newSpin 120130

The newSpin newsletter, Jan. 30, 2012
By Bill Lewellis
Published Monday, occasionally also on Thursday

TopSpin
• Renewal Assembly IV: Empowered Leaders, Renewed Congregations ... will focus on empowering leaders in our parishes and is designed to help vestry members in particular and those interested in leadership and taking an active role in parish vitality. Saturday, February 11, at seven locations around the diocese, 9 to 3. More here. Register here where you will also find more info. Have you found that service on the vestry has enriched your spiritual life?  Bishop Paul posed this question to his guests on the video prepared for Renewal Assembly IV.

• Diocesan Life for February 2012 ... Here.

• What people talk about before they die ... [CNN Belief Blog] People talk to the chaplain about their families because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives. That is how we talk about the big spiritual questions of human existence. We don't live our lives in our heads, in theology and theories. We live our lives in our families:  the families we are born into, the families we create, the families we make through the people we choose as friends. More here.

• No to Anglican Covenant ... [Episcopal Café] “Anglicanism was born in the Reformation’s rejection of an unwarranted and unhistorical over-centralization of ecclesiastical authority,” according to Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch. “This pernicious proposal of a Covenant (an unhappy choice of name if you know anything about our Church’s history) ignores the Anglican Communion’s past, and seeks to gridlock the Anglican present at the cost of a truly Anglican future.” MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church, and Fellow of St Cross College, in the University of Oxford. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy and co-edits the Journal of Ecclesiastical History. He has written several books on Christian history and the English Reformation, including the award winning Thomas Cranmer: A Life and The Reformation: A History. His most recent book, A History of Christianity: the First Three Thousand Years, won the 2011 Cundill Prize. He devised and presented the BBC television series based on that work. MacCulloch received a knighthood earlier this year for his services to scholarship. More here.

 • Numbers: Episcopalians who join the ordinariate, RC Catholics who become Episcopalian ... See below, under TailSpin.

• Bill Tully leaves St. Bart's ... See below, under Episcopal/Anglican.

• The Church of England's fudge on female bishops is breathtaking ... See below, under Episcopal/Anglican.  

DioBethSpin  
• Visit to Kajo Keji ... Archdeacon Stringfellow and Mr. Charlie Barebo leave tomorrow (Tuesday) evening on a New Spin visit/mission to the Diocese of Kajo Keji in Southern Sudan. They will open and bless two new schools, discuss a micro-finance project and build relationships with the people in our companion diocese. They will return February 8. God bless Africa and our missioners.

• Bishop Anthony of Kajo Keji has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the Global University of Lifelong Learning in recognition of the work he has done in the area of the Church and Community Mobilisation Process.

• Diocesan Training Day ... Find all the info you need, here. The annual Diocesan Training Day is now open for online registration. The event, held Saturday, March 24 at St. Stephen's Pro-Cathedral in Wilkes-Barre will feature twelve workshops from a variety of ministries.

• Renewal Assembly IV ... See above, under TopSpin.

• AuthorsAdvocate ... Elizabeth "Libby" House, senior warden at Grace Allentown and executive director of Grace Montessori School, publishes an insightful blog, AuthorsAdvocate.net, for Dorrance Publishing in Pittsburgh. Her blog focuses on the world of book publishing. Don't miss it. After a ten-year career at Westminster Press in production, sales and promotion, Libby has worked for the past 28 years in the self-publishing industry with Dorrance. BTW, she is a "Baker" as well as an elected member of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Bethlehem and a deputy to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church.

• Anne's 50th ... [Canon Anne Kitch] I am turning 50 this spring and I am inviting you to celebrate with me.I am throwing a party called.50 desks in 50 days. More here.

• Bishop's Beach Party (Rescheduled) ... March 17, 2:00 to 7:00, Cathedral. More here.

• Parish Nurse Preparation Course ... [Diana Marshall] The Parish Nurse Coalition of the Greater Lehigh Valley is conducting a Basic Parish Nurse Preparation course sponsored by Sacred Heart Hospital. More here.

