds
The Women's Conference 2010 ... Maria Shriver inspires women to be architects of change. Read about it here.
British Columbia RC bishop severely beaten ... [CBC News] One person is in custody after the Roman Catholic bishop of Kamloops, B.C., was severely beaten at the city's cathedral. RCMP were called to the Sacred Heart Cathedral in the B.C. Interior city on Friday night, and found Bishop David Monroe bleeding on the floor of the church rectory. Police believe he had been beaten with a blunt object. Monroe, 69, was rushed to hospital, along with another priest who dislocated a shoulder trying to fend off the attacker. More here.
To promote civility in religion and politics ... Episcopal priest and former Republican Senator John C. Danforth has launched an academic center on the relationship between religion and politics at Washington University in St. Louis. More here.
How RC bishops challenge abortion laws is 'flawed' ... [NCReporter, Tom Roberts] The approach currently taken by the U.S. bishops to changing the law on abortion -- giving it a preeminence above all other issues that Catholic voters might consider -- is flawed on four counts, argued Fr. Charles Curran during a lecture Oct. 28 at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, where he teaches. Curran, a controversial theologian who ran into trouble with church authorities earlier in his career for challenging church teaching on artificial birth control and other social issues, did not dispute church teaching about abortion in his talk. Instead he argued that various approaches to the law are acceptable under Catholic teaching. More here.
Giving ideas away ... In the very long run, all knowledge is open-source. But IDEO is giving it away, free, right now. More here. [H/T to Leadership Education at Duke Divinity]
Health
We’re Heading into the Dark Days of late fall, when depression can become overwhelming, and loneliness can set in for those who spend much of their time at home. Plan now to screen those at risk in your communities: new parents, those who have recently moved, the homebound, those with a new health diagnosis, actually, MANY of us! If you would like to anonymously screen yourself, or recommend this to others, visit the free, confidential, on-line screening tools designed by Screening for Mental Health, Inc. There are screenings for college students, members of the military and their families, and the general public. Or call your local mental health facility for help in finding a tool that will be right for your community. [From the International Parish Nurse Resource Center, H/T to Diana Marshall]
Media
The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, by Eliza Griswold ... [Farrar, Straus and Giroux] A riveting investigation of the jagged fault line between the Christian and Muslim worlds. The tenth parallel -- the line of latitude seven hundred miles north of the equator -- is a geographical and ideological front line where Christianity and Islam collide. More than half of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims live along the tenth parallel; so do sixty percent of the world’s 2 billion Christians. Here, in the buzzing megacities and swarming jungles of Africa and Asia, is where the two religions meet; their encounter is shaping the future of each faith, and of whole societies as well. An award-winning investigative journalist and poet, Eliza Griswold has spent seven years traveling between the equator and the tenth parallel: in Nigeria, the Sudan, and Somalia, and in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The stories she tells in The Tenth Parallel show us that religious conflicts are also conflicts about land, water, oil, and other natural resources, and that local and tribal issues are often shaped by religious ideas. Above all, she makes clear that, for the people she writes about, one’s sense of God is shaped by one’s place on earth; along the tenth parallel, faith is geographic and demographic. An urgent examination of the relationship between faith and worldly power, The Tenth Parallel is an essential work about the conflicts over religion, nationhood and natural resources that will remake the world in the years to come. [Eliza is the daughter of Phoebe and onetime Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold.]
Pray for
Leslie Evans ... [From Bishop Paul, Sunday morning] I received a call from Kirk last night that for the last 8 days Leslie has been in Lower Bucks Hospital seriously ill. She will continue to be hospitalized for an indefinite time. I ask your prayers for her and her family.
Our young men and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for their families ... More here.
Spinning
(1) More of our churches seem to be using the Community Calendar published Monday through Saturday in the paper and available 24/7 online. Submit an event here. Let me know, please, of similar services in other newspapers.
(2) O threefold God of tender unity, life's great unknown that binds and sets us free: felt in our loving, greater than our throught, you are the mystery found, the mystery sought. [743, Hymnal 1982]
(3) Jon Meacham, a graduate of the University of the South, preaching recently on stewardship at Trinity Wall Street, described Sewanee as a combination of Brideshead Revisited and Deliverance.
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Send info about newSpin 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. The newSpin newsletter is currently received by some 1,200 people, many of whom forward it to many others. To have it emailed directly to you, 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 on the left column of 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 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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