News

Since its installation over 130 years ago, the E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings organ at Grace Church in Medford has been touched up now and then, including a conversion from mechanical to electric in the 1950s. But last April marked the beginning of a much-needed total renovation, the first the organ…

When the Federated Church in Edgartown, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, also in Edgartown, and Grace Episcopal Church in Vineyard Haven opened their doors to anyone who needed shelter on Jan. 1, no one came. Volunteers staffed the shelters every night, anyway. Ten days later, the program’s first…

Global mission is a decades-long tradition for many churches in the Diocese of Massachusetts, and grants from funds raised through the diocesan Together Now campaign have helped to strengthen and promote this work in recent years. This year, for the first time in recent memory, there will be an…

The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, meeting in retreat March 11-15 in Navasota, Tex., unanimously approved and issued on March 15 the following "Word to the Church" regarding "the violent forces being released by this season’s political rhetoric" and calling for "prayer for our country…

An interfaith group of about 110 people concerned about gun violence and looking for ways to curb it gathered with Bishop Alan M. Gates at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston in late January to learn more about the Do Not Stand Idly By gun safety campaign.  The gathering brought parish…

At the building that once housed the Church of the Holy Spirit in Wayland, one chapter has ended and another is just beginning. The closed church has been sold to a Coptic Orthodox congregation, and Bishop Gayle E. Harris represented the Diocese of Massachusetts at the transfer of ecclesiastical…

The diocesan mission strategy listening team will issue its initial report in early April and invites the diocesan community's response.Four open forums have been scheduled in April at locations around the diocese, at which the team will present its initial findings and invite further conversation…

Each Ash Wednesday, Episcopalians from numerous congregations take to streets and train stations in an effort that's come to be known as "Ashes to Go."  (Read about some past efforts here.)Among them this year were the Rev. Margaret Schwarzer, Associate Rector for Adult Formation and…

The Society of Saint John the Evangelist (SSJE) has announced the election of a new superior, Brother James Koester, SSJE. In a March 8 news release, the outgoing superior, Brother Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE, said, “When I became …

With heroin cheap and widely available on city streets throughout the country, users are making their buys and shooting up as soon as they can, often in public places. Police officers are routinely finding drug users—unconscious or dead—in cars, in the bathrooms of fast-food restaurants, on mass…