Engage Brain!

The (Resource) Strategy and Development Unit of the Archbishops’ Council  and Church Commissioners have just published the first issue of an on-line ‘Resourcing Mission Bulletin’ and sent the email below round to senior church leaders to get it into the bloodstream of the C of E.

Much of what I receive, from all sorts of sources, is not worth passing on. Some of it is echoed here on my blog. Occasionally it is really valuable. This mailing falls, I suggest, into the last category.

What it isn’t is a series of fixes for an anxious church. What it is is a set of essays inviting us to engage our brains – and our faith – with some of the big underlying issues that will affect how we live and grow – or don’t – in the years to come.

Well worth reading- so do continue below the fold, and follow the links.

Filed under: Church of England

Rave in the Nave first pictures

   

First pictures from the year’s Rave in the Nave at Ely Cathedral which was held last night. About 1000 people present, nearly all (hooray!) a lot younger than me. Well done Dave the Rave, aka Capt David Waters, our Diocesan Youth Officer, who masterminded it yet again.

Filed under: Church of England, Events, youth

C of E News Roundup

Wedding wrap

Weddings made in cyberspace

An innovative way of planning a church wedding by web has been a surprise hit with couples. What began life as a pilot less than two years ago with a change in the law initiated by the Church – the Marriage Measure – is now at the heart of one-third of Church of England weddings, statistics suggest.  www.yourchurchwedding.org draws a third of a million visitors a year (27,000 unique visitors a month) and over the past 21 months since launch in October 2008 has been used to plan more than 28,000 of about 90,000 Church of England weddings.  Read the full story.

Feel free to cut and paste for diocesan and parish magazines

Read the full version of the Comms Update

Service with a smile – have a ‘paparazzi moment’

New guidance for giving wedding guests a day to remember

Weddings are a special day for guests, too, and with over 40 per cent of people attending a church wedding every year the Archbishops’ Council’s Weddings Project has drawn on extensive feedback from more then 700 vicars to develop new resources to optimise guests’ wedding day experience

General Synod – York 2010

Latest on discussions and debates

Summary information about the discussions and decisions at General Synod, which met in York from Friday July 9 to Tuesday July 13, is available on the Church of England website.  This online coverage of Synod includes sound files of each debate. You can also access the agendas and papers.

Listen to William Fittall Secretary General to the Church of England’s General Synod

Pic: Synod chamber at York University

Archbishop of Canterbury

Closing sermon at General Synod

The Archbishop preached at the celebration of the Eucharist at the end of the Quinquennium 2005-2010, during General Synod in York. 
Listen to the sermon.

 

Archbishop of York

New national charity to help make a practical difference in local communities.

The Archbishop of York tonight launched the Acts 435 charity nationally at Synod. The charity helps churches to make a practical difference in their local communities helping those who are going through tough times financially. In the face of further government austerity measures the Archbishop has said it is important for the Church to reach out to those in need.

Education

Bishops encouraged to go back to school

Church school anniversary 2011

Preparations for celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Church of England opening the first free schools in England and Wales have begun, with the launch of a website, www.natsoc200.org.uk. The site is aimed at inspiring and supporting today’s 5,000 Church of England and Church in Wales schools, and their associated churches, to mark the landmark birthday in creative ways.

Filed under: Church of England

Book of Common Prayer On-line

The Book of Common Prayer is now on line on the C of E website. Click on the links below to go to the separate sections.

The Preface

Concerning the Service of the Church

Concerning Ceremonies, why some be abolished, and some retained

Rules to Order the Service

The Order how the Psalter is appointed to be read

The Order how the rest of the Holy Scripture is appointed to be read

A Table of Proper Lessons and Psalms

The Calendar, with the Table of Lessons

Tables and Rules for the Feasts and Fasts through the whole Year

The Order for Morning and Evening Prayer – Introduction

The Order for Morning Prayer

The Order for Evening Prayer

The Creed of S. Athanasius

The Litany

Prayers and Thanksgivings upon several occasions

The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, to be used at the Ministration of the Holy Communion, throughout the Year

The Order of the Ministration of the Holy Communion

The Ministration of Publick Baptism of Infants

The Ministration of Private Baptism of Children in Houses

The Order of Baptism for those of Riper Years

The Catechism

The Order of Confirmation

The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony

The Order for the Visitation of the Sick

The Communion of the Sick

The Order for the Burial of the Dead

The Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth

A Commination, or denouncing of God’s anger and jugements against Sinners

The Psalter

Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea

The Form and Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons

Forms of Prayer for the Anniversary of the day of Accession of the Reigning Sovereign

Articles of Religion

Royal Warrant

A Table of Kindred and Affinity

Text from The Book of Common Prayer, the rights in which are vested in the Crown, is reproduced by permission of the Crown’s Patentee, Cambridge University Press.

The Archbishops’ Council is grateful to the Trustees of the Prayer Book Society for their generous support in developing these pages.

The service pages have been created using Visual Liturgy Live, the worship-planning software from Church House Publishing.

