The messaging, targeting 18- to 34-year-olds, highlights the many opportunities for involvement within United Methodist churches – from community hunger programs to basketball leagues. Meanwhile, the denomination is engaging in dialogue within its churches about enhancing those opportunities.
A hymn, “Lord of our diversity,” was commissioned for the gathering. Poet Mervyn Morris and composer Noel Dexter of Jamaica used music that recalled Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” to ask that God would “sanctify our listening and help us get the sense of perplexing arguments before we take offense.” Another verse prays that God would “teach us that opinions which at first may seem quite strange may reflect the glory of your great creative range.”
Bishop Cathy Roskam wrote these wise words. Try this prayer before your next vestry meeting: God our true perfection: Grant us brevity and resolution to do only those things which should be done, and keep from all that we ought not to do, to say all things needful, and not more.
Church Times wonders about the disparity of investment in response to diseases around the world. Last week World Malaria Day passed with barely a whisper
Episcopal Life has three videos surrounding the opening of the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Jamaica: (1) opening remarks by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (2)
Acceding to the covenant is voluntary, explained Mr. Kearon, adding that the membership in the Communion of churches will not cease or be altered if their decision-making bodies decide not to sign on to it. “The covenant will only be operative for those who agree to sign the covenant.”
The Nassar family decided there should be another option – to refuse to be enemies. So they established on their land a project called the Tent of Nations. Its overarching aims are to build bridges between people of different backgrounds and between people and land. “We wanted to move away from a circle of blame, and channel our frustration into something positive.”
When a Pew Survey studied the growing stream of people leaving the religions of their youth and eventually becoming people not connected with any religious tradition at all, few noticed the ones who grew up nonreligious and joined a church later in life.
Here is our weekly collection plate, offering some of the good things that Episcopalians and their congregations have done that made the news this past week. And other news fit to print.
The headline in The New York Times reads: “After 341 Years, Britain Picks a Female Poet Laureate.” In other news, the Archbishop of Canterbury has authorized a network of “flying laureates” to minister to those who don’t believe that God intended women to write poetry, but who want to continue to read it.