Members of the Joint Nominating Committee for the Election of the Presiding Bishop have decided on a timeline for receiving names of potential nominees to be the 28th presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church.
The nominating committee plans to release its profile and call to discernment for the next presiding bishop and begin receiving names on May 15. Names will be received until July 15. Bishops who discern a call to enter the nomination process will have until Aug. 15 to submit their applications. The committee plans to announce its slate of nominees in the spring of 2024.
The committee is charged with presenting at least three nominees to stand for election at the 81st General Convention, scheduled for June 23–28, 2024, in Louisville, Kentucky.
“We pray that the church will join us in our discernment process,” said Alaska Bishop Mark Lattime, who co-chairs the committee with Canon Dr. Steve Nishibayashi of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.
At its Jan. 11-13 meeting in Los Angeles, which included some members participating via Zoom, the committee used the videoconferencing platform to interview people who have worked closely with Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and his predecessor, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. The committee’s goal was to learn more about the scope and challenges of the presiding bishop’s work.
“We appreciated having time to talk with all of these folks who willingly shared their time and expertise with us,” Nishibayashi said. “Their insights will inform our work on the profile and our discernment going forward.”
Members learned what Episcopalians said in a recent survey (available Oct. 10-31, 2022) about the skills, qualities, and gifts the church ought to seek in its next presiding bishop, considering what the church and the world may look like in the next decade. Those answers will inform the profile and the committee’s discernment. The online survey, hosted by the General Convention Office, received 6,092 responses.
“The people who responded to our survey told us so much about what they hope for in our next presiding bishop and how they see the church and the world moving in the next 10 years,” Lattime said.
