Coming August 31:

Across the country, people are entering their churches and noticing big changes: fewer people in the pews; music ranging from Bach to U2; fewer life members and more converts; online faith communities; coffee house and home churches. So, what is happening to our churches? And what does this mean for Christianity?

Phyllis Tickle is founding editor of the religion departmentat Publishers Weekly and one of the most highly respected authorities and popular speakers on religion in America today. She is the author of more than two dozen books on the subject, including The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why, the recently published The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord and The Divine Hours, a series of manuals for observing fixed-hour prayer. A lector and lay Eucharistic minister in the Episcopal Church, Tickle is a senior fellow of the Cathedral College of Washington National Cathedral. (Photo credit: Pete Cereen)

Tickle began her career as a college teacher and, for almost ten years, served as academic dean to the Memphis College of Art before entering full time into writing and publishing. In September 1996 she received the Mays Award, one of the book industry's most prestigious awards for lifetime achievement in writing and publishing, and specifically in recognition of her work in gaining mainstream media coverage of religion publishing. In 2007 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Christy Awards "In gratitude for a lifetime as an advocate for fiction written to the glory of God."  In 2004, she received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the Berkeley School of Divinity at Yale University. In 2009 she received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from North Park University. Tickle is a founding member of The Canterbury Roundtable, and serves now, as she has in the past, on a number of advisory and corporate boards. A lay Eucharistic minister and lector in the Episcopal Church, she is the mother of seven children and, with her physician-husband, makes her home on a small farm in Lucy, Tennessee.

What Happened to My Church?

You are invited to hear Phyllis Tickle, at St. James Episcopal Church on Sunday, August 31, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. as she continues a conversation on what is being called the emerging church. Mrs. Tickle is a highly sought-after speaker about what she sees happening in North American churches today as the regular, semimillennial "rummage sale" of the Church.

How have the automobile and the Internet, the industrial and information ages, changed how we think about and even "do" Church?

In conjunction with its Fifth Sunday Celebration, the St. James Center for Spiritual Formation will offer a breakfast meal from 8:30-10:00 a.m.  Along with parishioners, our homeless neighbors are invited to join us in Bishops Hall to start the day together.

Following the breakfast, Mrs. Tickle will be the speaker for the 10:30 a.m. combined morning service.

At 6:30 p.m., Mrs. Tickle will be the speaker for the evening program, What Happened to My Church?, open to the public free of charge.

Publicity Information:

Here's a poster in PDF format to print for your office or bulletin board.

Here's a postcard in JPG format to email to your friends to share this event.

Here's a larger JPG postcard, or the postcard in PDF format.

A higher-res photo of Phyllis Tickle (credit Pete Cereen) is here.