Permanent home found for Sisters who left Anglican community; Methodist Church celebrates ethnic inclusion; Episcopal Church House of Bishops to gather in Nashville
Permanent home found for Sisters who left Anglican community
The new religious community of the Personal Ordinariate, the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary, has moved into a permanent home for the first time since being received into the full communion of the Catholic Church.
The community includes 11 sisters who had been part of the Anglican Community of St Mary the Virgin in Wantage, Oxfordshire, and one sister who belonged to an Anglican community in Walsingham.
They are now part of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham adopting the Benedictine rule, and officially became part of the Catholic fold on New Year’s Day.
They had no endowments to sustain them financially and have spent the last eight months as guests at an enclosed Benedictine abbey on the Isle of Wight.
On Tuesday, they will move into their new permanent home, a convent in Birmingham, which is the former home of the Little Sisters of the Assumption.
Mother Winsome, the Superior of the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary, said: “We are absolutely overjoyed to have been given the opportunity to live in this convent. We have prayed long and hard and the Lord has opened up this way for us. It is a gift from God.”
Their intention is to earn a living at their new home by offering retreats and the ministry of spiritual direction.
Mother Winsome continued: “The abbess and the community there shared their Benedictine life with us and welcomed us into their hearts in the most wonderfully generous way. It has been a life of complete harmony and joy and it will be a wrench to leave. But we are pleased beyond measure that our journey of faith has taken this new direction.”
Methodist Church celebrates ethnic inclusion
A project promoting and celebrating ethnic inclusion across the Methodist Church comes to an end this week. The Belonging Together project was a response to the “Towards an Inclusive Church” report presented to the Methodist Conference in 2010.
Over the last three years, the project has sought to affirm values of inclusiveness across the Methodist Connexion through new resources and ways of working together.
Churches have been encouraged to be intentional about ethnic diversity in leadership and stationing decisions in order to be consistently inclusive.
This includes developing and implementing strategies that enable the contribution, representation, access and participation from people from all backgrounds.
The Reverend David Shaw, minister at Wesley Methodist Church, said the project had initiated the momentum for change at the church.
The church had a time of visioning and prayer at an open Church Council meeting and from this, developed a 12-month plan for change that has impacted who is involved in the welcome, worship and leadership of the local church.
The Reverend Jane Earl, secretary to the Church Council, said: “Belonging Together gave us the tools and the impetus to have conversations in a range of places within church about the skills and background of all of our congregations in the context of our hopes and dreams for the Church for the future.
“We’ve been working on three themes: to develop our worship and music life, to develop our welcome to those who come new to the church and to those who have been with us for some time and to develop and maintain our work with young people.”
The Revd Katei Kirby, Partnership Officer for Belonging Together, said: “The Methodist Church in Britain is one of the most ethnically diverse churches in the UK, and that is something to be celebrated. This three-year project gave the Church the opportunity to see what could happen when people of all ethnic backgrounds are encouraged to become and belong.
“As the project closes, the Church now has the responsibility to continue to be intentional and deliberate about ethnic inclusion, so that the rich diversity of the whole people of God is both visible and sustained.”
The Revd Dr Martyn Atkins, General Secretary of the Methodist Church, said: “The end of this project should mark the beginning of a more excellent way of being an ethnically inclusive Church, and I invite us all to help make it so.”
Episcopal Church House of Bishops to gather in Nashville
Bishops of The Episcopal Church will gather for the House of Bishops fall meeting September 19-24 at the Nashville Airport Marriott, Nashville Tennesee.
The theme of the gathering will be Transforming Loss into New Possibilities.
The meeting will begin with welcomes by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Bishop John Bauerschmidt from the host Diocese of Tennessee.
Slated are presentations on Missional Wisdom, Bridge-Building Mission, Formation for Mission, Moving Missionally, and Moving Diagonally. In addition, the bishops will discuss a range of important topics such as gun violence, the new diocesan staff networking program, and a business meeting on September 24.
On Sunday, September 22, the bishops will visit churches in the area. Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori will preside and preach at Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville.
Among the invited guests are: Bishop Suheil S. Dawani, Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem; Rabbi Steve Gutow, President and CEO of Jewish Council for Public Affairs; Dr. Elaine Heath, McCreless Professor of Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University and co-founder of the Missional Wisdom Foundation; President of the House of Deputies the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings; Bishop Gregory Palmer, Bishop of the West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church; Canon David Porter, Director for Reconciliation for Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby; and representatives of the United Methodist Church.