CEB: What do you consider to be your spiritual gifts?
JWF: Preaching, encouraging and mentoring, energy and enthusiasm, creativity in imagining new ways in the faith.
CEB: How are these particularly matched with your new position and its demands?
JWF: The mix of my spiritual gifts can be useful for my new position. A bishop, however, is not just a bundle of gifts and skills. A bishop is a person who is filled with the Holy Spirit, empowered to be an agent of love and forgiveness. Bishop Doyle spoke most effectively about this in his sermon at my consecration. I believe that God called me to be a bishop””filled with the Holy Spirit, warts and all””and the person that I am today will not be the same as the bishop I will be tomorrow. God has always given me the gifts to do the ministry I am called to do. I am trusting that the same will continue to be true.
The extract above is the same one that struck me when I read the article. He says, “A bishop is a person who is filled with the Holy Spirit, empowered to be an agent of love and forgiveness” which is all very well, but there is nothing in the article to indicate that he intends to be a proclaimer of God’s whole truth to the people, whether it be negative or positive.
The fundamental duty of a bishop is to speak God’s whole truth, to the church and to the world. That is the reason, in those jurisdictions where the bishop has a staff, that it is shaped like a crook – so he can shepherd (i.e. guide and correct) his charges.
This is usually one of the first things that an orthodox bishop will point out when asked questions like this.