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The SVMC office is collecting short stories from ministers who have odd stories to tell. Maybe you remember a wedding mishap or a funeral gone awry, a hospital miracle, a bizarre Sunday morning experience, or an unbelievable moment at camp.

[Anglican Communion News Service] Four years after a single tree was planted at the 15th Lambeth Conference on Aug. 3, 2022, the Communion Forest now stretches from mangroves and meadows to prayer gardens and prairies worldwide. The Communion Forest, the Anglican Communion’s global creation care initiative, has grown into a diverse, worldwide movement of Anglicans caring for creation. It comprises local activities of forest protection, tree growing and ecosystem restoration, undertaken by provinces, dioceses and individual churches. Read the entire article here.

[Episcopal News Service] Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally opened a new clinic at St. Monica’s Nursing and Midwifery Training College in Mampong, Ghana, with a commissioning ceremony on July 29 in celebration of the college’s centennial. The clinic was named in her honor. The visit and celebration were part of Mullally’s 10-day visit to the Church of the Province of West Africa, her first visit to Africa as archbishop of Canterbury. Earlier in the trip, she preached at a church service at St. Joseph the Worker Anglican Church in Accra, Ghana, which was led entirely by female clergy in honor of her visit as the first woman Archbishop of Canterbury. The Anglican Diocese of Kumasi operates the college, which also hosts Mampong Babies Home, an orphanage, and St. Monica’s College of Education for women. “I can touch and see the kingdom of heaven this morning in this place,” Mullally said during a special service celebrating the school’s anniversary after the commissioning ceremony. More than 1,000 students from the three institutions joined Mullally for the service. During the service, Mullally told the students that they must believe in themselves and that “God has loved you and calls you by name.” “Know that each of you has the ability to shine like lights in the world, to be salt, to be yeast, to be that mustard seed that affects everything, by what you do and how you do it,” Mullally, a former oncology nurse, said. “Knowing that as you follow a career in nursing and midwifery, you have the difference – the difference that can change people’s lives in the ordinary things that you do, it will transform lives and your community. Never underestimate what you do.” After the service, Mullally visited Mampong Babies’ Home and then met Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, king of the Asante people, at Manhyia Palace in Kumasi. Mullally and Tutu exchanged greetings and gifts and discussed their shared Anglican faith. They also reflected on the Asante Kingdom and Anglican Communion’s deep, longstanding spiritual bond dating back to the early 20th century, when Asantehene Prempeh I and his mother, Asantehemaa Yaa Akyaa, were baptized into the Anglican Church in 1904 while politically exiled in the Seychelles. In the evening, Manhyia Palace hosted a special Evensong service. Mullally preached and the Rev. Akua Ofori-Boateng, a priest in the Anglican Diocese of Accra, presided. In her sermon, Mullally reflected on Ephesians 3:15-16: “According to the riches of his glory, may you be strengthened in your inner being with power through his spirit, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” “Asantehene, as followers of Christ, and fellow pilgrims in the way of Jesus, we are also custodians of the treasure of the kingdom of heaven, ‘the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge’ and ‘all the fullness of God’ and the ‘riches of God’s glory,’” Mullally said. “Asantehene, brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow pilgrims, we are invited to seek this treasure of the kingdom, to discover in Christ Jesus the breadth, length, height and depth of the love of God for us.”

Fourteen of our churches participated in a Peanut Butter and Canned Food Drive challenge within our district. An amazing total of 56,490.64 ounces (3,530.67 pounds) were collected.

Crest Manor Church of the Brethren and Dismas House of South Bend, Ind., have entered into a “Shalom Partnership” to offer mutual friendship, support, and community for residents of Dismas House seeking to find their way back into society following incarceration.

Zanna Meynell shares how the Victorian justice campaigner’s faith inspires her advocacy work in this new season

The World Council of Churches (WCC) World Week for Peace in Palestine and Israel will focus on protecting children. 

Faith Sebwa is a teenage Kenyan climate campaigner. Her poem, “The Path of Justice,” has been set to music and the song video has just launched, supporting the Hope for Children Through Climate Justice initiative.

The World Council of Churches invites all member churches and people of good will to join in a Prayer for the Peaceful Reunification of the Korean Peninsula.

From 1 September to 4 October, churches worldwide will mark the Season of Creation. It runs five weeks, and is given to prayer and action for the care of creation. The theme this year is Living Water, drawn from Ezekiel 47. Ahead of it, the Green Anglicans Movement, Africa, will hold a webinar on 4 August to introduce the season, where it came from, and the new Feast of Creation now kept at its start.