Report in on a Sunday evening

It was a stunning day out there where the bay meets the ocean. So, accompanied by several friends I went a-boating. Still learning how to safely get about in this boat, so I've not until today gone out on to the Ocean. Today was the day. Strong currents but calm seas. Beautiful.

It was good to be back at St. Peter's after two weeks away. Choir at 8, good sermon both times, fine turnout and good news about a young person in the parish who had the flu and is recovering.

Meanwhile back in Anglican blogland some recommendations and some oddities:

Anglicans Online publishes a "cover" essay each week. The one today was especially good and suggests that church from the ground up can be practiced by as simple a means as the UTO Blue Box. Read it HERE.

The beginning of the Anglicans Online article ruminated about "creeping centralization" in Anglican churches. This is unfortunately the reality, both in individual "provinces" and in the Anglican Communion as a whole. This, just at a time when a combination of networking (in a gen x sort of way) and decentralization seem to be the real need.

We unfortunately rumble about wringing our hands at the "loss" of a central evangelism office, or the reduction in staff at a diocesan level, when we might otherwise be delighted that evangelism and outreach and education and such be in the hands of locals, networking with one another about best ways to do these things.

So it is with some amusement to see that on Baby Blue she gives us a look-see at part of the New York Times interview with ACNA Archbishop Robert Duncan, deposed bishop of Pittsburgh. The section that stood ought enough to be quoted by her is this,

" NYT: We should point out that you were deposed from ministry of the Episcopal Church by the presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, after you threatened to have your diocese in Pittsburgh secede.

Duncan: That was a year ago, but what’s interesting is that virtually no one in the Anglican world accepted that sentence. Within two weeks of being deposed, I was received at Lambeth Palace in London by the archbishop of Canterbury, who continues to consider me a bishop."

Well all that has to do with one sort of centralization or another. Duncan got deposed from TEC, accepted in good standing by The Province of the Southern Cone, formed a new church and became Archbishop Duncan.

Duncan sets high marks on being "received at Lambeth Palace." The photo accompanying that seemingly central event is however of the gatehouse at Lambeth, not Lambeth Palace itself. Such a little thing. But it made me smile.

Being received by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth or elsewhere is a fine thing, but it says little or nothing about being brought into the center. Just as it says nothing about doing the decentralized networking work of people who figure that getting to church before the end of the processional hymn is doing pretty well at being centralized, and giving to and praying for mission is quite sufficient.

Follow her link to the NYT article, which article is pretty limp.

Over on Confessions of a Carioca, Dan Martins is doing a fine job at hacking away at issues concerning ecclesiology. Of course I don't agree with all he has to say. It wouldn't be any fun otherwise. But he writes very well and places some of the issues in clear terms so that we can actually discuss them. Parish theological discussion groups could do well to read these essays. They are good provocation for discussion. Go on over there and read his latest, HERE.

That's it. More later. As always it seems a good time to stay below the radar, do some good somehow, and trust in the Lord.