Episcopal Life Daily April 29, 2008
Episcopal Life Online is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife.
Today's Episcopal Life Daily includes:
* TOP STORY - Fort Worth visit an 'unwarranted invasion,' Presiding Bishop tells Southern Cone primate * TOP STORY - Education for Ministry focus of May 4 bulletin insert * TOP STORY - Lainya diocese, ERD partner to support Sudan's returning refugees * TOP STORY - Indigenous Ministries Committee wants Executive Council to rescind budget cuts * DIOCESAN DIGEST - MAINE: Stephen Taylor Lane to be ordained and consecrated as bishop coadjutor on May 3 * DIOCESAN DIGEST - NEW YORK: Presiding Bishop helps parish celebrate 175th anniversary * WORLD REPORT - BRAZIL: Bishops respond to Anglican Covenant St. Andrew's Draft * WORLD REPORT - ENGLAND: Renewal of St. Martin-in-the-Fields to serve 'community, visitors and those in need' * WORLD REPORT - IRELAND: President Mary McAleese to speak at General Synod in Galway * WORLD REPORT - IRELAND: Jerusalem bishop to visit Clogher diocese * TEACHING - Episcopal Church Service of Repentance set for October in Washington, D.C. * ARTS - Episcopal artists -- you can see them as they see themselves * DAYBOOK - April 30, 2008: Today in Scripture, Prayer, History * CATALYST - Messages in the Mall: Looking at Life in 600 Words or Less
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TOP STORIES
Fort Worth visit an 'unwarranted invasion,' Presiding Bishop tells Southern Cone primate
Episcopalians organize to counter moves to re-align Fort Worth diocese
From staff reports
[Episcopal News Service] Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has advised Southern Cone Presiding Bishop Gregory J. Venables in an April 29 letter that his planned May 2-3 visit to address a special convocation of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth (http://www.fwepiscopal.org/index1.php) "with the expressed purpose of describing removal to the Province of the Southern Cone is an unwarranted invasion of, and meddling in, the internal affairs of this Province."
"I write to urge you not to bring further discord into The Episcopal Church," Jefferts Schori told Venables, who was, according to reports, scheduled to be in Central California on April 29 to meet with church leaders who last year voted to disaffiliate with the Episcopal Church and align with his Argentina-based province.
"The actions contemplated by some leaders in Forth Worth are profoundly uncanonical," Jefferts Schori wrote. "They also prevent needed reconciliation from proceeding within this Province."
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_96776_ENG_HTM.htm
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Education for Ministry focus of May 4 bulletin insert
[Episcopal Life Weekly] The bulletin insert for May 4 offers information about Education for Ministry (EfM), a lay ministry training program offered by the School of Theology at the University of the South.
Bulletin inserts are available at
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/95270_ENG_HTM.htm
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Lainya diocese, ERD partner to support Sudan's returning refugees
By Matthew Davies
[Episcopal News Service, Lainya] The Diocese of Lainya in the Episcopal Church of the Sudan (ECS) is partnering with Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) to support vocational training programs for returning refugees in southern Sudan, one of the primary challenges of the post-war conditions in Africa's largest country.
Lainya's visionary Bishop Peter Amidi hosted a group of U.S. Episcopalians and Canadian Anglicans who toured the diocese's former educational complex destroyed during the 21-year civil war that ended with the signing of a 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
Amidi outlined his plans for using the remaining structures as a foundation for building a rehabilitation center to train refugees returning to the area, primarily from camps in Kenya and Uganda. ERD has committed to funding the multi-year project through ECS' Sudanese Development and Relief Agency (SUDRA).
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_96762_ENG_HTM.htm
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Indigenous Ministries Committee wants Executive Council to rescind budget cuts
Reductions called 'very devastating' to ministry
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Church's Executive Council Committee on Indigenous Ministries plans to ask the Executive Council to restore to the church's 2008 budget money cut from block grants that help fund ministry to Native Americans.
At its last meeting in February, the Executive Council approved a revised 2008 Episcopal Church budget that included reductions to several programs, including a five-percent cut in the money that South Dakota, the dioceses of Alaska and North Dakota, the Navajoland Area Mission and the Indigenous Theological Training Institute expected to get from the church's Domestic Partnership block grant program.
