Author: wwedderburn

Volunteers work to distribute food and toys Dec. 16 through an annual holiday outreach ministry launched more than a decade ago by St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Jasper, Alabama. Photo: Diocese of Alabama [Diocese of Alabama] For more than a decade, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Jasper, Alabama, has marked the Advent season by serving…

“Sunday in Palm Beach” is a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle by Michael Storrings for Galison. The puzzle depicts the Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida. Photo: Shireen Korkzan/ENS [Episcopal News Service] The holiday season is a time for loved ones do fun activities together, like completing a jigsaw puzzle. For dissectologists, or jigsaw puzzle lovers, who…

Every December, Trinity Episcopal Church, in partnership with the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless, hosts a memorial service for people who died during the year while homeless. Photo: Jed Dearing [Episcopal News Service] Columbus, Ohio, is facing a homelessness crisis as the number of unhoused people increases annually. At the beginning of 2025, more than…

[Diocese of Alabama] The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama has announced a slate of two candidates to stand for election as the diocese’s 13th bishop: the Rev. Candice B. Frazer, rector of the Church of the Ascension in Montgomery, and the Very Rev. Richard Lawson, dean and rector of St. John’s Cathedral…

At the memory café at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Chandler, Arizona, people with memory impairment and their caregivers gather the first and third Friday of each month to socialize through conversation, live music, games and arts and crafts in a judgment-free setting. Photo: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church [Episcopal News Service] When Shafeeka Brown’s husband,…

[Episcopal News Service] Two people from the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe are attending the United Nations Global Refugee Forum Progress Review meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, Dec. 15-17. Bishop Mark Edington is an official participant, and Giulia Bonoldi, managing director of Rome’s Joel Nafuma Refugee Center and the convocation’s chief welcoming officer for refugees and…

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal bishops from Province I, which encompasses the seven New England dioceses, and the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s New England Synod released a joint statement Dec. 17 calling for peace this Advent. The statement includes a call for prayers for the two Brown University students who were shot…

Erin Lederrey is the first Episcopal and the first trans woman chaplain to serve in the Swiss military. Photo: Courtesy of Erin Lederrey [Episcopal News Service] Being a chaplain in the Swiss military comes with challenges. Many are unfamiliar with what a chaplain does, and past church encounters with church people have “spooked” a lot…

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Burlington, Massachusetts. Photo: Google Maps [Episcopal News Service] The ecumenical Christmas Eve service the Rev. Dave Woesnner is organizing for the Massachusetts Council of Churches will include the liturgical elements one could expect – choirs, carols, prayers and the reading of the story of Jesus’ birth…

[Church of England] When teenager Pam Knowles first started teaching Bible stories to children at her beloved church in Liverpool in 1951, a post-war Britain was still rationing food and Winston Churchill was re-elected as prime minster. 75 years later, the country may have moved on in terms of rationing and prime ministers, but the…