Please note: As there will be no nominations from the convention floor, this petition process is the final opportunity for nominating a candidate for bishop. 

Within days, the Search Committee will announce the official slate of candidates for the 10th Bishop of Georgia. Each of these individuals will have undergone a rigorous and lengthy process of mutual discernment including written essays, telephone and face-to-face interviews, reference checks, and background checks. In addition to the individuals listed on that slate, members of the Diocese of Georgia now have the right to nominate candidates to the process by petition. 

The rules for nominating a candidate by petition are as follows:

1. Nominations by Petition may be made between Tuesday, June 9 and Tuesday, June 23, 2009.  All nominations must be RECEIVED by 5:00 p.m. on June 23.
2. The nomination forms will be posted at www.georgiabishopsearch.org on Tuesday, June 9, 2009.
3. All nominees presented through the Petitioning Process must obtain signatures of a lay person and an ordained person from each of the convocations of the Diocese of Georgia. The lay and ordained persons from each convocation shall not be from the same parish.
4. Completed forms, together with the nominee’s resume, CDO profile, and answers to questions specified in the nomination packet, must be returned to: 
             Mr. Charles N. Hough, Jr., Clerk
             The Standing Committee
             2331 Pineridge Lane
             Albany, GA 31707
   Mr. Hough may also be contacted by email at charlie.hough@hotmail.com or by telephone at (229) 446-8100 and (229) 343-8448.
5. Any candidate presented by this process must undergo a Background Check and Psychological Examination prior to being placed on the ballot.
6. Any candidate completing the above requirements and whose Background Check and Psychological Examination reveal no impediment, may participate in the Walkabouts scheduled for August 26-28.

Questions concerning this process should be addressed to the Rev. Joy H. Fisher, President of the Standing Committee.  She may be contacted by email at attyfisher@aol.com or by telephone at (478) 731-8183.

The work of the Search Committee continues to move forward pretty much on schedule. Since February, we have been meeting twice each month reviewing the resumes and CDO (Church Deployment Office) profiles of our nearly 30 nominees. In addition to these materials we asked our nominees to respond in 500 words or less to these three questions:

1. What are you passionate about in your ministry, in your personal life, and in the world around you?
2. Please elaborate on an occasion or experience, during your ministry, of significant personal growth or change.
3. What are the touchstones in your faith that will guide your responses to the issues now facing – some would say threatening – the Episcopal Church and the world-wide Anglican Communion?

Without exception all of our nominees have given thoughtful and considered responses to our questions. All are capable clergy of our church with interesting and varied experience in ministry. We are most appreciative for the time, energy and investment they have each made to our search for a new bishop.

We have functioned as a committee of the whole in prayerfully and carefully reviewing each nominee’s profiles, noting each individual’s positives and verbalizing any reservations. Our chaplain, Nancy Mills, has gently kept us grounded in God’s presence. Our consultant, Rick Callaway, has offered timely and useful insight. Our conversations with each other have been open, honest, and frank.

At the end of March we enter into the next phase of building relationship with and getting to know our nominees better as we conduct telephone interviews with nearly two-thirds of them. The committee has been divided into four teams of three for this purpose. All members of the committee are invited to “listen in” on any conference call with any of the nominees that their team will not be interviewing, if they are so interested.

After these interviews are completed we will meet to consider what we have learned about our nominees and their impressions of our diocese. Our process continues to be one of mutual discernment between our diocese and each nominee.

As a committee we continue to enjoy each other, growing in appreciation and trust as we work together. We feel that we are working well together mindful of all the points of view present in our diocese. Please keep us and our nominees in your continued prayers.

As we now embark on the daunting task of receiving and sorting nominations for the tenth bishop of Georgia, we may find it both useful and wise to turn to the ordination rite itself for clarity and guidance. Above all others, one word in the Ordination of a Bishop may be particularly instructive, and that word is “persuade.”

In the ordination rites for both priest and deacon, the ordinand is addressed by the bishop and given an outline of the several duties of the order to which he or she is being ordained. Thereafter comes the examination, within which the first question is similar for both priest and deacon: “My brother/sister, do you believe that you are truly called by God and his Church to this priesthood?” Or, “my brother/sister, do you believe that you are truly called by God and his Church to the life and work of a deacon?” In both cases, the operative word is “believe,” and the answer is the same for both rites: “I believe I am so called.” The onus of discernment is on the ordinand.

The question is different, however, in the examination of one being ordained to the episcopate. Rather than asking if the ordinand believes he or she is called, the Presiding Bishop asks, “Are you persuaded that God has called you to the office of Bishop?” The answer, unlike the case in the other two rites, is, “I am so persuaded.”

This striking and perhaps theologically critical difference has existed since Thomas Cranmer’s prayer book, yet it remains curiously unparsed and undiscussed in any of today’s major prayer book commentaries. Hatchett, Michno, Mitchell, Price, Stuhlman, and Weil all leave this difference untreated, leaving us to our own devices to discover Cranmer’s motivation behind the word “persuade.”

Yet that motivation may be painfully intuitive after just one look at the address which precedes the question. Hear what the Presiding Bishop will say to the soul whom you and I will elect in just a few short months. She says:

Your heritage is the faith of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and those of every generation who have looked to God in hope. Your joy will be to follow him who came, not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.

Lest we be fooled into thinking that the pattern for a bishop’s life is that of a tested administrator, or an imaginative guru, or even merely a very fine priest, the ordination rite tells us differently. No, the true pattern for the bishop’s life is none other than the Christ of the Cross–the Lamb who was slain–and the hundreds of saints and martyrs whose blood paints a scarlet road to the holiness of God and the consummation of all our hope. The ordination rite calls this the bishop’s “heritage” and “joy.” Who in their right mind would want this job?

Thus it makes sense that “persuasion” would enter into our vocabulary of discernment. Of course, this does not mean that we will have to do all of the persuading of that we should look for a particularly resistant candidate. It simply means that the utter humility of Christ—the humility of the one who emptied himself completely for the sake of our souls—should be close at heart for both us and for the nominees with whom we move forward. It also means that there is little need to ask questions such as, “Why do you want to be bishop?” or “what qualifies you to be bishop?” He or she simply may not know. And so our task is one of vulnerable, mutual discernment.

The good news, however, is that the persuasion is not ours to wield. It is the Holy Spirit’s, who will—if we say our prayers and remain in love—do all that is required to persuade both us and our future bishop of the humble, good road that lies ahead for us.

And thus a good question for us today is this: Are we persuaded that God has called us to this table, and to the awesome task of discerning the identity of our next bishop? And are we persuaded that the Holy Spirit will provide us with every humble gift necessary to find that person through a process paved in love, vulnerability, and mutual discovery?

The answer, God willing, is “We are so persuaded.”

Amen, and let it be so.

The Rev. Lonnie Lacy
Epiphany 2009