PHOTO BY CASSANDRA HELLER Bishop Edward Paup addresses GBGM board members following his election as general secretary.

By Elliott Wright
Special Contributor

STAMFORD, Conn.—A man who wanted to be a missionary when he was young and grew up to become a bishop in the United Methodist Church will soon step into the role of chief executive of his denomination’s international mission agency. 

Bishop Edward W. Paup of Seattle, 63, was elected March 11 to serve as general secretary for the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), the denomination’s largest agency with personnel, projects and partners in 135 countries. 

Bishop Paup will assume his new post on Sept. 1; until then, Bishop Felton E. May will continue as the interim chief executive. Bishop Paup said he will tender his resignation from the episcopacy, effective Aug. 31, when the United Methodist Council of Bishops meets in April. He will retain his status as an ordained elder in the Rocky Mountain Conference. 

It is unprecedented in the United Methodist Church for an active bishop to be elected to oversee a church agency. Bishops in the U.S. are elected for life. Bishop Paup, however, said in news reports that he wanted to “model the possibility” of moving beyond the episcopal role.
He was the unanimous nominee of a 19-member search committee. Bishop Paup became a director of the GBGM in 2004 and currently chairs the Health and Relief committee, which includes the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). He had direct involvement in the UMCOR responses to the 2004 tsunami in South Asia and the 2005 hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. 

The mission agency’s former top executive, the Rev. R. Randy Day, had been dismissed during the board’s annual meeting last October. Board members said they did not re-nominate Mr. Day because they were “looking for a different style of administrative leadership.” 

In accepting the election, Bishop Paup spoke of his strong call to mission and his commitment to proclaim and bear witness to the transforming love of God. “Mission is foundational to every aspect of the church, or should be,” he said. 

The mission board’s directors and staff lifted up their hands in an informal act of consecration, symbolically placing them on Bishop Paup’s shoulders, as a prayer was offered by the Rev. Maxie Dunnam, former president of Asbury Theological Seminary and a Global Ministries director. 

A native of Oil City, Pa., Bishop Paup attended Lycoming College and Iliff School of Theology. He was ordained a deacon in 1968 by the Western Pennsylvania Conference, then transferred to the Rocky Mountain Conference and was ordained an elder in 1970. 

He was elected to the episcopacy in 1996 in the Portland Area, and has been the resident bishop of the Seattle Area since 2004, leading the Pacific Northwest and Alaska Missionary conferences. He is currently the president of the College of Bishops of the Western Jurisdiction. 

Bishop Paup has served on many denominational boards and committees, and served from 1996 to 2000 as chair of the Advance for Christ and His Church, the denomination’s designated mission-giving program. 

He and his wife, Carol, have three daughters and five grandchildren.

Mr. Wright is the information officer of the GBGM.

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