Well-known evangelical preacher and theologian John Stott (Wikipedia | Theopedia) has finished his public ministry at the age of 86 with his final sermon as this year’s Keswick Convention: “The Model—Becoming More Like Christ” (MP3). Stott answered the question, “What is God’s purpose for his people?” this way: “God wants His people to become like Christ. . . . Christ-likeness is the will of God for the people of God.”
Building his sermon on three texts—Romans 8:29, 2 Corinthians 3:18 and 1 John 3:2—Stott affirmed Wednesday night that “if we claim to be a Christian, we must be Christ-like.”
If you wouldn’t, you might be found guilty of discrimination. That’s what happened to the Rt Rev Anthony Priddis, Bishop of Hereford, when he refused 42-year-old John Reaney, an open homosexual, a job as a youth worker.
A gay man has won his case for unlawful discrimination after he was refused a job as a youth worker by the Church of England.
The employment tribunal ruled John Reaney, 42, was discriminated against “on the grounds of sexual orientation” by the Hereford Diocesan Board of Finance.
The Telegraph reports that Prime Minister Gordon Brown has elected to allow the Church of England to “choose its own bishops for the first time since Henry VIII.”
The reform—one of the biggest changes in the relationship between Church and state since the Tudor king fell out with the Pope—will reopen the fraught issue of disestablishment.
It will also dismay many Anglicans that such a major reform could have been announced with so little consultation or public debate.
Mr Brown was at pains yesterday to minimise the fuss by overtly supporting the Church’s established status, a constitutional arrangement supported by most churchgoers.
His announcement is nevertheless bound to refuel the demands of a vociferous minority for all ties to be cut between Church and state, including the right of bishops to sit in the Lords.
The row will surface next week when the General Synod meets in York as a debate on senior ecclesiastical appointments is already on the agenda.
The Christian Post reports that the dwindling Church of England is using a new book and outreach effort, which centers on The Simpsons TV show, to reach people with the Christian message.
Mixing It Up with the “Simpsons,” a book to be released by the Church of England’s publishing company, will be sent to youth advisers in every diocese across the country next week, the Sunday Telegraph reported, with the hope of showing how Christianity is relevant to life today through issues tackled in the popular U.S. TV cartoon series. Clergy will be urged to show episodes of “The Simpsons” that focus on Christian themes such as love and punishment.
The book’s author, Owen Smith, is a youth worker in the Kent Diocese of Rochester and insists the cartoon series is filled with biblical references. He looks to illustrate this in the book with quote comparisons.
Smith told the Sunday Telegraph: “’The Simpsons’ is hugely moral, with many episodes dealing with issues and dilemmas faced by young people. The willingness of the show’s writers to deal with questions of both morality and spirituality makes the program an ideal tool.”
The Seattle Times has a story about Episcopal priest Ann Holmes Redding, who has recently made public her commitment to both Christianity and Islam.
Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group on First Hill.
On Sunday mornings, Redding puts on the white collar of an Episcopal priest.
She does both, she says, because she’s Christian and Muslim.
Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she’s ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she’s also been a Muslim—drawn to the faith after an introduction to Islamic prayers left her profoundly moved.
. . .
“I am both Muslim and Christian, just like I’m both an American of African descent and a woman. I’m 100 percent both.”
Redding doesn’t feel she has to resolve all the contradictions. People within one religion can’t even agree on all the details, she said. “So why would I spend time to try to reconcile all of Christian belief with all of Islam?
“At the most basic level, I understand the two religions to be compatible. That’s all I need.”
She says she felt an inexplicable call to become Muslim, and to surrender to God.
“It wasn’t about intellect,” she said. “All I know is the calling of my heart to Islam was very much something about my identity and who I am supposed to be.
We are committed to bringing the gospel message of Jesus Christ to those who don’t know [him] and in this land that’s 95% of the people: 95% of people facing hell unless the message of the gospel is brought to them.
Another site has it this way:
We are committed, are we not, to bringing the gospel message of Jesus Christ to those who do not know Jesus. And in this land that is 95% of the people, and 95% of the people in this country facing hell unless the message of the gospel is brought to bear.
