Please scroll down to read items. Comments, please, to Peter Crumpler, Director of Communications on peter.crumpler@c-of-e.org.uk.

This month’s contents:

Faithful Cities report launch – warning that regeneration can force many to the margins
New Bishop of Birmingham announced
Cathedrals continue to reach upwards
BBC White Paper ignores religion’s key role, says Church
Church Commissioners publish 2005 report and accounts, and 2006’s first quarter investment update
Launch of English Heritage’s Inspired! Campaign welcomed
Church calls for joined-up approach to help victims of human trafficking
New resource breaks the mould to help young Christians – and busy youth workers
Accessibility for All: Lambeth seminar on Disability Issues
Church challenged to put children at its centre
Da Vinci Code – making your mind up: an online resource
Pioneering research uncovers young peoples’ views on life and sets a challenge for today’s church
'Porvoo’ celebrates ten years
All-clear on pipe organs
Hymns Ancient and Modern take over Church House Bookshop
Flats set for refurbishment
Clergy Terms of Service Human Resources Conferences
Important change to date of next national church electoral roll
And finally… the Church of England kicks off the FIFA World Cup with a prayer

Faithful Cities report launch – warning that regeneration can force many to the margins
Millions of pounds have been poured into Britain’s city and urban areas in recent years but the resultant growth has forced many to the margins and dramatised the gap between the ‘super rich’ and the poorest. That is the challenge highlighted by Faithful Cities: A call for celebration, vision and justice, the report of an ecumenical and interfaith Commission initiated by the Church of England and presented to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

The report argues that much has changed in the 20 years since the Church report Faith in the City ignited a wide-ranging political debate on urban life in 1980s Britain. Cities have been transformed, both in how they look and who lives in them. Yet the extremes of poverty and prosperity are not so different from those in the 1980s, argues the report. It also raises a number of recommendations to faith communities and Government, examining the current failure of urban regeneration projects to improve the lives of all who live in cities and calls for a debate on ‘What makes a good city?’

Read more about the report: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr5406.html
Visit the Commission of Urban Life and Faith’s website: www.culf.org.uk

New Bishop of Birmingham announced
The ninth Bishop of Birmingham will be the Rt Revd David Urquhart. Bishop David, 54, is currently Bishop of Birkenhead in the Diocese of Chester and will take up his new office later this year, probably in the autumn. He succeeds the Most Revd Dr John Sentamu, now the Archbishop of York.

As a Suffragan Bishop, assisting the Bishop of Chester, Bishop David already has six years' experience of bishop's duties. In addition to his duties in the Archdeaconry of Chester, he chairs the Chester Diocesan Board of Education, the Diocesan Urban Mission and Ministry Group and Wirral Local Strategic Partnership. He also chairs the trustees of the Church Mission Society and has recently been appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Episcopal Link with China. He became a follower of Jesus Christ, aged 18, while working with the physically less able in Uganda in 1971. After 10 years in commercial management with BP he trained for ordination in Oxford. He then served in two inner-urban parishes in Hull before moving to Coventry where he was vicar of Holy Trinity Church, in the city centre, from 1992-2000.

View the full release from the Diocese of Birmingham at: http://www.birmingham.anglican.org/files/
uploaded_files/general/new-bishop---announcement-release.pdf

Cathedrals continue to reach upwards
Attendance levels at regular weekly services in Church of England cathedrals have risen by a total of 21 per cent since the turn of the millennium – that’s a rate of almost four per cent each year. Encouraging figures released last month show that at Sunday services alone, 15,800 adults and 2,500 children and young people are usually present in the country’s cathedrals, while over the whole week the figures rise to 24,300 and 6,600 respectively. Cathedrals are key places of daily Christian worship outside Sundays, attracting a further 50 per cent of adult attendees and more than doubling the number of children over the whole week.

See more details of the full statistics: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr5306.html

BBC White Paper ignores religion’s key role, says Church
The Government’s White Paper on the BBC’s Royal Charter fails to reflect the key role played by churches and faith communities in the nation’s life, says the Church of England. In its submission to the Government’s final consultation on the BBC Charter Review, the Church also warns that ‘high quality’ may become merely an option for BBC programmes under the new Charter.

The Church of England wants the BBC Charter to acknowledge the all-embracing nature of religion in the BBC’s purposes. The submission says that religion is “Too significant an area to be left to chance. The new Charter must make clear that there is a place for programmes where moral and ethical dilemmas are discussed. It must also make provision for the broadcast of religious services when the nation can come together at times of grief or celebration.”

