In order to meet its current needs and live in the future it has been anticipating, the small, rural Diocese of Eastern Oregon announced on February 1 that it hopes to continue with a part-time assisting bishop instead of calling a new diocesan.
Its current bishop, the Rt. Rev. Patrick W. Bell, will leave the position on December 31. Bell “aged out” as diocesan bishop at age 72 in 2022, but with permission from former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and the Office of Pastoral Development, he continued to serve the diocese as an assistant bishop, with a term extended to the end of 2025.
“We are proposing to live into a continuation of a lot of years of work,” said the Rev. P. Kelly Mahon, president of the diocese’s standing committee.
This, he said, is shaped by the diocese’s long practice of total ministry, in which members of a congregation are set apart for holy orders and serve as volunteers instead of hiring a seminary-educated professional from outside.
A letter by the standing committee said the diocese had considered several other strategies for its future in the last several years, including “financial strategies that might allow for the hiring of a part-time Bishop Diocesan, merging into an adjacent diocese, [and] reaffiliation of our parishes into a neighboring diocese.”
“Consensus, after several years of work, is that the standing committee is prepared to take a more active role in the leadership of this diocese,” Mahon said. “It is our desire to call a part-time bishop who is interested in coming alongside of us to live our mission of ministry in this part of the country.”
Mahon said a traditional bishop search could take 18 months to 2 years and be very expensive.
“The diocese could spend all that money and not come up with a candidate who is able or willing to serve here. That’s the fear,” Mahon said.
The diocese has been without a full-time bishop for a decade. When Bell was elected in 2015, Eastern Oregon had already decided the bishop should only be employed half time.
The standing committee is “operating in the space we’re in; it is what the current canons provide. We are in good stead with that,” said Mahon, who serves as rector at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Mount Hood.
Unlike diocesan bishops, who assume full pastoral authority and are officeholders with unrestricted tenure, assisting bishops serve under contract for a fixed time and their work is restricted to sacramental acts.
Usually, the standing committee retains full control of the diocese when an assisting bishop is called. But Eastern Oregon’s letter says the diocese is committed to “exploring a shared episcopate model, in which the Standing Committee, an Assisting Bishop, and key staff will share leadership responsibilities together.”
“Roles are yet to be determined. Right now, it is a collaborative effort,” Mahon said, adding that the standing committee meets often to work together.
“As we transition, we are figuring it out. It is not terrifying, not unpredictable. Currently, when a pastoral need arises in the parishes or with clergy, they reach out to Pat [Bishop Bell],” Mahon said. “If he needs us, the standing committee. We talk about it.”
While preparing for Bell’s departure in December, Mahon said the standing committee would like to call someone who is already a bishop, perhaps someone retired, who could step in. He said having an assisting bishop is not permanent, but is a faithful experiment for the diocese.
“At the end of a year or two, we will review, and if we determine we can do a full, conventional bishop’s search, we will go from there,” Mahon said.
Eastern Oregon may be envisioning a situation like the similarly small and rural Diocese of North Dakota, which has even fewer congregations. After the departure of its last diocesan bishop, Michael Smith, in 2019, the diocese was under the care of two different part-time retired provisional bishops, Keith Whitmore and Thomas Ely. It released a search profile for a full-time diocesan bishop on February 19.
Mahon said he is proud that every parish or mission in Eastern Oregon is self-sustaining. “We are 22 parishes and missions; no one collects a contribution from this diocese or anywhere else.”
The assessment of parishes in the Diocese of Eastern Oregon is 22.5 percent of the operating budget, which a recent TLC study found is the church’s second-highest. “Given our geography and topography, this is not unreasonable,” Mahon said.
Mahon emphasizes that the diocese is not floundering. “Many parishes are viable. We are simply trying to replace Bishop Pat. This is not a Hail Mary. We are trying to maintain and grow in being faithful to the world we are in,” he said.
The standing committee continues to work toward this plan and is committed to working with Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe and his staff.
The Diocese of Eastern Oregon covers an expansive geographic area; roughly two-thirds of the state, the mostly high-desert region east of the Cascade Mountains (with one congregation in Washington State). It has been a separate jurisdiction from the historic Diocese of Oregon (which now calls itself “The Episcopal Church in Western Oregon”) since 1907.
There are few cities of significant size, and the cultural norms are more conservative than in the state’s coastal region, which is dominated by trendy Portland. Thirteen of the 18 counties included in the diocese’s territory have passed ballot measures sponsored by the Greater Idaho Movement, indicating a desire to secede from Oregon and unite with their more similar neighbor to the East.
The diocese is really small by population. Eastern Oregon, with only 1,675 baptized members, was the church’s third-smallest domestic diocese in 2023 (only Northern Michigan and Western Kansas are smaller). Only five of its 22 congregations have more than 100 communicants.
Its collective average Sunday attendance of 638 is the fifth-smallest in the church, though that number increased 11.7 percent in 2023, and is higher than attendance in the dioceses of North Dakota and San Joaquin, both of which are receiving names for a diocesan bishop.
Given the distances involved and the challenge of crossing high mountains in snowy weather, the diocesan mergers that significantly larger Eastern dioceses like Easton in Maryland have been asked by church center staff to consider may be impractical.
In addition to its 22 congregations, the diocese’s ministry includes the High Desert School of Ministry and Ascension School Camp and Conference Center.
High Desert is a local formation program developed by the dioceses of Eastern Oregon and Idaho that allows individuals to receive formation closer to home and on a schedule that will better fit with their lives. Approximately two-thirds of the clergy in the diocese received their formation at High Desert.
The Ascension is on the site of a former Episcopal girls’ school in Cove. It has been a summer camp since 1924, and hosts the diocesan offices.
The Rev. Meredyth Albright is a longtime journalist and rector of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.