The committee's decision to ask that the money be restored came during ECCIM's April 25-26 meeting in Sioux Falls in Diocese of South Dakota. South Dakota Bishop Creighton Robertson, a member of the committee, will lead the work to draft a resolution to present to the Executive Council at its next meeting June 13-15 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_96729_ENG_HTM.htm
More Top Stories: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/elife
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DIOCESAN DIGEST
MAINE: Stephen Taylor Lane to be ordained and consecrated as bishop coadjutor on May 3 http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_96741_ENG_HTM.htm
NEW YORK: Presiding Bishop helps parish celebrate 175th anniversary http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_96764_ENG_HTM.htm
More Diocesan news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_ENG_HTM.htm
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WORLD REPORT
BRAZIL: Bishops respond to Anglican Covenant St. Andrew's Draft http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_96739_ENG_HTM.htm
ENGLAND: Renewal of St. Martin-in-the-Fields to serve 'community, visitors and those in need' http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_96738_ENG_HTM.htm
IRELAND: President Mary McAleese to speak at General Synod in Galway http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_96736_ENG_HTM.htm
IRELAND: Jerusalem bishop to visit Clogher diocese http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_96735_ENG_HTM.htm
More World news: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_ENG_HTM.htm
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TEACHING
Episcopal Church Service of Repentance set for October in Washington, D.C.
[ENS] In this bicentennial year of the abolition of the international slave trade, the Episcopal Church, mandated by the 2006 General Convention resolution A123, (http://www.episcopalarchives.org/e-archives/bluebook/23.html#2006-A123) will hold a Service of Repentance at the Washington National Cathedral on October 4 at 10:30 a.m. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will preside.
"Confronting the Past: Changing the Future" will begin on October 3, 1-6 p.m. with a reception and workshops focusing on the following:
* Narratives of the Episcopal Church, slavery and Jim Crow segregation * The use of scripture to support slavery * The continuing reality of institutional racism in the church and society * Examples of initiatives for the "repairing of the breach" (Is. 59:12)
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/78650_96767_ENG_HTM.htm
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ARTS
Episcopal artists -- you can see them as they see themselves
By Jerry Hames
[Episcopal Life] Thirty-one artists contribute works of self-expression to the latest exhibition, Portraits of the Self, launched on the Episcopal Church & Visual Arts website (http://www.ecva.org) this month.
It is the first exhibit of 2008 and the 25th on the Episcopal artists' website since the organization was inaugurated in 2000.
The artists in this exhibit of 40 self-portraits present themselves within a wide range of interpretations. "From the introspective nature of self-conception to the outward-looking nature of creating visual art, from revealing to concealing identity, self-portraiture is characterized by persistent contradiction," said the curator, David C. Hancock, in his introduction to the exhibit." Honesty and deceit each play their part in facing the 'self' with its deep hidden truths, and in sharing these personal discoveries with others."
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81827_96768_ENG_HTM.htm
More Arts: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81827_ENG_HTM.htm
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DAYBOOK
On April 30, 2008, the Church calendar remembers Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) and Rogation Day.
* Today in Scripture: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/82457_ENG_HTM.htm * Today in Prayer: Anglican Cycle of Prayer: http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm * Today in History: On April 30, 418, Roman Emperor Honorius (384-423) issued a decree against Pelagianism, a teaching that a person can take the initial and fundamental steps toward salvation by one's own efforts, apart from divine grace.
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CATALYST
"Messages in the Mall: Looking at Life in 600 Words or Less" from Church Publishing, Inc., by Paul V. Marshall, 149 pages, paperback, c. 2008, $16
[Source: Church Publishing, Inc.] For more than a decade the author has been writing a "Saturday religion column," syndicated in ten newspapers in the 14 counties of Pennsylvania that comprise the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem. The "600 words or less" in the title comes from the rigorous discipline of writing to strict space requirements. The intent of the columns is to engage the secular culture and to bring the church's message to it by commenting on the realities of the human condition and on issues of general interest. This book is a compilation of many of the columns, organized along thematic lines.
This book will be an ideal cross-denominational trade book for individual reading or group use. The short-take format lends itself to episodic reading and will appeal to the individualdaily-prayer market. Clergy will find the book an excellent source for sermon ideas.
To order: Episcopal Books and Resources, online at http://www.episcopalbookstore.org, or call 800-903-5544 -- or visit your local Episcopal bookseller, http://www.episcopalbooksellers.org
More Catalyst: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/83842_ENG_HTM.htm