Read more, and view the full submission: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr4406.html

Church Commissioners publish 2005 report and accounts, and 2006’s first quarter investment update
The Church Commissioners’ annual report for last year reveals that they achieved a return of 19.1 per cent on their investments in 2005. Over the past ten years, the Commissioners’ total return on their investments has averaged 11.0 per cent per year, placing them in the top one per cent of funds in the benchmark group for the decade, compared with 8.0 per cent per year for the industry benchmark.

As a result of this above-average performance, the Commissioners’ asset value is £4.9 billion, and the fund is able to distribute £38 million more each year to the Church than if the investments had performed only at the industry average over the last ten years.

Read more of the summary, and download the full report: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr4006.html

The First Church Estates Commissioner's newsletter for the quarter to March 2006 has also been published: http://cofe.anglican.org/about/churchcommissioners/
news/newsletterq12006.html

Launch of English Heritage’s Inspired! Campaign welcomed
The Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, has welcomed Inspired!, the English Heritage five point plan to assist historic places of worship. Speaking at the launch at St Mary Magdalene Paddington, the bishop said: “The funds being requested are very modest but Inspired! has set out some important principles. There is no need for any new bureaucracy to administer these funds, rather the theme is capacity building amongst those already caring for the churches. This distribution of funds through networks on the ground is an important principle and is a key part of this stitch in time approach.”

More details on the Inspired! Campaign: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/inspired/
See more of the Bishop of London’s comments: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr5006.html

Church calls for joined-up approach to help victims of human trafficking
The Church of England has welcomed steps being taken to support victims of human trafficking, in an official response to Home Office proposals for a UK action plan designed to tackle the issue.

“Trafficking, whether for sexual exploitation, forced labour or removal of organs, treats human beings abusively and oppressively as a means to the enrichment and gratification of others. It is totally contrary to Christian teaching and deserves the same unremitting opposition as other forms of slavery,” writes the Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Revd Tom Butler, in a paper that will add to calls for tougher action on those who perpetrate such crimes.

Read more and see the full submission: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr4206.html

New resource breaks the mould to help young Christians – and busy youth workers
A ground-breaking youth work resource from Church House Publishing’s Emmaus portfolio has been launched, following the success of the first Youth Emmaus resource. Youth Emmaus 2 – Big Issues and Holy Spaces offers a bright, fast-moving programme of ready-made interactive sessions using discussion, film, and music. The 14-part course, designed by a team drawn from the cutting edge of youth ministry, aims to accompany young people as they develop and deepen their faith.

Find out more or order some copies: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr5106.html

Accessibility for All: Lambeth seminar on Disability Issues
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, chaired a seminar at Lambeth Palace in May on Disability Issues and the Church. The seminar included senior representatives of the National Church Institutions, the Disability Rights Commission, the Employers’ Forum on Disability, disability groups, and mental health practitioners.

The seminar was briefed on how the Church is actively addressing questions of accessibility – in the national institutions, in dioceses and in parishes. Presentations were given by staff and clergy with disabilities about their own experiences. Participants also considered all that is being done to enhance access to buildings, to develop employment policies and practices, and to improve communications.

Church challenged to put children at its centre
The first in an eagerly-awaited series commissioned to follow the major impact of the Mission-shaped Church report has been published, hoping to extend the visionary influence of the original book to the Church’s work with children.

Written by the Church’s leading specialist in the field - Margaret Withers, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Officer for Evangelism among Children – Mission-shaped Children: moving towards a child-centred church surveys some of the obstacles currently preventing growth in children’s work across the Church - and offers effective strategies to help overcome them.

Read more about the book and order copies: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr4906.html

Da Vinci Code – making your mind up: an online resource
A new section of the Church of England website, launched in the run-up to the UK release of The Da Vinci Code film, invites people to consider the facts and fiction of the book for themselves. The site pits the ‘facts’ of the Dan Brown novel with the story of Jesus accepted by the Church for generations, providing weblinks to organisations such as the Christian Enquiry Agency and the Church Army Sheffield Centre.

