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Celebrating new bishops: SCJ delegates elect three to episcopacy Robin Russell, Aug 1, 2008
PHOTO BY BILL BALL; OTHERS BY ROBIN RUSSELL, LINDA GREEN
Delegates gather to congratulate newly elected Bishop Earl Bledsoe at the South Central Jurisdictional Conference in Dallas.
By Robin Russell Managing Editor
DALLAS—United Methodists elected and assigned new bishops and also settled some sticky regional issues during their 2008 Jurisdictional Conferences across the United States.
The denomination’s five jurisdictions meet once every four years, following the churchwide General Conference.
At the South Central Jurisdictional Conference, meeting July 16-19 in Dallas, balloting went into the late hours of the final session, but the 296 delegates eventually elected three new bishops to replace two who are retiring and one who had died. It takes 60 percent of the delegates’ votes to be elected.
Earl W. Bledsoe, 57, a district superintendent in the Texas Conference, was elected a bishop on the third ballot and will serve the North Texas Conference (Dallas Area). He succeeds Bishop Alfred L. Norris, who retired in 2004 but re-entered active service following the 2006 death of Bishop Rhymes Moncure Jr.
John Michael “Mike” Lowry, 58, executive director for New Church Development and Transformation for the Southwest Texas Conference, was elected on the 13th ballot and will head the Central Texas Conference (Fort Worth Area). He succeeds retiring Bishop Ben R. Chamness.
James “Jim” Dorff, 61, area provost for the North Texas Conference, was elected on the 23rd ballot and will lead the San Antonio Area (Rio Grande and Southwest Texas conferences). He succeeds retiring Bishop Joel Martinez.
The newly elected bishops were consecrated July 19 at First United Methodist Church in Dallas.
Because of the lengthy balloting process, the Episcopacy Committee, made up of one clergy and one lay person from each annual conference, worked into the wee hours to review the work of the bishops and assign them to their areas. The committee announced its decisions at 1:30 a.m. July 19.
There were no changes in assignments for active bishops in the South Central Jurisdiction. Returning to their episcopal areas for another term are: Bishop Ann B. Sherer, Nebraska; Bishop Janice Riggle Huie, Texas; Bishop William Hutchinson, Louisiana; Bishop E. Max Whitfield, New Mexico/Northwest Texas; Bishop Robert Hayes Jr., Oklahoma; Bishop Robert Schnase, Missouri; Bishop Scott J. Jones, Kansas; and Bishop Charles Crutchfield, Arkansas.
In making assignments, members of the Episcopacy Committee receive feedback on “concerns and hopes” of the new bishops as well as feedback on missional needs from the jurisdiction’s College of Bishops and 15 conferences, said Cody Collier, committee spokesman from the Missouri Conference.
In the U.S., a United Methodist bishop is elected for life, and although eight years is the standard term for a bishop to serve in an episcopal area, it is not unusual for a bishop to be assigned to one area for 12 years for “missional reasons.”
About 50 or so U.S. bishops oversee some 7.9 million of the church’s 11.5 million members worldwide. They are charged by the church’s Book of Discipline to “lead and oversee the spiritual and temporal affairs” of the church and to “guard, transmit, teach and proclaim, corporately and individually, the apostolic faith as it is expressed in Scripture and tradition, and as they are led and endowed by the Spirit, to interpret that faith evangelically and prophetically.”
Bishop Bledsoe
At a news briefing following his election, Bishop Bledsoe said he was “very surprised and very nervous.” He immediately called his mother so she could share the news with his father, who is a United Methodist pastor. His wife, Leslie, was at his side.
A district superintendent since 2002 for the Bryan/West District in the Texas Conference, Bishop Bledsoe had served as a pastor at three Houston area churches. He has a master of divinity degree from Perkins School of Theology, where he was a Benjamin E. Mays Scholar in Hebrew and Greek, and a doctorate from Drew University.
The role of a bishop, he said, is to help “set a vision” that moves the church forward in its mission of evangelism. “A church is either growing or dying,” he said. “If it’s standing still, it’s dying.”
