Episcopal bishop faces a big task

Stacy J. Willis

Friday, Feb. 23, 2001 | 10:50 a.m.

When Episcopal Bishop-elect Katherine Jefferts Schori is consecrated Saturday, she will assume the responsibility for reinvigorating a stagnate diocese.

Jefferts Schori, 46, was selected in October to lead the statewide diocese, which has been praised for its use of unpaid ministers but criticized for its lack of financial foresight.

Despite Nevada's high metropolitan population growth rate, its Episcopal diocese remains among the smallest in the nation.

There are 2.3 million baptized Episcopalians in the U.S., and 5,794 baptized Episcopalians in Nevada, according to the Episcopal Church USA. By comparison, the downtown Los Angeles diocese has more than 70,000 members.

In the late 1980s the diocese attracted national attention for its implementation of the "total ministry" program, the project of then-Bishop Wesley Frensdorrf. In total ministry, congregations select laypeople to go through ministerial training and become unpaid priests. There are more than 40 such priests in the diocese today, Jefferts Schori said.

But critics of the program say it has left the 35 Nevada parishes slow growing -- and financially struggling -- because part-time leaders often lack the capacity to grow their parishes. There are fewer than a half-dozen Episcopal parishes sustaining paid, seminary-educated priests in Nevada.

"Total ministry is, as a model for ordination, theologically bankrupt," the Rev. Massey Gentry of Christ Church, said.

Gentry, a seminary-educated priest, said the diocese needs a leader who will re-unite the far-slung parishes by improving communication, form a long-term plan for growing the diocese, and take a more prominent stand on social issues.

Jefferts Schori said she is up to the task.

"We don't have a clear vision of why we're here," she said. "So I hope to meet with the parishes and develop God's dream for Nevada." Jefferts Schori replaces Bishop Stewart Zabriskie, who became bishop in 1986 and died in September 1999.

Jo Ann Roberts Armstead, president of the local chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians, said she is optimistic about the selection of Jefferts Schori, who served a diocese in Corvallis, Ore., before moving to Las Vegas last month.