Dear friends,

The Bishop Search Committee is pleased to announce a full schedule of listening sessions that will help us in our work of building a diocesan profile. You can find that full schedule at the bottom of this email. This diocesan profile will tell the story of our diocese in a wide variety of ways. If you have been involved with a parish search for a new priest, this process of profile building is much the same–except on the diocesan level! From the history and finances, to outreach and mission, to stories of our ministries and our wider communities, and more, these profiles are one of the initial ways candidates to be our ninth diocesan bishop will begin to get to know us. As the Bishop Search Committee begins its work to create this, we are turning to you for your prayers, feedback, hopes and wishes, and guidance. Though these sessions will not be the only time to offer feedback (a survey is coming in January, too!), we do hope you will be able to attend one session near you or to join a Zoom-based session.

Before you continue down to the schedule please note that we have made every effort to host one of these conversations within a one hour drive to an in-person session for everyone in the diocese. Please also note that there are two Zoom-based, online only sessions, if an in-person option does not work for you. Though the in-person sessions will not allow for hybrid participation, you are welcome to join an online only session by registering at the links below specific to the date you wish to attend. There will also be sessions for smaller groups within the diocese including youth, a session conducted only in Spanish, and one for clergy.

The Bishop Search Committee will be leading our conversations centering on the following three questions. We are sharing them with you now so that you can prayerfully consider your responses and be ready to offer them at the listening session you attend. These questions center our conversation in each place on our worshiping communities and the wider communities in which we live, on the gifts and skills of our ninth bishop, and on the life and ministry we share as a diocese. The questions are:

• Tell us about something exciting in your worship community and your wider community.  Tell us about a challenge in your worship community and your wider community.
• At this time in the life of the diocese, what qualities are most important in the next Bishop?
• In the next 5-10 years, what opportunities do you dream of for our diocese?  What do you imagine that would inhibit those dreams?

We need your help spreading the word! Please feel free to print and distribute this to members of your community as fits your needs best. Please also spread the word in announcements, newsletters, and in any way you can. 

We are looking forward to being present around our diocese in the coming weeks to hear from you. We know that this work cannot be done by us alone but by prayer and by our community coming together, in hope, to look toward the future that God has in mind for us in this place. Mark your calendars now and plan to join us in this holy work together! 

May your Advent season continue to be filled with hope and expectation for the good news of great joy we will soon rejoice in!