Today we received a new Bishopric in church.
There is no paid clergy in my church. Each congregation is lead by a Bishop, who is called from the congregation for a period of time (usually around 5 years) to act as the leader of the congregation. It is a huge sacrifice and commitment for the man serving, and to his family, too. The Bishop leads and directs the congregation, performs weddings, oversees funerals, directs the use of welfare funds for the poor, checks on the orphans and widows, and hears confessions of those who need church help in overcoming sins. All of this while still working at his normal job to support his family.
Our Bishop up until today has been Bishop Brailsford, a neighbor and friend of ours. We are roughly the same age and our children have grown up together. The new Bishop is Bishop Rowley, an older, retired gentleman in the congregation that we have known for years, though not well. He got up to speak for the first time as our Bishop and I was glad to hear that he has a sense of humor. I think that is important in a man of God. He told a story about his grandfather's old plow horse who had been retired from the traces, yet still walked out to the plow every day, waiting to be hitched up and work. Finally, the grandfather humored the old horse and hitched him to the plow and let him furrow a field. The horse died in the traces. Bishop Rowley joked that he hopefully wouldn't 'die in the traces'. It doesn't sound very funny in print, but it sounded cute and funny when he said it over the pulpit. He also said he thought he might make a list of his 22 worst character flaws, to save us the hassle of discovering them over the course of his service as the Bishop. Then he decided against it, saying it would be more entertaining for us to discover them along the way. He then bore testimony of the divinity of Christ.
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