It’s inevitable when you’re a leader. People will start to come after you. Lots of people are after Archbishop Rowan Williams, for lots of different reasons. Now some people are coming to his defense. Finally.

One recent notable example is a Facebook group started by Dave Walker. It’s called “The Archbishop of Canterbury is a good man.” If you’re a Facebooker, I encourage you to check it out, and sign up.

Richard Kew has written a passionate and thorough defense of Rowan Williams and his leadership. Here’s a snippet:

Perhaps there is an inevitability in an aggressively secular society for Christian leaders, especially if they appear a bit quirky or are intelligent way beyond anything the lowest common denominator can imagine, to be attacked, misrepresented, and ridiculed by the forces that are at play. What is more difficult to stomach is when these individuals are set upon by those who should be their own spiritual kith and kin. Some of the things that have been said about Rowan Williams in the last few weeks, and by those who are fellow-travelers along the Christian way, have been at time scurrilous. I just hope the Archbishop doesn’t sit up late at night surfing the web looking for them, for they would cause him a great deal more pain.

As I have watched Rowan Williams these last few months (and you get a much closer view in England than the USA), I have seen a man who is an example of Christ to me. He appears to be someone who has been so captured by the redeeming love of Christ that it is reconciliation and forgiveness that he seeks, even when being bombarded by viciousness from Christians and secularists alike (although for different reasons). As a person he seems to be in the process of thoroughly absorbing the message of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, of forgiving his enemy and turning the other cheek. Wherever we are on the spectrum of the conflict that is tearing at the very fabric of the church, this is an example from which we can all learn and seek to emulate.

Rowan isn’t perfect, but he’s doing the best he can. More to the point, he’s seeking to behave as a Christian leader. Not enough Christians who are leaders manage to put those to things together.

(Kew’s article first appeared on his blog, the Kew Continuum.)

Like many people, I’m a Starbucks regular. If you notice my Facebook status on the right column, you may see that sometimes I’m “praying to St. Arbuck.” Sure, I know I should be drinking coffee that’s more ethical, but Starbucks is so, well, convenient. And yummy.

I was delighted to read, a couple of weeks ago, that Starbucks would be closing for retraining. Based on the drinks I get, many baristas could use it. But what will the caffeine-addicted masses do during the closure? If quality means less than a good bargain, you can get some cheap drinks elsewhere. Maybe you’ll get a free drink. Starbucks itself suggests some spring cleaning or a change in hair color. Here’s my suggestion: pray. Or give $5 to someone who needs it, since you didn’t get to buy the Venti four-shot soy vanilla cappuccino. There are also lessons for churches in all this.

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As I wrote a few days ago, Episcopal Life has been the source of much consternation lately. Because I serve on the Board of Governors of Episcopal Life, this is a matter with a personal connection. Recapping, a few days ago it was announced that the search for a new editor was going to be suspended. The plan is to publish the newspaper with decentralized editing. On cruise control.

I’m not a member of Episcopal Communicators at present, but I understand the discussion on their members’ email list as been vicious [update: see note below]. I’ve only seen a few postings on the House of Bishops & Deputies email list, but there’s some angst there too. Lots of people want a quality publication, with journalistic independence, to be produced.

People were angry to learn that the Board of Governors had not been consulted in this decision, despite the implication in the press release that we had been consulted. We were finally consulted, yesterday, in a conference call with Robert Williams, Director of Communications, and Linda Watt, Chief Operating Officer. The Board has now issued a statement (after the jump). I’d like to add my own $.02.

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The Telegraph, known for being wildly inaccurate on church matters, is now speculating that there’s a plan to sell many of the bishops’ palaces. Just for the sake of discussion, let’s say this story had come from a 13 year-old blogger, based on reading tea leaves, rather than The Telegraph. My imagined scenario will allow us to project some credibility for this story.

Should the church be in the real estate business? No. The church is in the the kingdom-building business, but God’s kindgom doesn’t require palaces. Quite often, the church forgets our real business and we focus on institutional business. The Senior Warden where I serve is fond of saying, “We’re not the First Bank of Christ Church.” He means that we need to be good stewards of our resources, and that might mean spending our money. He’s right.

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If you spend much time reading blogs, you get very well acquainted with your RSS aggregator (”reader”). I used to use Bloglines. I loved Bloglines. It was fast, above all else, and it had great features. Alas, over the weekend, it went kaput. Sometime on Saturday, it stopped working. Sometime on Sunday, I became a NewsGator user.

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Today begins the Fairtrade Fortnight. This will require no explanation for my many British readers, who seem to (a) belong to churches that care about Fair Trade and (b) use the word “fortnight.”

For this side of the Atlantic, Fair Trade is an umbrella term for a kind of commerce that’s kind to people and to the environment. Think of coffee, where the people who grow it are paid an amount on which they can live (i.e. “fair”) and they are encouraged or required to practice sustainable agriculture. Yes, it costs more, but as Christians we shouldn’t be mostly worried about the financial bottom line, anyway. (For you protectionists out there, Fair Trade has nothing to do with Free Trade. You may now resume your isolationist bubble life.) Oh, and a “fortnight” is two weeks. It’s a handy word, even if most parishioners here are likely to stare blankly when I use it.

In any case, there’s the big shindig going on to promote Fair Trade products. This is something that churches should rejoice to practice, but most US Episcopalians — or at least Episcopalians here in the land that was defined by Yankee frugality — seem to want to just shave a few pennies of the budget here and there. So, visit the website. Tell some people. Ask if your church is fairly traded products. Read more »

I’m a big fan of Edward Tufte, and I pretty much agree with his view on the evils of PowerPoint. For a quick example, I invite you to consider this speech versus this PowerPoint presentation. Imagine if we had to look at this every week instead of singing or saying the creeds.

