During June and July the Bishop Search Committee is meeting with candidates who have been invited to visit Buffalo for two days as the next stage of our mutual discernment. Their visits will be confidential, and they will not visit any churches or meet with anyone other than committee members. This is an opportunity for everyone on the Search Committee to meet the candidates, and for the candidates to tour the region and to talk in greater depth about their approach to the challenges unique to our diocese, their vision for our church, and their questions about our ministries. These visits have been enjoyable, inspiring, and thought-provoking; we have laughed, reflected, and worshipped together. The candidates’ considerable accomplishments give us great hope, but their vulnerability, their willingness to take the risks involved in being part of this process, reassure us of God’s presence as we seek to bring about the Kingdom of God here in this small corner of the world, as Catherine Way, Chair of the Search Committee, has put it in the letter that introduces our Profile.

We have promised to work beside our next bishop in making our challenges into opportunities for renewal and transformation. We have already begun to do this during the 15 months that we have been engaged in the search process. We share a vitality and hopefulness that was not so clear a year ago; our shared ministries in outreach, communications, and youth continue to bring us together, and our plans for the new Ministry Center in Tonawanda provide a new point of departure for clarifying our mission.

However, it is very important that each congregation take concrete steps toward keeping this promise. The Education Team of the Search Committee is preparing new materials for adult, youth, and children’s education that should be available here by early August. Here are some ideas of other ways you might prepare:

Ø Download printed copies of the Diocesan Profile for your congregation to read, and encourage all your members to read the online version available here.

Ø Form a Reading Group that will read the Profile one section at a time. Learn about the history of our region and our diocese.

Ø Use the Profile for discussion to begin Vestry meetings. Use the chapters that describe our “Strengths and Challenges” and “Looking Ahead” to formulate congregational goals that would support our diocesan ministry priorities.

Ø Develop a timeline that places your congregation’s history within the history of our diocese.

Ø Trace the histories of your Deanery churches to see if and when their key moments and leaders correspond to the history of Western New York.

Ø Discuss the “Profile of a Bishop” and consider how your congregation might support our new bishop in the challenging tasks that lie ahead.

The most important way to keep our promise to our next bishop is to pray daily—for lay and clergy delegates, for Bishop Michael and Carol Garrison as they prepare for retirement, for the candidates and their families. Include prayers in your weekly Prayers of the People, for the grace to understand how God is preparing us for our next bishop and preparing a person to lead us. See here for some prayers that might be helpful as you continue to be open and thankful for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

As we continue in this process, we are very excited, for we feel very blessed with the candidates who have come forward. However, we cannot share any information about these candidates. The purpose of this secrecy is to keep our own discernment focused and our conversations among ourselves open. We want every candidate to have an equal chance to be seen and heard, undistracted by the larger conversations that will be appropriate once the slate has been selected. We want to be open to the Holy Spirit, and our discernment of where God might be leading us—and leading our candidates—is more reliable if it grows out of open and extended conversations among those of us who have been thinking and reading about this matter together for the past year. We have been entrusted with a profoundly serious and wondrous ministry, and each of us is putting every effort into being trustworthy. So please don’t tempt us with questions! We will share our experiences when we can. Please keep us in your prayers, as well as the Transition Committee, the candidates, and the congregations of our diocese, that we may be faithful to the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we have been given.

We give profound thanks to everyone who has nominated a candidate, who has entered the process, and who has prayerfully discerned that this is not the right call at this time. The Holy Spirit is indeed at work in all our hearts, and it is no small act of courage to contemplate “walking this tightrope.” Our shared purpose is to be open to the Holy Spirit, who guides all that we do: