A Blessed Christ-Mass!

May the Lord Jesus grant all of you, my dear friends, a truly blessed, happy and holy Nativity of the Saviour! Merry Christmas! And remember, let us put MASS back in Christ-Mass!

Christmas Masses at Saint Barnabas Dunwoody

The Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Eve, Friday 24th December
Sung Mass, 7pm
Sung Mass with incense (Missa Cantata), 11pm

The Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Day, Saturday 25th December
Sung Mass, 10am

Saint Stephen, Deacon and Martyr, Sunday 26th December
Low Mass, 9am
Sung Mass, 11am

Please join us if you are in the metropolitan Atlanta area!

God bless you and Happy Christmas!

Anniversary of Priestly Ordination

On Saturday 21st December 1996, I was, by the mercy and grace of God, ordained to the Sacred Order of Priests in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church by the Most Reverend John Thayer Cahoon Junior at Saint Paul's Anglican Catholic Church in Lexington, Virginia. Of your Christian charity, pray for me and my priestly ministry, and pray for the repose of the soul of Bishop John, who entered life eternal in 2001.

To live in the midst of the world without wishing its pleasures; to be a member of each family, yet belonging to one; to share all sufferings; to penetrate all secrets; to heal all wounds; to go from men to God and offer Him their prayers; to return from God to men to bring pardon and hope; to have a heart of fire for charity and a heart of bronze for chastity; to teach and to pardon; console and bless always. My God, what a life! And it is yours, O Priest of Jesus Christ!

Once in Royal David's City

My eldest son, Chandler Aidan Baskwill Jones, offering the first verse of Once in Royal David's City at the beginning of Nine Lessons and Carols on Sunday 19th December 2010 at Saint Barnabas Church. This was his liturgical music debut!

The Real Meaning of Christmas

Christmas by John Betjeman

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

Tradition inspires young ‘Bishop Chad’ at Dunwoody’s St. Barnabas

By Joe Earle
joeearle @ reporternewspapers . net

Bishop Chandler “Chad” Jones is rector of St. Barnabas Anglican Church in Dunwoody.

He’s widely known simply as “Bishop Chad,” but don’t let the informality confuse you.

It’s not a sign of his youth, even though at age 39, he is the youngest Anglican bishop in the country.

No, Bishop Chandler “Chad” Jones is quick to say he’s a traditionalist. Tradition is what attracted him to the Anglican church in the first place.

“I consider myself a younger embodiment of that which has gone before,” he said recently during an interview in his office at St. Barnabas Anglican Church in Dunwoody. “An embodiment, and a living out, of tradition. I consider myself a person of tradition.”

Jones started out, however, not as an Anglican traditionalist, but as a Southern Baptist. He grew up in the small town of Elkin, N.C., in a Baptist family. He switched to the Episcopal Church as a teenager. He said he “read my way into it” after he discovered works by authors such as C.S. Lewis in the public library. He’s still a reader — a copy of “Wolf Hall,” a historical novel about 16th centuryEngland, sat on his desk recently.

While in college, Jones joined the Anglican church, which had split from the Episcopal church. He found the splinter group’s approach more in keeping with the traditions he admired.

The Anglicans split from the larger Episcopal church in the in the 1970s because they believed the American version of the denomination had become too liberal and strayed too far from its original teachings, members say. The Anglicans don’t recognize women priests, and the sign outside St. Barnabas states that the congregation adheres to the 1928 version of the Book of Common Prayer.

St. Barnabas organized in 1979, said Marguerite Harvey, one of its founders. There were only 13 members in the congregation then, she said. Now there are about 450.

The congregation originally met in member’s homes, gathering in their living rooms, she said. As it grew, the congregation called in a priest. It found it needed larger spaces for services, moving to a bank’s community meeting room, then to a hotel conference room and then to the meeting space in a DeKalb County women’s club.

In the early 1990s, the congregation purchased a former Presbyterian church building in Dunwoody. The building, at 4795 New Peachtree Road, happened to be next to St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church. “We moved in next door,” Jones said.

Despite the tangled history of their denominations, the two churches have gotten along well, Jones and Harvey said. They cooperate on ministries, such as the food pantry, Harvey said. “We have coexisted very peaceably,” Harvey said.

Jones moved to St. Barnabas from Florida in 2007 and became the church’s rector, or chief priest, in 2009. “We liked everything about him,” Harvey said. “He was young, he was active and full of spirit.”

She calls Jones “a wonderful scholar” and says he knows his subjects and speaks well. “He know his Bible up and down because he was raised a Southern Baptist,” she said.

Jones is the third bishop to serve at St. Barnabas. The other two were already bishops when they arrived at the church, Harvey said. One, Robert Harvey, became her husband, she said.

Jones formally was elevated Sept. 18 to bishop of the Diocese of the Eastern United States of the Anglican Province of America. He is now one of four active Anglican bishops in the country. As a bishop, he continues to minister to the congregation, but also serves as an adviser to other priests.

So, what did he do when he was consecrated a bishop? “I went to Ruth’s Chris Steak House with the [other] bishop and my family,” he said. “And the next day, I went to work. I didn’t go to Disney World, I went to Daytona Beach.”

From the Dunwoody, Georgia Crier

Jones consecrated a bishop
Tuesday, November 30, 2010 4:28 PM EST

Rev. Chandler H. (“Chad”) Jones, rector of St. Barnabas Anglican Church in Dunwoody, was consecrated as a Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of the Eastern United States, of the Anglican Province of America. The consecration took place in a ceremony at St. Alban’s Cathedral in Oveido, Fla., and was attended by an estimated 300 persons, in addition to 31 clergy. “I feel profoundly humbled and honored to have been elected to lead the faithful,” said Jones. “As bishop I pray for divine guidance as I shepherd Christ’s flock.” Jones, a noted preacher, teacher and scholar, will continue to serve as Rector of St. Barnabas, where he is assisted by Father Paul Rivard. The bishop, who is 39 years old, is the youngest bishop in the American Anglican Province. He is pictured at the consecration service, surrounded by his family, wife Megan, and Owain, Mailli and Aidan.

Saint George's Anglican Church, Baghdad

Inside St. George's - Baghdad from FRRME on Vimeo.