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[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal congregations churchwide will begin Lent by offering Ashes to Go on Ash Wednesday, March 5, as a convenience for people unable to attend worship services in the middle of the week. Ashes to Go, is open to all branches of Christianity and “creates opportunities for people to take a fresh look at the church and the gospel.” Episcopal churches began participating in 2010, when Chicago, Illinois, and Missouri-area clergy and lay Episcopalians began imposing ashes on people in public areas, including suburban train platforms, coffee shops and outside grocery stores and laundromats. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, 40 days of penance, fasting, contemplation and prayer leading up to Easter. On Ash Wednesday, Christians receive blessed ashes in the shape of a cross on their forehead to symbolize mortality and penitence. The ashes are made from burning the dried palm branches from the previous year’s Palm Sunday. The following is a list of some Episcopal parishes offering Ashes to Go. Check for additional offerings hosted by local dioceses and parishes in your area. All times are local. Washington, D.C. — St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square will offer Ashes to Go twice, from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. and 4 to 6:30 p.m. Colorado Springs, Colorado — St. Michael’s Episcopal Church will impose Ashes to Go from 7 to 9 a.m. in the church’s parking lot. Bethesda, Maryland — St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church will impose Ashes to Go from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. in the church’s lower parking lot. Brownsburg, Indiana — Good Samaritan Episcopal Church will impose Ashes to Go at 7 a.m. in the church’s parking lot. Canton, Connecticut — Trinity Episcopal Church Collinsville will offer Ashes to Go from 6:30 to 8:30 a.m. Diocese of Los Angeles — Several churches throughout the Diocese of Los Angeles will host Ashes to Go events throughout the day. Click here for more information. Hillsdale, New Jersey — The Diocese of Newark will offer Ashes to Go at the Hillsdale Train Station from 6 to 8 a.m. Tallahassee, Florida — St. John’s Episcopal Church will offer Ashes to Go and one-on-one blessings from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Florida State Capitol rotunda. “The church rightly expects all practicing and able-bodied Christians to participate in the solemn Mass and Imposition of Ashes on this sacred day. We hope all who are far from home know they are welcome at our tables!” Bulverde, Texas — St. Nicholas Episcopal Church will offer Ashes to Go in the church’s sanctuary and front yard from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sacramento, California — St. Paul’s Episcopal Church will impose Ashes to Go from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the sidewalk outside the church at the corner of 15th and J streets. “As the Episcopal Church in the heart of downtown, St. Paul’s community will meet people where they are – on their way or during a break in the workday – just as Jesus went into the streets to find, teach and heal people. Ashes to Go moves the encounter with God out of the church building and into the spaces of everyday life where we live out our response to God. Please stop by for this brief encounter!” Roswell, Georgia — St. David’s Episcopal Church will offer a drive-thru Ashes to Go service from 1:15 to 2:15 p.m. Seattle, Washington — The Episcopal Church of the Ascension will impose Ashes to Go from 8 to 8:30 a.m. Astoria, Oregon — Grace Episcopal Church will offer a curbside Ashes to Go service from noon to 1 p.m.  Anthony, New Mexico — St. Luke’s Episcopal Church will offer a drive-thru Ashes to Go service from 7 to 10:30 a.m. Elgin, Illinois — St. Hugh of Lincoln Episcopal Church will offer a drive-thru Ashes to Go service from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Omaha, Nebraska — St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church will impose Ashes to Go twice at the northwest corner of Elmwood Park at the drive into the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s campus, from 8 to 9:30 a.m. and from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Daphne, Alabama — St. Paul’s Episcopal Church will impose Ashes to Go between 2 to 5 p.m. in the church’s parking lot and the St. Paul’s Thrift Shop parking lot. Chandler, Arizona — St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church will offer Ashes to Go and prayers from 7 to 8 a.m. in the church’s parking lot. De Pere, Wisconsin — St. Anne’s Episcopal Church will offer drive-thru Ashes to Go services twice, from 7 to 8 a.m. and from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Crestwood, Missouri — The Episcopal Church of the Advent and the St. Thomas Deaf Church will offer Ashes to Go and prayers from 6 to 10 a.m. from the circle driveway off Buxton Dr.  -Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

The United Church of Christ, along with four-dozen other faith-based organizations joined with Church World Service (CWS) to sign on to its Ash Wednesday Ecumenical Declaration, a public statement against policies and actions that threaten refugee rights, separate families, and…

The post Faith Communities Unite in Historic Declaration to Defend Refugees at Critical Crossroads for U.S. Policy appeared first on United Church of Christ.