• Grace Montessori open houses next Saturday ... [Beth Reed, priest-in-charge, Grace Allentown] Grace Montessori will host two events next Saturday (Feb. 4) for parents who may be considering sending their children to our school. At 10:00 AM, at the primary site (814 West Linden Street), The Rev. Beth Reed and Mrs. Libby House and other faculty and staff will welcome parents of 3-6 year olds. They will describe how we implement the Montessori philosophy, show parents around the facility, and answer questions. At 1:00 PM, at the elementary site (108 North Fifth Street, on the second floor of the church building), they will present a similar program for parents of children ages 6-10.  Libby House is the Executive Director of the school and Beth Reed is its chaplain. The school is a ministry of our parish, and through grant writing and other fundraising, we offer financial assistance to about 30 percent of the students. This allows students in downtown Allentown who could not otherwise obtain a high-quality early childhood education to receive one. It also means the school is a place of economic diversity and an anchor in the downtown. 

• The Diocesan Stewardship Commission is gathering information about how the various generations view their spirituality, image of God, the part church plays in their lives, their concept of mission, and their intentions about the use of money. No names will be used with the results of this survey. Click here to take part in this venture.
  

 • The newsletter and the blog ... You are reading the newSpin newsletter. There is also a newSpin blog. The newsletter is accessible (1) As a post on the newSpin blog where anyone can pull it down. (2) As a note that is posted on Bakery for members of that interactive list. (3) As a note pushed to some 1,000 addresses on the newSpin list on ChurchPost.

• Calendar of Diocesan Events ... Updated Jan. 10. Here.

• Weekly Parish eNewsletters ... Here are links to the attractive, newsy, and user-friendly weekly electronic newsletters of the Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Grace Allentown, Prince of Peace Dallas, Trinity Easton and St. Anne's Trexlertown. The Cathedral's newsletter is created with ChurchPost that, through a diocesan contract, is available free to all parishes. Cathedral, Jan. 27, here. Grace Allentown, Jan. 26, here. Trinity Easton, Jan. 27, here. Prince of Peace Dallas, Jan. 27, here. St. Anne's Trexlertown, here, click on "Weekly Calendar." There may be other weekly electronic newsletters, besides these five, that might be looked at. If so, please send me a link.

• Episcopal News Weekly bulletin inserts ... Download inserts here.

• DioBeth Website ... newSpin Blog ... Re:Create blog for youth and young adults ... Twitter.DioBeth ... Twitter.Kat Lehman ... Facebook.DioBeth ... Flickr, search under dio_beth • Public news and info lists ... At the Diobeth website , enter your name and email in the "Get Connected" box on the right hand side. You are welcome to subscribe to any or all of these. "Bakery" is our diocesan interactive list.

TaleSpin
• To tithe or not … [NTTimes] Graphic on how much the candidates give to charity, and how much believers give to charity. Text by Michael Paulson.

• Love Free or Die premiered at Sundance … [Episcopal Café and RNS] A documentary on Bishop Gene Robinson, first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, took center stage at the Sundance Film Festival. Here and here. It won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize for Grace Under Pressure.

• Asking questions ... [From a sermon preached by the late Dominican Herbert McCabe at Blackfriars Oxford on the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, Jan. 28] St. Thomas’s life was spent in asking questions (nearly all his major works are divided up explicitly into questions), and this meant seeking to answer them. A man is a saint, though, not by what he does and achieves, but by his acceptance of failure. A saint is one who conforms to Christ, and what Jesus is about was not shown in his successes, his cures and miracles and brilliant parables and preaching, but in his failure, his defeat on the cross when he died deserted by his followers with all his life’s work in ruins. Now whatever his many other virtues, the central sanctity of St. Thomas was a sanctity of mind, and it is shown not in the many questions he marvelously, excitingly answered, but in the one where he failed, the question he did not and could not answer and refused to pretend to answer. As Jesus saw that to refuse the defeat of the cross would be to betray his whole mission, all that he was sent for, so Thomas knew that to refuse to accept defeat about this one question would be to betray all that he had to do, his mission. And this question was the very one he started with, the one he asked as a child: What is God? ... This, then, is the heritage Thomas has left to his [Dominican] brethren and to the Church: first, that it is our job to ask questions, to immerse ourselves so far as we can in all the human possibilities of both truth and error; then we must be passionately concerned to get the answers right, our theology must be as true as it can be; and finally we must realize that theology is not God, as faith is not God, as hope is not God: God is love. We must recognize that the greatest and most perceptive theology is straw before the unfathomable mystery of God’s love for us which will finally gather us completely by the Holy Spirit into Christ, the Word God speaks of himself to himself. Then, only then, is our first question answered.

