Like its fellow jurisdictions, the North Central Jurisdiction used an innovative approach in its bishop assignments.
Starting Sept. 1, Bishop David Bard and Bishop Kennetha Bigham-Tsai will begin their joint episcopacy of the Illinois Great Rivers Conference.
Bishop Frank Beard, who has led the Illinois Great Rivers Conference since 2016, is taking long-term disability leave starting Aug. 1 as he deals with blindness caused by glaucoma. Disability leave is not the same as retirement, and federal labor law requires a similar position be available to Beard should he choose to return.
In the meantime, the North Central Jurisdiction has made plans to ensure the conference has episcopal oversight for the next four years.
“I leave knowing that the job I started is unfinished,” Beard wrote in a farewell message. “But, as I have told many pastors and churches, ‘the Lord knows exactly what is needed and will supply your needs.’ We don’t always get our ‘wants,’ but God ALWAYS attends to our needs!”
During the month of August, other North Central Jurisdiction bishops, including retired Bishop John Hopkins, will be on call to cover the conference. But come September, the jurisdiction determined the conference would need bishops assigned to the area.
Like other jurisdictions, the conference has seen its number of bishops go down from nine bishops to now six able to take assignments. The jurisdiction still has 10 conferences. In trying to figure out how to handle assignments, the North Central Jurisdiction turned to other jurisdictions for ideas.
“Through our process of discernment, conversation and creativity, we came to this shared model of episcopal leadership for which we gleaned from the Northeast,” said the Rev. Aleze Fulbright, chair of the North Central Jurisdiction episcopacy committee.
Over the past few years, Bishops Sandra Steiner Ball and Cynthia Moore-Koikoi have collaborated in leading the Susquehanna, Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia conferences.
Fulbright said the North Central leaders sought insights and asked questions about the model used by their Northeastern neighbors.
“So we could gain insights and ask questions. And we formed it after that model.”
While both Bard and Bigham-Tsai will be assigned to Illinois Great Rivers for four years, the plan is for Bard — who also leads the Michigan Conference — to have primary responsibility in the first two years. During those years, the conference expects to finish its gracious-exit process for churches wishing to depart The United Methodist Church.
Bigham-Tsai, who also leads the Iowa Conference, will have primary responsibility for the following two years — paving the way for Iowa and Illinois Great Rivers to share an episcopal area.
Both bishops have expressed excitement for this new opportunity.
The Rev. Sara Isbell, who represents Illinois Great Rivers on the episcopacy committee, is likewise excited about the gifts the two will bring to her conference.
The two of them are not only excellent bishops and leaders in their own right, but they already have a relationship because Bishop Bard was Bishop Bigham-Tsai’s bishop in Michigan,” Isbell said. “They already know each other; they already kind of understand how each other works. They’re not going to necessarily do everything identically — and they’re not asked to — but to be in collaboration with each other.”
Read Illinois Great Rivers press release.
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