Greetings to you this Advent season!

I’m writing to you today on a subject that may feel off-topic, given the holiday festivities we are all participating in this month. Still, the work ahead requires me to provide an update to prepare for announcements and decisions you should begin seeing in January. I value sharing this information with you as I take seriously my commitment to being transparent about big decisions whenever appropriate and possible.

When I was assigned as your episcopal leader, I was blessed to inherit a largely formed leadership team from my predecessor, Bishop Elaine Stanovsky. This has served us well as I have endeavored to learn more about you and my role as your bishop. This team—our cabinet—has been a blessing, but no good thing lasts forever.

Over the next few years, and particularly over the next 18 months, many of these excellent leaders will be completing their terms of service, transitioning into retirement or other ministry opportunities. As they do, I hope to incorporate some of what we have learned together as we consider how best to adapt to the needs of today and tomorrow without increasing the financial burden local churches carry.

In January, I expect to announce the anticipated transitions of the district superintendents across the Oregon-Idaho and Pacific Northwest Conferences. As I do this, I plan to announce superintendency appointments that will be fixed this June, as well as in 2026 and perhaps beyond.

I am aware that this is different from how we typically do things. As I explain the new model of superintendency that we are exploring, I hope it becomes clear why it is essential to announce as many of these new superintendents as possible.

One thing we learned during our ministry priority conversations is that there is a perception, and sometimes a reality, that our connectional work is too distant at times from the ministry of our local churches. While there are different ways to address this challenge, we have settled on a model to experiment with for at least the next few years.

As superintendents roll off the cabinet, I will appoint two- to three-person superintendency teams with a three- to four-year commitment instead of replacing them with full-time superintendents. These teams will include pastoral leaders who serve halftime in the superintendency role and, most often, halftime in the local church to which they are currently appointed. They will work collaboratively within the district and beyond, with each superintendent overseeing a subdistrict that will not exceed 20 churches.

We will experiment with this superintendency team model to respond to a desire for leadership closer to the ground. Whenever possible, we will recruit these superintendents from within the sub-district that they will serve, allowing them to keep one foot in the current mission field that they already know. In addition to the benefits this may provide to the superintendency, it also allows leaders to say yes to this way of service without stepping entirely away from what they feel they have been most directly called to.

As we adapt to this new model, we will work closely with involved local churches to ensure these transitions work smoothly. With the superintendent working half-time in the local church, there should be an opportunity to add additional pastoral support when that pastor previously served full-time. We want to avoid unneeded disruption to the local church’s ministry and the pastor’s family life as we explore this new way of working. Announcing these transitions early will allow us to do this work well, providing ample opportunities for preparation and onboarding for the new superintendents.

While our understanding of what a district superintendent does can be somewhat rigid, we know that it has taken many different forms over the years. For example, in Great Britain, a circuit superintendent is expected to have pastoral responsibility for at least one local church in that circuit. While part-time superintendency is less common in the U.S., it is happening in some places, and we are already reaching out to learn what works well and what needs additional care.

Some of you may know that finding district superintendents isn’t easy. This challenge grows when your bishop has only been with you for 18 months and with an episcopal area as large as the Greater Northwest. To assist in finding possible candidates, I invited 37 leaders from across the area—roughly 1/3 elders, 1/3 other pastoral leaders, and 1/3 laity— to offer up the names of two elders in full connection who could serve in this role. I shared that I was looking for individuals who were faithful yet humble disciples of Jesus, with better-than-average administrative gifts, committed to developing lay leadership, capable of engaging conflict well, collaborative with a proven record of growing something (discipleship systems, membership, small group, etc.). I named it vital that they were not stuck in the past but committed to the church of today and the future we will create together.

I know that may sound like a daunting list, but seeing the gifts and graces that people have named in others has been amazing. Some names showed up several times, others only once or twice. I have invited many of these individuals to deeper conversations about the superintendency, where we hope to learn from each other what is working, what is needed, and whether they are interested in exploring the possibility further.

We will share more about these changes with the superintendency in January.

Beyond the expected transitions above, I want to share some additional changes to the cabinet’s composition.

I am making the director of the Circle of Indigenous Ministries, currently filled by Rev. Dr. Allen Buck, a cabinet-level position. This will help us to center the Truth-Telling Project that Rev. Buck has recently launched while also advancing our work with native people and tribes with tangible signs of engagement, repentance, and reparations.

In June, we had the opportunity to celebrate the ministry of Kristina Gonzalez, who will be retiring at the end of 2024. The work that she has been shepherding for us—equity training and innovation projects—must continue. We plan to split this work up with someone focused on continuing our work related to equity and intercultural competency. A second temporary and part-time position will focus on new ministries, directly supporting the three conference boards funding congregational development work. It is rare to find someone gifted in both of these ministry areas, and this shift returns us to what existed for years before Kristina stepped into her role as executive director two years ago.

Finally, this week, we are announcing the hiring of a new staff person who will work in pensions and human resources as part of a shared services model for the Greater Northwest Area. This emerging collaboration between the administrative offices of all three conferences will allow for more expertise and better service while utilizing existing staff funding streams. Each conference will have an opportunity to learn more about this new model when they meet in June.