TailSpin
 • Numbers: Episcopalians who join the ordinariate, RC Catholics who become Episcopalian ... [Episcopal Café, Jim Naughton] There may be a good reason that the departure of fewer than 1,500 Episcopalians to the Roman Catholic ordinariate deserves extensive media coverage while the departure in recent years of more than 225,000 Roman Catholics to join the Episcopal Church goes unmentioned even in stories about the creation of the ordinariate, but I don’t know what it is. The stories on the ordinariate also report that as many as 100 priests—many of whom may be Episcopalians—have also applied to join the ordinariate. Is this evidence that the Catholic Church is winning priests from the Episcopal tradition? It reads that way, unless one knows, thanks to the Church Pension Group, that 432 living Episcopal priests have been received from the Roman Catholic Church. There is no reason to fear the ordinariate. Its creation is among the most overhyped religion stories of recent years. Some people swim the Tiber. Some swim the Thames. Media coverage suggests that reporters pay little attention until the Vatican tells them it’s a big story. More here.

• T.D. Jakes, one of the best-known pastors in America, says he believes in the Trinity. Wait, wasn’t that settled, like, 1700 years ago? [h/t Religion News Roundup]

• Catholic Healthcare West, one of the nation’s largest hospital systems, is cutting its formal church ties and changing its name in part to avoid the growing number of conflicts with church and state.

• Reconciling beliefs and vote ... Washington State is poised to become the seventh state (plus D.C.) to allow same-sex marriage, thanks to the support of a Democratic state senator, Mary Margaret Haugen, whose statement about reconciling her beliefs and her vote is gaining much notice: “I have very strong Christian beliefs, and personally I have always said when I accepted the Lord, I became more tolerant of others. I stopped judging people and try to live by the Golden Rule. This is part of my decision.”

• For Episcopalians look for new path ... [The Tennessean via Episcopal Café] In an overview of the turmoil in the Anglican Mission of America, Bob Smietana in The Tennessean Newspaper, lays out the issues confronting the members of the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) as they try to regroup. The article begins by quoting a former Episcopal priest who left to join the AMiA and who describes the present situation as "It’s sinful, it’s ugly, it’s wrong […] And it doesn’t bring honor to the name of Christ.”

• Woman charged with embezzling $1 million from New York RC  Archdiocese ... [RNS and NYTimes] A 67-year-old woman with a criminal record for theft has been charged with siphoning $1 million in donations while working in a finance office of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, church officials announced Monday (Jan. 30). The archdiocese said it did not conduct a criminal background check when the employee, Anita Collins, was hired in 2003. She had previously pleaded guilty to criminal charges in fraud schemes at other New York employers in 1986 and 1999. Her complex scheme drained money from an education fund at the same time the church was closing Catholic schools. ... More here and here.

Resources
• English words of Yiddish origin ... Have you wondered sbout kvech or mensch or schlep?  More here.

• Teachable Moment Videos ... [Oprah.com] With Ed Bacon of All Saints Pasadena. Here.

• In-Formation in Bethlehem, January 2012 ... Canon Anne Kitch's monthly newsletter of lifelong Christian formation resources. Here.

• Aging out of health care? ... [The Morning Call]  Ever-increasing costs prompt some medical ethicists to ask if a patient can be too old for a lifesaving but expensive procedure. "We need to stop thinking of medicine as an all-out war against death, because death always wins." More here.

• Congregational Resource Guide ... Here.

