James Hobby acknowledges that the first time he ministered in Western Pennsylvania, as a pastor in two Episcopal parishes in the Mon Valley in the late 1980s, things didn’t go very well.
“I was 29, so I was idealistic, zealous and pretty full of myself,” the new Anglican bishop of Pittsburgh recalled last week in an interview. His preaching reflected the scholarship that earned him good grades in seminary, but he laments failing to connect with the blue-collar culture of his parishioners.
“Folks are not really interested in how much I know,” he said. “If they don’t feel loved and respected and cared for, the bridge for the gospel is pretty shaky.”