Filed under: Church of England

Ely Schools News

See http://ely.anglican.org/education/schools/documents/30June.pdf for all the latest news from our Ely Diocesan Schools.

Filed under: Church of England, Schools

Ely ordination photos

Here are the official photos of our fifteen great ordinands with me and my senior colleagues after the service on Saturday, which went really well. The second photo shows us welcoming the new deacons, and there is a parallel photo of the Dean welcoming the new priests also available.

Please pray for

Priests

Margaret Christine Barrow
Girton, St Andrew

Jennifer (Jenny) Anne Gage
The Three Rivers Group

Sarah Catherine Gower
St Neots, St Mary

Timothy David Mark Hayward
Buckden with The Offords

Anthony James Lees-Smith
Chesterton, The Good Shepherd

Barbara Elizabeth Anne Pearman
The East Marshland Benefice

Brenda Alice Stewart
Abbots Ripton, St Andrew with King’s Ripton, St Peter and Houghton with Wyton, St Mary

Deacons

Alan Davies
Downham Market, St Edmund and Crimplesham, St Mary with Stradsett, St Mary.

Charles Ian Alexander Fraser
Cherry Hinton, St John the Evangelist and at The Leys School(Methodist Foundation) in Cambridge

Julie Anne Gawthrope
Cherry Hinton, St John the Evangelist

Rebecca Gilbert
The Ely Team Ministry

Jane Rachel Penn
Orton Longueville, Holy Trinity with Bottlebridge

Emma Rothwell
The Papworth Team

Lynda Brigid Taylor
Chesterton, St George

Kenneth (Ken) Robert Waters
Grimshoe Group

Filed under: Church of England, Ely, ordination

James Bradfield School Sings Its Heart Out

  

The James Bradfield School in Stoke Ferry – one of our Norfolk church schools – sang its heart out today as it celebrated the opening and dedication of the new extension to its Early Years classroom, and associated facilities. I was there to do the honours and was very moved to find that one of the songs they sang so lustily had been “customised” for the occasion and even mentioned me!

Come and join the celebration
It’s a very special day.
Come and share our jubilation;
We welcome Bishop David today.

See our new extension, see the light and space.
We are happy
And grateful to learn amid God’s grace.

We give thanks for
All our teachers’ work and care;
For our school that
Leads us where we know it’s safe and fair.

“God is with us”,
Round the school the message rings.
He is with us,
Blessing every day with all good things.

• We thought a bit together about how sad the world would be if we couldn’t speak or sing; and then
• how in singing and speaking we depend on the air all around us, given by God but so easily (like his love) taken forgranted
• how we need to use our windpipes and vocal chords like instruments to vibrate with God’s love and each play our part
• and how we can do that in tune with another – or not! (The children made a fine racket before we got them singing a chord…)

After that I popped into the Year 6 class to talk with those older guys about just how in their lives they had helped others or been helped by them, and heard some very moving stories – from one girl helping another learn to swim, to another having her eyesight saved by a doctor.

Three cheers for James Bradfield, an improving school!

Filed under: Church of England, Norfolk, Schools

St Philip’s School, Cambridge celebrates its new extension

 

St Philip’s C of E School in the Romsey Town area of Cambridge has just celebrated its new extension with a formal opening ceremony and assembly and special lunch. The children and staff gathered with parents, governors, friends and visitors to thank those who had worked on the extension. Then the School Council accompanied me in a ribbon-cutting and dedication ceremony. My predecessor as Bishop of Huntingdon, Gordon Wroe, dedicated the main buildings some 30 years ago and it was a pleasure and privilege to follow in his footsteps. The school is a good and popular one serving a very mixed community, and I was impressed by the verve with which they sang their school song – in the form of a rap. You can download more of their songs from i-tunes too! Congratulations to everyone on an excellent project well completed.

  

 

Filed under: Cambridgeshire, Church of England, Schools

Etheldreda founds Ely!

Well done to everyone who helped ensure that Etheldreda founded Ely yet again at the Etheldreda Day procession last Saturday. Here she is landing at the Riverside with her royal father before being given in marriage to the King of the Fens. The heavens opened just after we reached the Cathedral, but by then we were home and dry and it was an excellent day al lround.

Filed under: Cambridgeshire, Church of England

Whittlesford

I was invited out to Whittlesford, south of Cambridge, to lead the service last Sunday morning. It’s a rather hidden gem of a church – I just loved the old cruck beams of the porch arch – with a long history. One of the windows commemorates a Whittlesford archer at the battle of Crecy – but the congregation of today were very friendly, and we enjoyed some decent coffee and biscuits after the service in their very nice new extension on the other side of the church.

The minister Ruth Whitehead runs a good blog of her own http://thinkingaboutpreaching.blogspot.com/ where you can see what she was preaching about that day. I was with the Elijah passage too, musing on how he comes to the end of his tether and has to let God sort him out – but not at all in the way he was expecting. You can read 1 Kings 19 for yourself …

Filed under: Cambridgeshire, Church of England, Churches