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Blog Archive

Posts from retired blogs, including Bishop Mark Beckwith's blog "Signs of God's Grace," Canon Greg Jacobs' blog "Out of the Ordinary," and blogs by General Convention deputies in 2012 and 2015.

Becoming ambassadors
Posted by Mark Beckwith on February 4, 2014

“This public, community forming, and restoring dimension of the Spirit’s work is vital for the Episcopal Church to recover in order to live into its ideals for diversity and reconciliation.” (Page 70, People of the Way by Dwight Zscheile.)

Bishop Beckwith, Canon Jacobs and Deacon Deborah Drake
Posted by Mark Beckwith on January 30, 2014

“Jesus leaves as his legacy a community that embodies God’s promises and reconciliation to the world.” (Page 52 People of the Way by Dwight Zscheile.) Dwight’s whole book emphasizes the communal dimension of the Christian witness. He contends that whatever personal revelation we experience through the Resurrection needs to be connected with community.

God as community
Posted by Mark Beckwith on January 23, 2014

“It is in God’s nature to create others to share in God’s Life” (page 47, People of the Way by Dwight Zscheile). Dwight talks about the community of God as Trinity – Creator, Son and Holy Spirit. They exist together in a mysterious community.

An apostolic opportunity in a zone of secularism
Posted by Mark Beckwith on January 21, 2014

Dwight Zscheile describes them as "none zones" in chapter 2 of People of the Way. Areas where people, when asked of their religious affiliation, check "none." He describes the building tide of secularism, in which the number of younger adults who describe themselves as NONE has doubled in thirty years. It is a rather chilling statistic. Mainline Protestantism has now been functionally sidelined, with only twenty percent of the population (page 33). More and more people are cherry-picking spiritual practices, and are doing so independent from a religious community. He cites a study in which the emerging religious sensibility can be described as moralistic therapeutic deism (page 34).

Institutional vs. incarnational witness
Posted by Mark Beckwith on January 16, 2014

Dwight Zscheile notes that the American cultural landscape has changed. “The church no longer stands in a privileged position of moral authority within American society.” (Page 29, People of the Way.)

Bringing people to church, bringing the church to the world
Posted by Mark Beckwith on January 14, 2014

In the second chapter of People of the Way, Dwight Zscheile outlines a brief history of mission in the Episcopal Church. He notes that the “established” church in England became the church of the establishment in the American colonies (page 22). From the outset, we were seen – and have seen ourselves, as a church of privilege. Yet, alongside this historical reality is a deep commitment to mission.

Breaking through assumptions
Posted by Mark Beckwith on January 10, 2014

After thirty four years of ordained life, I have developed some assumptions about the church and its ministry. I can own some of these assumptions, but many of them are so embedded in my practices and habits that I don’t know that they are even there.

In the Introduction to his book, People of the Way, Dwight Zscheile outlines some assumptions that most of us bring to the Episcopal Church; that we are shaped by the “establishment” nature of the history and practice of the church.

"People of the Way" Bishop's Epiphany book discussion
Posted by Mark Beckwith on January 6, 2014

Today is the Feast of the three kings. It is the end of the Christmas cycle and the beginning of Epiphany. As Christians, we have spent part of our holiday remembering and recreating the remarkable story of a birth and angels and a moving star. But as soon as the original Christmas card picture is taken, reality sets in. And the story moves from promise and hope – to survival.

Isaiah 9:2
Posted by Mark Beckwith on December 19, 2013

A random carjacking at the Short Hills mall on Sunday night resulted in the murder of a 30 year old Hoboken man. Clustered round the first anniversary of the Newtown Connecticut murders were what seemed to be copycat shootings in schools in various parts of the country. Those tragedies – of young lives taken by senseless violence, have been the underbelly of many our communities for a long time. The darkness that Isaiah talked about generations ago (Isaiah 9:2) is still with us. There is indeed a lot of darkness in the world, and a huge measure of suffering that accompanies that darkness.

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