KING OF PRUSSIA, PA (ABNS 3/4/25)—American Baptist Churches USA is thrilled to announce that Dr. Raimundo Barreto has been named the 2025 recipient of the prestigious Luke Mowbray Ecumenical Award! This esteemed award honors individuals who have demonstrated exceptional dedication to ecumenical work, fostering Christian unity at the local, state, national, or international level. Rev. […]

The post Raimundo Barreto Recognized with 2025 Luke Mowbray Ecumenical Award appeared first on ABCUSA.

Emma Van Dorp, from the Confederation of Switzerland, Eglise Protestante de Genève, is a member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission on Young People in the Ecumenical Movement.

[Church of England] A church in the heart of one of the country’s most underprivileged areas is bringing local people together and helping them with their mental health and wellbeing, thanks to the launch of a series of environmental projects. Ten thousand people live in East Marsh in Grimsby. For many years it was home to those working in the fishing industry and at the port. But with the collapse of the fishing industry, things have changed in this community. East Marsh is now one of the poorest places in England on every metric: income, health, crime and education. More than a third of children in the area live in poverty, according to the End Child Poverty coalition, and within one square mile in the area, there are six food banks. One of them is linked to St. John and St. Stephen’s Church. It provides food for over 150 people three times a week. But the church is doing more than this; through changing its environment inside and out, it is aiming to bring people together, help with their mental health and wellbeing, and change the mindset of what’s possible, as well as greening the environment. Big ambitions for one church community. “We want to show people what can be done in a small place,” said the priest-in-charge, the Rev. Kay Jones. “So, we started with the church environment being different.” Inside the building, a bequest provided for LED lighting and thermal boards. ‘It’s not freezing anymore,” said Jones. “We can have warm-space activities. People like being here.” The church runs a dinner providing a main course and a pudding for £2.50 — or about $3 — which is “becoming more popular,” according to Jones. Outside, things have changed too. A gardening project has led to planters providing vegetables for the church kitchen, a potting shed and attractive planting. Nearby, the church plans to use a piece of waste ground to create a small orchard and a meadow. This was all funded through partnerships with grant-making bodies. The church was first approached by East Marsh United community group to build the potting shed using grant money from Grow Wild, the national outreach initiative of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Further funding was also given by the Royal Horticulture Society to build the planters at the front of the church. And a desolate patch on the street corner at the church will be transformed into a wildflower meadow and orchard thanks to the Native Species Project funding by Kew Gardens. “We have 0.07% tree cover,” said Jones. “It should be 15%, and the national requirement from the Tree Equity Score UK tool will be 30%, so we need people to buy into that. They need to see something small that they can connect with.” And people are connecting with it. An open day to launch the potting shed brought 17 adults and 27 children together. “It was hard to get rid of them at the end,” Jones joked. “It is changing things for lots of people,” she added. Those people included local youths, who destroyed the planters several times and threw things at people doing the gardening. But in the end, curiosity overcame them, and they helped “grafting” in the garden to help get the landscaping done. Older members of the church community are becoming grandparent figures to younger people who aren’t well-parented. “What I’m seeing is people wanting to be part of what we do,” said Jones. People are trying different foods grown in the garden, learning how – and what – to recycle in the church’s recycling bins, and crucially, learning where food comes from, helping to reduce their food bills. Many people live their whole lives in East Marsh, she said, unable to access the beautiful countryside around Grimsby, so greening the area is really important. “We have to be able to see that the natural world is beautiful, and the artificial world isn’t always working as well as it might for us,” she said. “If we can talk enough about that, people will see things differently.” Plans are afoot for a foraging garden, where you can touch and smell the plants, and pick raspberries, blueberries, strawberries and herbs. “If you sit among the plants, you will learn,” said Jones. “It won’t be forced. Our ethos is not about doing this to people, it’s working with them.” Local resident Melissa, who is recovering from drug addiction, regularly visits the church and enjoys the gardening club. She said, “I first came into the church when I was in a really vulnerable place. I was going back into active addiction and was in a bad way. This is a hard area to live and sometimes you can come here and be in a bad way – mentally and emotionally – but you will be cared about here and met where you are at.” East Marsh United Community Group member and local resident Rachel enjoys the church’s gardening club. She added, “When you are digging away or planting it gives you a chance to switch off, it’s so good for my mental health.” The enterprise shows that lives can be improved by simply enhancing the environment and naturally, people will come together, join in, and benefit from the changes.  

