In May of 2008 the Standing Committee of the Diocese created a Search and Nomination committee for the Tenth Bishop of Georgia. The Committee, a lay person and a cleric from each convocation, was carefully chosen to reflect the geographic, demographic, and theological diversity that exists in our Diocese. 

The Search Committee has now completed the task assigned to it by the Standing Committee last May. In just a few days we will announce a slate of nominees for the election of the Tenth Bishop of Georgia. At the outset of our work together we pledged ourselves to these goals: 

• To offer a process that would be as open, fair, and transparent as possible. 
• To communicate with the Diocese regularly and expediently about our progress and our process. 
• To honor all of the participants in the process to the end that their experience might be edifying to them personally and that the Diocese might be seen in the most favorable light. 
• To begin the work of renewing the Diocese of Georgia by modeling attitudes and actions that honor our Lord and who we are as a Diocesan family. 
• To present a slate of candidates for election all of whom Committee members endorse as excellent potential leaders for the Diocese in the next decade or beyond. 

We hope and trust that, by God’s grace, we have in some measure achieved these goals, fulfilled the charge of the Standing Committee, and served you well in this undertaking. 

Our work is now completed, and yours is beginning. It is up to you, the elected delegates and clergy of our congregations, to do your part in discerning and electing the person who will lead our Diocese for the next decade and possibly beyond. Our process has been thorough and deliberate, beginning with convocational and clergy listening sessions and a Diocesan survey in which many of you participated. Based on what we learned from listening to you, we prepared our Diocesan profile, characterizing our Diocese and forming a picture of a person we think might serve our Diocese best as its next Bishop. 

The Nomination Process was opened and the response was gratifying, with 30 individuals nominated to the Committee. Twenty-eight of these agreed to discern with us whether their gifts matched our profile and whether they might be called to the episcopate in Georgia. They were asked to respond to three questions in short essay form. From our review and discussion of these materials we selected 17 nominees to be interviewed by telephone. Members of the Committee then spent approximately two hours in conference calls with each of the candidates, all of whom addressed a prepared list of questions designed to elicit as much information as possible about their experience as priests, the challenges they have faced, their faith journeys, their accomplishments, and their suitability for our Diocese. We also spent time responding to their questions as we acknowledged this to be a process of mutual discernment. Members of the Committee listened carefully, took notes and, in April, met again to consider the qualifications of those before us. With unanimous agreement, we decided to move forward with ten of the original nominees. 

In late April and throughout May, we arranged to meet the ten nominees in Savannah for personal interviews with the Committee. Dividing ourselves into two teams, and including meal times, we were able to spend a full day interviewing, in separate sessions, each nominee. Again we enjoyed engaging conversations with the nominees as we asked them questions, from a prepared list, about their creedal, theological, and liturgical views, as well as other questions about the Diocese of Georgia, the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. At this point in the process we all felt confident that we were closing in on what we needed to know to arrive at the slate of nominees which we now present for your consideration. 

Although those of us who are delegates will, like the rest of you, at the appointed time make a choice from among the five final nominees, the Search Committee members want you to know that we are unanimous about the exceptional quality of all five, each of whom we believe to be electable at the called Special Convention in September. We affirm each as an outstanding choice to be our next Bishop. 

We now encourage you to avail yourself of the information that will be provided about each of the nominees on our www.georgiabishopsearch.org website, and to take advantage of the scheduled visits of the nominees to the Diocese, where you will have the opportunity to meet and converse with them. We also anticipate that there will be some level of online conversation regarding these nominees from within, and outside of, our diocese. We trust that it will be respectful and helpful to all as voting delegates come to their own conclusion about who would best lead the Diocese of Georgia into the future that God has for us. 

Throughout this process your Search Committee members have worked deliberately to create consensus when it came time for all decision making. We have invoked and been encouraged by the palpable presence of the Holy Spirit in our work together. If you have any questions which members of the Search Committee might be able to answer, we are at your service; our contact information is to be found on the search website. 

As we began this work we adopted a heartfelt motto to remind ourselves and to communicate to others what we were about: Discerning the One Mind for One Mission. As we conclude this work, we are indeed of one mind that each of the nominees has the vision, the skills and the will to lead our Diocese. And we are equally convinced that these nominees are all committed to the mission of the church: restoring all people to unity with God through his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. 

May God grant us all his grace and the guidance of the Holy Spirit as we proceed, and may we all allow that same mind to be in us that was in Christ Jesus. Amen.