Read more: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr4806.html

Go straight to the site: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/davinci

Pioneering research uncovers young peoples’ views on life and sets a challenge for today’s church
A revealing new book looks set to be a page-turner for all those with an interest in how the Church engages with young people. Making Sense of Generation Y contains the results of ground-breaking research into the world view of 15-25 year-olds who have little or no connection with the Christian faith, based on interviews with 120 young people in 18 locations across the country. The book’s researchers – academics Sylvia Collins-Mayo and Sara Savage, and youth ministry specialist Bob Mayo – embarked on an eye-opening journey that lays bare the dominant aspirations of contemporary youth.

The fourth author, the Rt Revd Graham Cray, Bishop of Maidstone and Chair of the Mission-shaped Church working party, offers reflections on the research’s wide-ranging implications for the way that the Church relates to young people, placing the emphasis both on individual Christians and church groups to embody the gospel through an ‘incarnational’ approach – meeting and serving young people in their own environment.

Read more about Generation Y and how to order copies: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr4606.html

’Porvoo’ celebrates ten years
The Porvoo Panel of the Church of England, under the chairmanship of the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Revd Dr Kenneth Stevenson, is organising an English celebration of the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Porvoo Agreement in Southwark Cathedral, London on Saturday, 25th November 2006. The main event of the day will be a special service of Holy Communion, at midday, followed by a seminar on Porvoo. There will also be a Nordic-Baltic fair celebrating both the Porvoo links of the Church of England and the life and work of the Porvoo chaplaincies and communities in England.

Discover more about Porvoo: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr4606.html

All-clear on pipe organs
The Church of England has welcomed a government commitment to “put an end to all this nonsense” that pipe organs should be subject to new regulations governing the disposal of hazardous substances. Speaking in Parliament last month, Minister for Energy, Malcolm Wicks, said the government’s view was that pipe organs do not fall within the scope of the EU Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive. The Minister said: “Our clear view is that pipe organs do not fall within the scope of the directive and that view is widely accepted in the European Commission. The DTI is working closely with the Commission, and our aim is to reach a successful conclusion before the directive comes into force on 1 July.”

More on this story: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr4506.html

Hymns Ancient and Modern take over Church House Bookshop
Hymns Ancient & Modern, a Christian charity and publishing company responsible for SCM-Canterbury Press and the Church Times, has taken over Church House Bookshop, Great Smith Street, London. The bookshop will continue to trade in the same location under the same name, and the transfer does not involve Church House Publishing, which will continue as the publishing arm of the Archbishops' Council, producing a wide range of new titles each year.

Read the full announcement: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr4306.html

Flats set for refurbishment
The Church of England Pensions Board is celebrating being granted planning permission for the £6 million redevelopment of its 36 bed supported housing scheme in Hindhead, Surrey. Once work is complete at Manormead, residents will benefit from more spacious flats, each consisting of a lounge, study area, assisted bathroom and bedroom. There will also be a large communal lounge area, library, dining room and chapel.

The scheme, scheduled for completion in the autumn of 2007, completes an ambitious programme of redevelopment of each of the Board’s seven residential homes over the last decade.

More information on the Church of England’s clergy retirement housing: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/cepb/housing/

Clergy Terms of Service Human Resources Conferences
The Clergy Terms of Service Human Resources Conferences will take place on 19 October 2006 and 12 February 2007, principally to discuss the practical implications of the McClean reports. Advance notice of these events have been distributed to Diocesan Bishops, Suffragan Bishops, DBF Secretaries and DBF Chairs.

Read more about the implementation of the McClean reports: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/lifeevents/
ministry/workofmindiv/dracsc/

Important change to date of next national church electoral roll
The date for the next preparation of church electoral rolls has been moved forward a year from 2008 to 2007, after which the preparation of a new roll will be take place every succeeding sixth year.

This one off change was made in order to alter the cycle of the formation of new electoral rolls and deanery, diocesan and general synod elections to ensure that at least every other round of elections to deanery synods should take place on the basis of up-to-date information on electoral rolls. It was brought about by an amendment to rule 2(4) of the Church Representation Rules that was agreed by the General Synod in 2004 and which came into force on 1 January 2005.

And finally… the Church of England kicks off the FIFA World Cup with prayers
The Church of England is praying for all those involved in the tournament, and the national team, with two special prayers written for the occasion. The Revd Peter Moger, National Worship Development Officer, comments: "People look to the Church of England for prayers to mark significant events in the life of the nation. We hope these resources will guide the aspirations of those who wish to see fair play and exciting matches.”

Read the World Cup prayers: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/prayers