Bishop

30 July 2025

On the chess board, the bishop is a powerful player. How impactful to be able to move diagonally in any direction!

How about the Bishop of the ELCA? This week at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Phoenix Arizona, a new presiding bishop is being elected for a six-year term. Unlike our brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic tradition where a bishop is appointed by the pope, the ELCA presiding bishop is selected by an assembly composed of 60% lay people and 40% clergy.

Would you be up for the task if nominated? What a calling! As I discuss the process with colleagues, the conversation sounds similar to a presidential election in terms of wondering, who, in the right mind would be a mixture of audacious, courageous, sacrificial and passionate enough (ideally) to be willing to serve in such a role. Let alone equipped, insightful, faithful, and wise enough. The new presiding bishop will need to move more dynamically than a chessboard’s bishop, rook, and knight rolled into one.

One commentator writes that our new presiding bishop will face an “era of enormous challenge. Fostering the ELCA‘s unity and interdependence through congregations, synods, and churchwide ministries will require enormous energy and Herculean effort.”

But we trust God has already called such an amazing and needed leader.

Indeed, I praise God that at least seven synodical bishops and pastors have been willing to be pre-identified as nominees. (Any pastor can be nominated from the floor in a process known as the ecclesiastical ballot). Among the various visions cast by nominees this week, I bet we will hear some common themes regarding some essentials required for future leadership:

Asking the question of mission. What is God calling the church to be about in 2025?
Asking the question of strategy. In a culture that’s radically different than even four decades ago, how do we reform and evolve as the church? How can we faithfully proceed to effectively live out the Great Commission and Great Command in this new culture. How do we honor the past, but be free to adapt to what’s required for the future?
Bringing conviction that perplexing challenges also offer incredible opportunities.
Exuding a deep confidence that the Holy Spirit leads us, and Jesus’ agenda will prevail, regardless of the pendulum swings of realities throughout the centuries.

Dear faith friends let me ask you a couple of questions right now. What is YOUR key God-given mission and calling today? And what’s the best strategy for making progress in that mission within today’s realities?

I invite you to join me in fervent prayer that God, through the votes of the churchwide assembly this week in Phoenix, taps a wonderful new leader for our beloved denomination. I’m absolutely convinced that today’s world needs the Lutheran-Christian voice of Jesus’ grace, forgiveness, acceptance, empowerment, love, and calling! We’ve got a vital calling to live out within the body of Christ for the sake of the world.

But also join me in prayer for each of us reading this email right now, that the Spirit would likewise empower each of us to play our needed positions in God’s game-plan.

Just like the bishop of a chessboard can powerfully see the angles, so can YOU.

God has positioned you on the board of life, so to speak. God has equipped you with specific unique and undeniable abilities. Certainly, there are moments when our God-given assignments seem just as daunting as that of a new bishop guiding a mainline denomination in 2025. But have faith. With good cheer and confidence that the Holy Spirit is with you, you can be just the kind of leader and culture shaper that God desires and your world needs.

There is a prayer I invite you to pray with me. Written by Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, it’s a featured prayer in our Lutheran hymnal. It’s one that I pray as we elect a new ELCA bishop, as Christ Our Shepherd moves forward into our next 50 years, and as you take on a new calendar year!

Let us pray. Oh God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us, and your love supporting us, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

For livestream and video recordings of churchwide worship and assembly events, visit elca.org.

Praying with you,

Pastor Fritz