Bonnie Polley, president of the Diocese of Nevada’s Standing Committee, writes about a renewed effort to elect the diocese’s next bishop:
On behalf of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Nevada, I thank all of you for your support and patience as we dealt with the pain and disappointment of our failed search for a new bishop last year. It was a hard decision, and we apologize for the frustration and distress it caused so many of you and the candidates themselves. We truly believe had we not taken this step, we would have faced even greater pain in the future.
Thursday and Friday, May 9 and 10, the clergy — both priests and deacons — met at Camp Galilee. Most of our time was spent discussing what happened and our way forward.
… In the time since the first search ended, we have analyzed what went wrong. The main error we made as the Standing Committee was to assume a new bishop had to be in place immediately when our current bishop, Dan, retired. That caused us to compress the timeline for the search to the point, that although the Search Committee worked diligently, we had insufficient time for training and gathering complete information. Now we understand there are a number of ways to handle the time between bishops.
… By the end of our time at Galilee, the consensus was the clergy now have greater faith in the work of the Standing Committee. We Episcopalians have always believed we find God in conversation, and the clergy affirmed the need for our regular annual clergy meetings.
As part of the healing process, we hope to meet soon with the previous Search Committee to answer questions they might have and listen to their concerns and suggestions for the future.
We are excited we are currently developing criteria for a new Bishop Search Committee. It will be formed during the coming months, and introduced at our Diocesan Convention in October 2019.