Bishop Bledsoe said his strengths were in administration and empowerment of the laity, which he described as “the hope of the church.” He praised the denomination’s connectional system as a global body, and its theological diversity that “allows people to grow in their faith. Not everyone’s in the same place.”
Mrs. Bledsoe, who lost her sight six years ago, said her husband has a “way of making people feel at ease.”
“Even when they’re upset, he has a way of dismantling tension in people,” she said. “And he does this in diverse areas and cultures.”
Bishop Bledsoe has chaired his conference’s Board of Ordained Ministry and was president of the Council on Finance and Administration. He also has chaired the Texas Methodist Foundation Board and Houston Board of Missions Revitalization Committee.
The Bledsoes have six children, five of them grown. They also have 11 grandchildren “that we love dearly and spoil rotten,” he said.
Bishop Lowry
Bishop Lowry, who led in the balloting for 10 rounds, admitted afterward that “It was a bit of an emotional roller coaster.”
Bishop Lowry graduated in 1972 from Earlham College in Richmond, Ind. He received a master of theology degree in 1976 from Perkins School of Theology at SMU and a doctor of ministry degree in 1985 from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
He was ordained a deacon in 1974 in the Northern Illinois Conference and an elder in 1978 in the Southwest Texas Conference. He has served churches in Irving, Kerrville, Harlingen, Corpus Christi, Austin and San Antonio.
While in high school, he said he fell away from the United Methodist Church. As a self-described agnostic, he questioned whether the Christian faith was “intellectually credible.” But at a Quaker college in Indiana, he met Dick Davis, “a wonderful professor who reintroduced me to Christ.”
As he prayed late one Sunday evening in his professor’s office, he had a spiritual reconnection to faith. “I experienced a light, emotion and presence that has never left me,” he said. He went on to get a doctorate in evangelism and church growth.
His wife, Jolynn, is a nurse, and said she is committed to working in faith-based nursing in communities where health care is not easily accessible. She also has a growing passion for missions, and has made several trips to Africa and Guatemala.
Bishop Lowry has chaired his conference’s Board of Ordained Ministry, Committee on Church Extension and Council on Church Revitalization and Church Extension. He has served on the board of the Texas Methodist Foundation, United Methodist Publishing House, Perkins School of Theology and Southwestern University.
The Lowrys have a son living near Boston and a daughter and son-in-law in Atlanta.
Bishop Dorff
Ballots cast for Bishop Dorff and Cheryl Jefferson Bell had run neck-and-neck throughout the day, but delegates also kept introducing other names to the ballots, including some who had already withdrawn. It took 23 rounds for delegates to elect Bishop Dorff.
Afterward, he credited three bishops who had mentored him in North Texas. As provost, his conference office was next to the bishop’s, so he witnessed the day-to-day tasks of the episcopacy.
Retired North Texas Bishop William Oden, he said, is a “superb thinker and strategist,” while the late Bishop Rhymes Moncure was “a people’s bishop” who knew how to build relationships. Bishop Alfred Norris, who came to North Texas to fill in after Bishop Moncure died in July 2007, is “a kind of a mix,” he added.
Bishop Dorff was district superintendent of the Dallas-Denton District and pastor at First United Methodist churches in McKinney and Gainesville, Texas, and associate pastor at Highland Park UMC. He has a master of theology degree from Perkins School of Theology.
His passions for ministry are threefold: developing ministries with young people, starting new churches and increasing clergy effectiveness so that they are “moving to excellence.”
Bishop Dorff has been chair of his conference’s Committee on Episcopacy, and its Divisions on Conference Relations and Evangelism, and served on its Council on Finance and Administration, Board of Ordained Ministry and Nominating Committee.
He also served on the General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns and the board of the Texas Methodist Foundation. He will represent the United Methodist Church on the General Assembly of the National Council of Churches.
Bishop Dorff and his wife, Barbara, have two grown sons who live near Washington, D.C.
PHOTO BY BILL BALL; OTHERS BY ROBIN RUSSELL, LINDA GREEN
Because of the lengthy balloting process, the Episcopacy Committee, made up of one clergy and one lay person from each annual conference, worked into the wee hours to review the work of the bishops and assign them to their areas. The committee announced its decisions at 1:30 a.m. July 19. 
Bishop Bledsoe 