James E. McGreevey, who resigned as New Jersey governor in 2004 after saying that he had had an extramarital affair with a man, has become an Episcopalian and wants to be ordained as a priest in that faith, according to a published report.
The former governor, who was raised as a Roman Catholic, was officially received into the Episcopal faith on Sunday at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan, said the Rev. Kevin D. Bean, the church’s vicar.
. . .
Bruce Parker, a spokesman for the General Theological Seminary in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, said Mr. McGreevey had been accepted as a student. Mr. Parker added that he did not know if the former governor wanted to become a priest.
I owe Lewis a great debt. In my late teens and early twenties I read everything of his I could get my hands on, and read some of his paperbacks and essays several times over. There are sentences, and some whole passages, I know pretty much by heart.
. . .
Someone who converted to the Christian faith through reading Mere Christianity, and who never moved on or grew up theologically or historically, would be in a dangerous position when faced even with proper, non-skeptical historical investigation, let alone the regular improper, skeptical sort. Lewis didn’t give such a person sufficient grounding in who Jesus really was.
. . .
As another imperfect apologist, I salute a great master, and can only hope that in sixty years’ time children yet unborn will say of me that, despite all my obvious and embarrassing failings, I too was used, in however small a way, to bring people under the influence and power, and to the love and kingdom, of the same Jesus Christ
N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, preached an Easter Vigil sermon yesterday entitled “God’s Future in Person,” in which he addressed the mission of the church. Here’s an excerpt:
The question of Easter, and of baptism and confirmation, is: are we in God’s promised future now? And the answer is, No, but someone has come back to us from God’s future, and if we stick with him we’ll belong to that future as well and will learn how to be part of it. At Easter, Jesus came to us from God’s future, from the new world which God has begun to make. In baptism we become part of that same future, and in confirmation we stand up and say Yes, I’m part of God’s future world, and I pray for God’s Spirit to help me make it a reality in my life and in the world around me.
. . .
Easter on the one hand, and baptism on the other, are the launching-pads for the church’s mission. Let’s be quite clear. The church’s mission isn’t about telling more and more people that if they accept Jesus they will go to heaven. That is true, as far as it goes (though we ought to be telling them about the new heavens and new earth rather than just ‘heaven’), but it’s not the point of our mission. The point is that if God’s new creation has already begun, those of us who have been wakened up in the middle of the night are put to work to make more bits of new creation happen within the world as it still is. . . . We are given a new life, with a new purpose: to be part of God’s new creation, already here and now; to be people of the light, even though the world still seems dark; to be people who live by New Time even though Old Time is still rumbling on. . . . Part of the challenge of Easter, and part of the particular challenge of Baptism, is to pray for wisdom and vision to see where God can and will make new creation happen in our lives, in our hearts, in our homes and not least in our communities. That, quite simply, is what the mission of the church is all about, and every baptized Christian is called to be a part of it.
Ethics Daily has a report about the decline in church attendance in England.
An in-depth survey by a British charity indicates that more than half of Britain’s adults claim to be Christian, but only one in 10 regularly attends weekly church services.
Tearfund, a Christian relief and development charity, said its poll of some 7,000 men and women over the age of 16 suggests that Christianity remains the dominant faith in Britain, with 53 percent–26.2 million–of the adult population adhering to its beliefs.
But those figures from 2006 also represent a sharp decline from the last British census, in 2001, when nearly three-quarters of adults identified themselves as Christian.
The poll, “Churchgoing in the UK” indicates that only 7.6 million adults in a nation with a total population of more than 60 million go to church each month, and only one in 10 attends each week.
Well-known evangelical preacher and theologian John Stott (Wikipedia | Theopedia) has finished his public ministry at the age of 86 with his final sermon as this year’s Keswick Convention: “The Model—Becoming More Like Christ” (MP3). Stott answered the question, “What is God’s purpose for his people?” this way: “God wants His people to become like Christ. . . . Christ-likeness is the will of God for the people of God.”
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If you wouldn’t, you might be found guilty of discrimination. That’s what happened to the Rt Rev Anthony Priddis, Bishop of Hereford, when he refused 42-year-old John Reaney, an open homosexual, a job as a youth worker.
The Telegraph 
The Christian Post 
The Seattle Times has 
Richard Turnbull
N. T. Wright
