Wisdom Wednesday: Bishop Sue

Grace and peace to you. I’m Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Welcome to Wisdom Wednesdays. I’m posting videos each Wednesday sharing devotions, discussing our church book studies, or church news.

Today, I want to tell you about my meeting with the Virginia Annual Conference’s new bishop. Sue Haupert-Johnson.

First a word about United Methodist bishops. We United Methodist organize our congregations into conferences, which are regional areas usually the size of a state. Each conference is governed by a bishop. Peakland is part of the Virginia Annual Conference, which covers most of the state of Virginia and has just over 1100 congregations and 1800 clergy like Andrew, Pastor Dave and me.

Our current bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson began as our bishop on January 1 of this year. This is her second annual conference where she has served as bishop. She spent the past 6 years as the bishop of the North Georgia Conference. A bishop is like the governor of a state. She is the chief executive officer and ensures that our church rules and laws are upheld. The bishop is the one who assigns us clergy to our congregations. Most United Methodist can go their whole lives without meeting a bishop, but bishops are an important part of our United Methodist church.

Bishop Sue as she prefers to be called is eager to meet as many Virginia United Methodists as she can as quickly as she can. Last week, I joined a group of 30 other Virginia clergy to meet her and share with her our hopes and challenges here in Virginia and to learn more about her and her hopes for Virginia and for our United Methodist denomination.

Bishop Sue is a life-long methodist who grew up in Florida. She is a second career clergy person. Her first profession was as a litigator. She had a heart warming experience as a young adult and realized God was calling her into a new profession as a United Methodist pastor.

I gather switching from law to the Gospel was a challenge as was being a woman in largely male dominated profession. Bishop Sue rose to the occasion. She’s tough and she’s a straight shooter. I like her very much.

Bishop Sue has high hopes for us in Virginia Annual Conference. As a few methodist congregations leave our denomination, Bishop Sue believes we United Methodists are to be a big tent church where all people are welcomed and all people can find a place here.

She described a bird, which needs its left wing and its right wing to fly. The United Methodist church is the same way. We need both our left wing progressive folks and our right wing traditional folks for us to soar as a congregation, as a conference and as a denomination.

I agree with Bishop Sue, and that’s exactly what I want for Peakland. We need left wing and right wing, we need poor and wealthy here at Peakland, We need young and old, those who are new to the faith and those who are the saints and giants of our church. We need those who wear suits and ties and dresses to Sunday worship and those who wear jeans and t-shirts. All of us together, united in Christ reaching out, serving all and extending God’s table and God’s love.

Thanks be to God.