This is the work of Damien Hirst, viewable at The Telegraph. Via the Blingdom of God.

I read 104 blogs every day, thanks to the miracle of Bloglines. Alas, it seems that Bloglines is not working. Or else all 104 bloggers decided to take the day off, which seems unlikely. There are usually 50 posts to read on Anglicanism alone, every time I open my trusty Macbook Pro. Now, nada. Especially irritating is the fact that I can’t find notice of an outage on Bloglines itself, though I’m not the only one with this problem. Grrr.

Why am I telling you this, dear reader? Because those 104 blogs are the fodder for most of my entries here. So if this keeps up, eventually the entire blogosphere will grind to a halt, as other blogs run out of blogs to froth about. Maybe I should hope for that outcome. Or maybe I should just get a new RSS aggregator. Suggestions are welcome.

I’ll see if I can muster an original thought in a next 12 hours or so. I’ll try to do my part to keep the tubes flowing.

UPDATE: The tubes are working now, but I’ve given up on Bloglines. See why I’m using NewsGator now.

Each week, I write a little blurb that appears (in slightly different forms) in the parish email newsletter and in our Sunday leaflet. Now that I have a blog, I’ll post them here to, to repurpose the content, to leverage the creativity, to take advantage of synergy, etc., etc. Most weeks, the “thought” is related to the Gospel reading for the week.

One time Jesus encountered a woman at a well. In what could have been an ordinary conversation (except for the fact that Jesus was talking to a woman, and a Samaritan at that), an extraordinary thing happened.

Jesus speaks about “living water.” The woman is understandably confused, and she asks him about the water. He replies, “Everyone who drinks of this water [from the well] will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

That’s how it is for us too.

All the things in our world - friendships, possessions, jobs, and even our families - spring from God. Without God, we will always be thirsty for more. Without God, we will find that our friendships seem wanting, our possessions bring us no comfort, our jobs will not be fulfilling, and our family relationships may be troubled.

God alone is the living water and the bread of life. God alone gives us what we need to live, to feel that this life is satisfying.

If we make time for God only when it seems convenient, or if we come to church only when the weather is not too nice or too lousy, or if we pray only when we are expecting God to bail us out of a problem, then we have not yet begun to drink from the well of living water.

God will love you if you never come to church. You can be a “good” person without being part of a church. But we will not experience the fullness of life in Christ without placing God first and joining in Christian community.

Come to church this Sunday. You can eat the bread of heaven and drink from the cup of God’s love poured out for you and for the whole world. As you delight in God’s presence, let this feed you and quench your thirst for the week to come.

The illustration is by He Qui. Visit the website to learn more, or to purchase art.

Things are abuzz in blogospheria Anglicana. Jonathan Petre and George Conger have both reported a plan to create an alternative episcopal oversight plan that might be acceptable both to conservatives and the ECUSA House of Bishops. Predictably, Petre’s version is more sensational, being based largely on rumor. After news broke, Bishop Howe of Florida released the actual plan, in order to show that Petre’s version was wildly inaccurate. (You can read the Howe news at The Lead.)

Here’s why this won’t work. In order to be acceptable to the House of Bishops, the plan would have to leave the Presiding Bishop as, well, the Presiding Bishop. The extremists on the right will not tolerate any plan that requires them to subject themselves to the authority of Katharine Jefferts Schori. This leaves no room for compromise, really.

Then, of course, there is the fact that the Pope of Pittsburgh seems hell-bent on having his own ecclesiastical empire. Many of these characters have shown themselves unwilling to be in the same room as someone with whom they disagree. The radicals on the right are out the door. There’s no getting them back. I’m not sure it was ever possible, sadly. That might be OK. I for one have no inherent objection to parallel jurisdiction, though I’m not convinced we need more versions of Anglicanism in the US. Read more »

Among the hats I wear is a gubernatorial cap. I serve on the Board of Governors of Episcopal Life. Usually, we toil in obscurity, but the last 48 hours have put us on the map, sort of. It seems that there are changes afoot with Episcopal Life, the newspaper of the Episcopal Church. The Board was informed, in an email sent by an administrative assistant on Thursday, that there is to be no full-time editor of the paper. Specifically, we were told that the search for an editor has been called off, due to budgetary constraints.

I have some ambivalence about this, which I’ll address below the fold. What I have no ambivalence about, however, is one part of this announcement. In the press release, issued on Friday, this line appears: “Consultation with the ELM board of governors and other industry experts to discuss long-range strategy and planning began in December, [Robert] Williams said, noting that further conversations are scheduled to continue.” This implies, I think, an endorsement by the Board of this move. This is not true. The Board has not endorsed this move. We have not, in fact, had a chance to discuss it.

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Over at the Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog, I ran across this cartoon, which originally appeared in Christianity Today.

Love this. It matches me, sort of. I started one notch in from the left, and I’ve ended one notch further to the right (we need a figure that’s either genuflecting or carrying a thurible). So often we evolve one way, or the other. To make this chart really accurate, we’d need an arrow to show that movement can go either way.

UPDATE: This cartoon — I am not surprised — turns out to be another fine example of Dave Walker’s work. Apparently, his nose must have been twitching, because he’s tracked down a number of blogs that have made use of this cartoon, mostly without citing him as the creator. I’m happy to give the correct attribution now. Sorry, Dave, for not getting it right the first time, and thanks for your generosity of spirit and your great work.

UPDATED UPDATE: My arrow both ways suggestion has been implemented over here. I don’t fancy I had anything to do with Bed Edson’s posting, but this does show the great cosmic link. Of something. This has been encouraged by Dave Walker. I’ll keep you posted.