Episcopal/Anglican
• Bill Tully leaves St. Bart's NYC ... [NYTimes] His reinvention of a dying church with ratty old wooden pews is emblemized by the 900 brand-new chairs — bought by parishioners for $900 apiece, engraved plaques included — arrayed in the exquisite mosaic, marble and stained-glass sanctuary. With a congregation of nearly 3,400, up from a foundering flock of just a few hundred when he took over in 1994, the Rev. William MacDonald Tully, 65, is retiring from active duty at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on Park Avenue and 50th Street. More here. His last sermon, on spiritual community.

• The Church of England's fudge on female bishops is breathtaking ... [Andrew Brown, The Guardian] Here.

• Episcopal Church new website ... complete transformation and redesign, launched December 28, efficient and user friendly. Read about it here. ... Episcopal News Service ... ENS blog ... Episcopal Church on Facebook ... Episcopal Church on YouTube ... Anglican Communion website ... Anglican Communion News Service. ... Anglican Communion News Service on Facebook.

Moravian
• Moravian Church in North America website.  Moravian Church Northern Province website.  Moravian Theological Seminary website.

Evangelical Lutheran 
• NEPA Synod E-News ... Jan. 2, here.  NEPA Synod website ... Here.  ELCA website ... Here.  ELCA News Service ... Here.  ELCA's blogs may be found here. See especially "Web and Multimedia Development."

United Methodist 
• UMC website Here. News Service Here. Communication Resources Start here. Communication newsletter (tips and tools) Here. Eastern PA Conference website  Here. Facebook Here. Bishop Peggy Johnson's blog Here.

Roman Catholic
• Top archbishop 'denounces Vatican corruption' ...  [NCR, Tom Roberts, Jan. 25, John Allen, Jan. 27]  A top Vatican official who is now the envoy to Washington denounced corruption and waste in the management of the Holy See in letters to Pope Benedict XVI, Italian media reported last Wednesday. Carlo Maria Vigano was secretary general of the governorate of the Vatican -- the person in charge of the administration -- until October, when he was named ambassador to the United States in what was seen as a demotion. More here and here.

• Protests and gratitude ... Catholic officials from Arizona to Maine and many points in between are heaping scorn on a new federal rule requiring faith-based employers to include birth control in their health care coverage. A more liberal group of religious leaders thanked the Obama administration for the rule.

• Items from shuttered churches ... Here.

• Diocese of Allentown ... Here.  Diocese of Scranton ... Here.  United States Conference of Catholic Bishops ... Here.  Catholic News Service ... Here.  Vatican website ... Here.  Vatican Information Service blog ... Here.  Vatican News/Info Portal ... Here.

Opinion/Commentary
• Why politicians get away with lying ... [NYTimes] Maybe it’s a sign that the public has given up on honesty from presidential candidates. Instead, in a recent flurry prompted by the public editor of The New York Times, the assumption seems to be that politicians will always lie and that voters’ defense against that is fact checking by journalists. But … why do voters let politicians lie to them? What sort of lies do people accept, and which do they object to? Todd Rogers of the Harvard Kennedy School and Michael I. Norton of the Harvard School of Business organized this discussion. Read the discussion at the NYTimes.

• A Question of Growth ... [Alban Institute] The result of an extensive period of discernment was to establish a new model for pastoral ministry that deemphasized the role of ordained clergy. No lon­ger was the program life of the church going to be created and driven by professional religious leaders. If a program was going to be implemented in the life of our church, it needed to be generated by the efforts and initiative of church members. Pastors were no longer to engage in ministry unless they were helping to train lay members for the ministerial tasks before them. We created a Teaching Pastorate model for ministry that stressed preparing the laity to take on the work of the church. More here.

Media/Films/DVD/TV/Books/Music/Tech
• On the end of privacy ... [Kevin Drum, Mother Jones] Latching onto Google's recent announcement that it can combine all your information it gleans from you into one mega-profile, Drum takes a bleak look at where personal privacy is headed. "If Google can change its privacy policy today, it can change it tomorrow. And it will. No company is an unstoppable juggernaut forever, and Google is already showing signs of becoming an ordinary corporation that has to scrap for profits just like everyone else. This is what's motivating their policy change this week, and someday it's likely to motivate them to sell my personal information after all." More here. [h/t The Atlantic Wire]

WordSpin
• Daily Office ...  Lectionary Page ... Lectionary ...  Oremus Bible Browser ...  Revised Common Lectionary. 

