Seven whole days

This morning, as I arrived at church, I updated my Facebook status to say this: “Scott wonders how many if his Episcopal Church colleagues will celebrate ‘Christ the King’ today in error.” I was being a little snarky, but I had no idea what volume of reaction this would provoke.

My UK friends were puzzled. They wondered, what’s the problem? While the Feast of Christ the King is on recent calendars in the Church of England, it is not a feast day the Episcopal Church keeps. My standard is the Book of Common Prayer. Check it out. This Sunday is “The Last Sunday after Pentecost.” The readings are nearly identical with those of Christians who keep the feast of Christ the King. So who cares it we call it Christ the King or not? I think it matters, for a couple of reasons.

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Today, along with many other churches, the parish I serve rang its tower bell 350 times. We did this to warn of catastrophic climate change. It turns out the 350 parts per million is considered by some scientists to be a safe level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. We’re way over that now, and there’s a growing campaign to ask us to immediately and radically reduce our carbon emissions. You can read more at www.350.org.

Anyway, one of our Vestry members sent out a press release to several papers. Our local town paper ran an article. I was delighted to welcome a photographer from the Providence Journal today. I think they’ll have an article in tomorrow’s paper (look here for an update). Anyway, the photographer also shot some video, which is now online. It’s pretty fun.

Lots of times we Christians complain that we’re never in the news for the right reasons. But what do we do to change that? At Christ Church, we’ve gotten a fair amount of local media coverage in the last year. It’s not because we have an highly-funded  PR machine. It’s because we try to do compelling things, and we sometimes remember to tell the local media what we’re up to. Any congregation could do this.

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This article covers a shocking new pattern by our President-elect:

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama’s appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday witnessed the president-elect’s unorthodox verbal tic, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.

Thanks be God for a leader who is actually articulate.

And thanks, John, for drawing my attention to this.

The Lead alerted me to a story in today’s Washington Post. It seems that Washington National Cathedral is undertaking some severe budget cuts. Among the casualties will be Cathedral College (the College of Preachers).

Historic programs are facing trims, too. The cathedral plans to shut an adjacent building that houses Cathedral College — a closing date has not yet been set — and suspend its 84-year-old residential program for visiting preachers until it can be revived in better times, [Dean Sam] Lloyd said.

When cutbacks like this happen, people usually start to line up to blame the leader, especially after an expansion program. I don’t know much about the Cathedral and its recent history. I know that when I was a parishioner at Trinity, Copley Square in Boston, my impression was the Sam Lloyd was a good leader. So my assumption is that he’s a good leader at the Cathedral.

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From the good people over at Church Brand Architects:

Have you ever gone out to eat at a restaurant and seen food on the floor, grease covering the walls, a very unsanitary look to the place? Let me ask you, would you eat there?

If your answer is no!!! Then think about how your church looks to the average visitor. Is the grass cut – Are the doors painted – Does your church look like someone cares? I invite you to take a walk around your church property and look at it from the eyes of a visitor.  Ask yourself, does this visual picture really represent my church? And, as a consumer would I visit this facility?

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This time of year our lectionary points us toward the end times. Wonder what the end of the world will look like? Maybe it will look like one of these screen grabs from the teevee. Or maybe not. Either way, this is a pretty fun idea.

From the Mt. Holly Mayor’s Office, via bb.

It’s been a busy week in the parish I serve, so I had little time for blogging. Since I’ve last commented on such matters, the dioceses of Pittsburgh, Quincy, and Fort Worth have announced their desire to leave the Episcopal Church and to affiliate with the Province of the Southern Cone. You can find serious commentary on other blogs.

This is my less than serious response:

I guess my answer doesn’t quite fit the question, but I felt that I should say something about these folks leaving. Since I lacked motivation to comment, I’d been quiet until now. Then this video came across my blogospheric radar today. Oh, and people were starting to get cranky for their 7WD fix. So, here it is.

J. R. Woodward has written a primer — an encyclopedic posting and catalog of links, really — on the missional church. This phrase, proliferating amongst the trendies of church-land, is packed with meaning. It encompasses emergent worship, a focus on mission (hence the name), and perhaps most of all, a kingdom-oriented stance. Woodward writes:

With the buzz about the missional church, and a the desire to acquaint people in the congregations I serve on the topic, I decided to write a primer on today’s missional church. A primer is designed to introduce someone to a topic substantively but not exhaustively. I say today’s missional church, because the focus will be with the recent history of the church. My hope is that God might whet your appetite for further study and practice in missional living.

So start with Woodward and keep reading. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to make your own congregation a bit more missional in its outlook.

A quick PowerPoint slide goes to opensourcetheology for this one.

I don’t think I need to add anything here.

From Church Marketing Sucks.

Alice Walker is a favorite writer of mine. She’s written an open letter to Barack Obama. It is, just as you’d expect, eloquent and inspiring.

You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.

I find it refreshing and uplifting to read her claims that Obama’s spirit can lift the nation. A smile can be part of changing our world. In this I will put my hope.

A friend emailed me this cartoon.

Thanks, Peter, for the attribution info. It’s by Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Sure, we’re all familiar with the red vs. blue state world now. (Of course, red wasn’t always conservative, but that’s a story for another blog post.) Anyway, have a look at this helpful map roundup over at kottke. The variety is pretty amazing, and there are some very entertaining maps there. Enjoy!

This map, showing states sized proportionally with their electoral college count, is from the BBC.