The Very Rev. Amy Dafler Meaux, who will become the ninth Bishop of West Missouri on May 3, looks forward to participating in the diocese’s ministries and hunger for following Christ.
“West Missouri has such an openness to serve, whether that’s expressed in radical hospitality, ministry for serving their neighbors, or spreading the gospel,” she said. “Anytime a community is that open to the gospel, the Spirit has an opportunity to take off and soar, and that excites me.”
The Diocese of West Missouri has 47 parishes and 8,800 members. It also has two schools, an assisted living facility, and 13 Daughters of the King chapters. Meaux was elected on November 9.
One challenge of West Missouri is its size: 37,000 square miles, with Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City, in the northwest corner of the state. It’s also culturally diverse. There are parishes with harvest festivals and parishes with Pride festivals. Meaux is confident, however, that people can work together in their shared desire to serve God. “It’s finding that common ground to follow Jesus,” she said.
She’s particularly hopeful about youth ministry, which is one of her passions. “Adults are willing to put aside those differences to bring young people together to grow into that commitment to Jesus,” she said. “We all want our kids in church.”
She hopes to continue the diocese’s annual pilgrimage to the location of 1906 Easter lynchings in Springfield, Missouri. “I’m invested in learning about the history of racial division — and reconciliation,” she said.
She has been dean and rector of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Little Rock, Arkansas, since 2020. She’s proud of adding a community garden on a vacant plot the cathedral owned, in partnership with the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance. She said vestry members considered selling the lot and using the funds to support the cathedral, but they realized that using it to help the community was a higher priority. “It was a great example of a creative response to mutual need,” she said.
This is something she wants to encourage: how can the diocese work with and for its neighbors? What can it address using the resources and space it already has? “My first hope is to empower and strengthen our congregations for their ministries. Congregations begin to understand their life within their communities and have a sense of vitality,” she said.
Another aspect of that is responsible maintenance and stewardship of parish resources. She is pleased that the Rt. Rev Diane Jardine Bruce, provisional bishop since 2021, began to work with congregations on how to keep their older buildings sustainable. Meaux hopes to help congregations seek grants from outside of the Episcopal Church. “Communities don’t want historic properties to go away either,” she said, adding that churches that use their spaces for secular purposes, like childcare, can more easily obtain non-church grants.
She knows this is a difficult moment for American religion. “We’re all facing challenges as we’re becoming the church in this new way of doing church in the 21st century,” she said. But she also knows God is there for the church. “I could not have been in this process with West Missouri without the presence of the Holy Spirit,” she said. “I want to be rooted in the will of God.”
Meaux was ordained to the priesthood in 2002 by Charles E. Jenkins III, 10th Bishop of Louisiana. Before serving as cathedral dean in Little Rock, she was rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Danville, Kentucky (2011-20), and served parishes in Texas and Louisiana.
“I want to bring the things I’ve learned, not only from the churches I’ve served but the churches that have served me,” she said, noting she’s been in the church all her life (and an Episcopalian since she was 11). She has a B.A. in humanities and social thought from Northwestern State University in Louisiana, and an M.Div. from the Seminary of the Southwest. She and her husband, Jared, have three children.
Greta Gaffin is a freelance writer based in Boston. She has a master of theological studies degree from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.