Be there 
February: Music at St. Stephen's Pro-Cathedral. Here.

Feb. 11: Renewal Assembly IV, seven locations, 9 to 3. More here. Register here.

Feb. 19: Celebration of New Ministry, Christ Church Stroudsburg
The Rev. Doug Moyer as rector, 4:00 p.m.

Feb. 19: Arts on the Mountain ... At Trinity Mt. Pocono, Feb. 19. Here.

March 2: An Evening with C.S. Lewis at Trinity Easton. Here.

March 5: Financial Sanity Seminar At Trinity Easton, Four Mondays, 7 to 8:30 p.m., March 5 to 26. More here.

March 9-11: Nativity Cathedral's 10th annual retreat for Episcopal women, here.

March 17: Bishop's Beach Party (Rescheduled) Here.

March 24: Diocesan Training Day, St. Stephen's Pro-Cathedral, Wilkes-Barre 9:00 to 3:00.

March 29: Chrism Mass, Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem 11:00 a.m.

April 13: Ordination, Nativity Cathedral Bethlehem, 7:00 p.m.

April 20-22: Christophany Retreat, grades 6-12, at Pocono Plateau Retreat, Cresco.

May 3-6: Icon Workshop with Peter Pearson at Cathedral.  More info here.

May 16: Episcopal Church Women Annual Meeting, Kirby House 9:00 to 2:30.
Program:  Prefer Nothing to ChristBenedictine Wisdom for the Christian Life.
The Rev. Laura Thomas Howell

May 20: St. Matthew's Society Gathering, Lehigh Country Club, Allentown 3:00 p.m.

June 1-3: Vocare Retreat for Young Adults, Kirkridge Retreat Center.

June 16: Renewal Assembly 5, various locations.

June 30: Bishop's Day with Kids

July 5-12: 77th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, Indianapolis.

July 28: Bishop's Day with Kids

Summer: Senior High Mission Trip. Dates and destination TBA.

Sept. 20: New Hope 5th Anniversary

Sept. 25: Pre-Convention Meeting, St. Albans, Sinking Spring 7:00 p.m.
Sept. 27: Pre-Convention Meeting, Church of the Epiphany, Clarks Summit 7:00 p.m.
Oct. 2: Pre-Convention Meeting, Nativity, Bethlehem 7:00 p.m.
Oct. 5-6: Diocesan Convention at Good Shepherd Scranton

Nov. 11: Joint Eucharist with United Methodists
Asbury UMC, Allentown, 4:00 P.M. Bishop Paul to preach.

Follow
• The Diocese of Bethlehem on Twitter and Facebook ... http://twitter.com/#!/Diobeth ... https://www.facebook.com/DioceseOfBethlehem
• Kat Lehman on Twitter ... http://twitter.com/#!/KatLehman

Additional sources of news/info/commentary
• Religion News Service Daily Roundup ... here.
• Faith in Public Life ... here.
• Episcopal/Anglican
 (1) The Episcopal Church
 (2) Episcopal News Service
 (3) Episcopal Café
 (4) AngicansOnline.
 (5) AnglicansOnline News Centre.

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You are reading the newSpin newsletter. The newSpin blog, which includes the newsletter and other items, is available here. When the newsletter is completed on Mondays and occasionally, more often than not, on Thursdays as well, it is published immediately to the blog and on Bakery and on a ChurchPost list of some 1,000 addresses. Many recipients forward it to many more. Bakery and the blog are interactive. The ChurchPost list is not. The newsletter comes, of course, with some spin from the editor. 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. If you're wondering why you haven't seen something related to your parish or agency here, it's probably because no one has sent relevant info. Regarding items about your parish or agency as well as feedback on any other items ... send email to Bill.

Bill Lewellis, Diocese of Bethlehem, retired
Communication Minister/Editor (1986-2010), Canon Theologian (1998)
Blog , Email (c)610-393-1833
Be attentive. Be intelligent. Be reasonable. Be responsible.
Be in Love. And, if necessary, change. [Bernard Lonergan]