As I have been encouraging you, we need to try new things to be responsive to our changing world, especially to the changes that impact how we relate to one another. We won’t get everything right the first time, but that will provide us with an opportunity to learn and adapt. While we can’t guarantee success in many of the things we might try, we can choose to be an organization that responds with curiosity and grace.

Be Well & Be Merry,

Bishop Cedrick D. Bridgeforth
Greater Northwest Episcopal Area

Nov. 6, 2024 – On this morning after a contentious election cycle, GNW Area Bishop Cedrick Bridgeforth shares this reminder of the people we are called to be in community.

Hello all. I know for some this morning is hard, and it should be.

For some, there’s opportunities to revel and celebrate the elections in the United States. Our job, our call, our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. And in our disciple-making, and in our understanding of what it is to be disciples of Jesus Christ, that has and always will include caring for the immigrant, the stranger, the widow, those who sojourn with us, those we know and those we do not. We lead with love. We extend grace and practice acts of mercy, one with another.

This day is unlike a day that we’ve seen before, but it’s one that calls for us to dig deep in our spirituality, to rely on our Wesleyan heritage and to trust in and care for one another.

I want you to know that as your bishop, I am praying with each and every one of you. Your political persuasion does not matter to me. What matters is your commitment to Christ, your willingness to care for one another, your quest to be well and to follow the words of the text that says to “go and do likewise.”

Those cannot just be words on a page for us in this season and in those to come. We have to make the teachings of Christ center in our lives. We have to care for those who are most vulnerable in our midst. We have to get outside of our church walls and get to know our neighbors and our neighborhoods, speak truth to power, and never let go of this unending love that God extends to us.

May we share that love with one another. May we seek out those who are now very, very afraid. Offer prayer, offer food, offer shelter, support asylum, and continue to call for an end, a ceasefire to all wars in this land and in those around the world.

We’ll continue to be in conversation and in dialogue with one another as we continue to understand discipleship and live as disciples of Jesus Christ in this age so that there is an age to come.

God bless you, and let us continue being disciples of Jesus Christ and making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. This is not the time to rest. And I ask you, do not grow weary in well doing.

Amen.

My family still resides in and around Decatur, Alabama. If you search Decatur, Alabama, you will learn that before the conflict in Palestine-Israel escalated to all-out war, Steve Perkins, a 39-year-old African-American man, was shot by several Decatur Police officers. Steve’s death on the front lawn of his home invoked outrage across the city and has sparked protests, rallies, memorials, and other calls for justice and peace. I did not know Steve, but I know Steve’s plight. I know what it means to be confronted with violence and live with the threat of death every time I leave my home. With Steve’s death, we add to the litany of unarmed Black men who died at the hands of state-sanctioned violence. I wonder if even being home is as safe as I tell myself it should be.

My heart aches for Steve’s family. It breaks for families in Israel and Gaza already suffering injury and loss. And it will break again for the Palestinians, Israelis and others who will be caught in the crossfire as war rages across the area. With people being held captive by colonialist borders and nationalist policies, there is limited personal and communal agency. With powers from far away dictating strategies and funding war efforts, colonization. 

Our high aspiration for peace must always come through acts of justice and insurance of equity. We cannot expect peace if injustice and inequities are commonplace. Our pursuit of peace must begin before we hear gunfire or see bombed-out buildings. That work starts in our homes, neighborhoods, community gathering spaces, and churches as we call out and work against all manner of injustice and inequity – especially when we are not the ones directly affected. That’s one way we walk in solidarity with those who are unseen, forgotten, mistreated, or dehumanized.

Another way to work for peace in the land is to acknowledge our privilege, dismantle racism, rebut nationalism, and not shy away from calling out discriminatory acts against others. We may feel like the Greater Northwest has its own problems and that those problems are nowhere near as dire as what we are witnessing in Palestine-Israel or Decatur, Alabama, but that is not true.

War anywhere in the world is a sign that everyone has work to do. The only way we bury our heads in the sand is to deny the interconnected nature of life and our globalized economic and war-making alliances. Others may be firing guns and dropping bombs in Palestine-Israel, Ukraine, Sudan, or Alabama. Still, our country’s failure to have difficult conversations, resolve conflict and honor diverse viewpoints keeps us on the brink of war and economic collapse. When we are silent, apathetic, or too busy to bother with it, peace moves farther into the distance. If peace moves away, so does justice and equity.

Amid all that you are facing, holding, and trying to move forward, I pray the weight of these presenting conflicts will not slow or stop you from living as peaceably and boldly as you can. I pray that we will center equity and justice in all the spaces and places of your life to pursue peace constantly, calling attention to the injustice of war-making and anti-peace policies and actions – at home and abroad.

As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” May these words serve as a daily reminder that today’s war on the other side of the globe impacts and is informed by how we live on this side. Let us not grow weary. Instead, let us continue with hope and in pursuit of peace in every place so that we can fall asleep and live lives in peace.

Peace in Palestine-Israel!
Justice for Steve!
Equity for All!
Amen!

Cedrick D. Bridgeforth
Resident Bishop, Greater Northwest Episcopal Area

The Council of Bishop’s released a statement condemning the violence in the Middle East that you can read here.