[Melbourne Anglican] Melbourne Anglicans will learn about the diocese’s gender-based violence work in culturally and linguistically diverse communities, often referred to as CALD,  in the lead up to this International Women’s Day, March 8. The Preventing Violence Against Women in Multicultural and Faith-Based Communities forum, taking place at at St. Philip’s, Collingwood on March 7, will feature learnings from the Safe and Thriving CALD Anglican project, research from Deakin University and observations from a panel of multicultural clergy. Panelist the Rev. Xiaoxi Lou said the forum would help increase awareness about violence in communities, which often does get seen but often goes unacknowledged. She hoped it would assure people caught in violent situations that the church supported them, while simultaneously making others aware they, too, could act to counter family violence. “Different cultures will often deal with violence differently, and being a voice to acknowledge that God and the Anglican church do not see violence as OK within the family, can help bring light and truth to these situations,” Lou said. The Rev. Prashant Bhonsle said he was participating because he was concerned about the world being divided by gender lines, globalization and patriarchy especially. He believed the focus on growing churches tended not to give long term consideration to how congregations would evolve without integrating gender justice and challenging the patriarchal structures of society. “We would not really be able to have a holistic, ecumenical and justice-oriented approach in our congregations without that long-term thinking,” Bhonsle said. “We need to have gender justice as a core concern running across all our themes and programs of our congregational life right from the beginning. Interpreting the Scriptures with an inclusive dimension is very important for any priest to foster an inclusive understanding.” He said this was important to empower women as well as people with different gender orientations in congregations. “Unless we affirm that we all created in the image of God, we will be unable to sail forward,” Bhonsle said. He added he hoped forum attendees would gain a good understanding of the challenges some congregations faced while trying to address such a sensitive issue as gender-based violence. CALD PVAW project officer Sarah Aruliah said the four-year-old initiative had given the diocese a better understanding about the CALD genderspace. She said there were many unique layers that needed to be covered in working with faith, multiple cultures and prevention work, and there were plenty of insights to be shared. Aruliah said the diocese was leading the way in intersecting those areas and working with different cultures, but it was still learning, and building support networks with other faith-based and secular anti-violence organizations. She said the forum was open to everyone, and would be especially useful for people from culturally diverse communities and clergy.

On most Sundays at First Congregational Church of Memphis, the Rev. Tony Coleman delivers his sermons surrounded by large, brightly colored art and a diverse group of congregants gathered in a circular arrangement. First Congo, as the church is often…

The post Preacher for General Synod aims to cultivate deep belonging, deep hope appeared first on United Church of Christ.

In the small Honduran community of Valle Verde, Oscar and his family have embraced new agricultural techniques through the ‘Produce Verde’ project, improving their harvests, securing their food supply and building a brighter future. Sowing Seeds of Faith and Family For Oscar Caballero Benitez, farming is more than just a livelihood—it’s an act of patience, faith and resilience, which all ... Read More

[Diocese of Dallas] The Bishop Coadjutor Search Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas on March 4 announced a slate of three candidates for the diocese’s bishop coadjutor. They are: The Rev. William Carroll, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Longview, Texas; The Rt. Rev. Fraser Lawton, bishop assistant in the Diocese of Dallas and rector of the Church of St. Dunstan’s Church in Mineola, Texas; The Very Rev. Rob Price, dean of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas, Texas. The candidates will participate in five meet-and-greet sessions around the diocese from April 1–4. The electing convention is scheduled for May 3 at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas. No date has been announced for the consecration of the bishop coadjutor, who will serve alongside Dallas Bishop George Sumner until his retirement. The bishop coadjutor then will become the eighth bishop of Dallas. Sumner has been bishop since November 2015. The release of the slate also marks the beginning of the petition process. That process will close at noon Central time on March 11. Additional information is on the diocesan website’s bishop coadjutor election hub.

Marie Higgins had a problem — a good one. On the fifth Sunday of a month, her church — Hope Community United Church of Christ in Aurora, Illinois— gathers not for traditional worship, but for “work-ship.” This gathering has become…

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