{"id":46651,"date":"2024-03-04T16:01:53","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T23:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=46651"},"modified":"2024-03-05T06:46:55","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T13:46:55","slug":"not-really-bishop-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/03\/not-really-bishop-material\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Really Bishop Material"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Jonathan invited me to come do some guest posting over here, and we talked a bit about some matters related to the series I\u2019d started over at the JI<\/a>. When Jonathan invited me to share some of the material here, I had a whole lot of ideas. We\u2019ll see where this goes, but by way of introduction to my guest posting here, I wanted to start by sharing some of my experience with having been bishop from which I was released a little less than a year ago.<\/p>\n

I got some heads up that I could be called as the next bishop very quickly after we moved to the new ward. \u201cYou know we\u2019re going to need a new bishop this January,\u201d the bishop\u2019s counselor said to me when he gave me my first calling in July. He said so in a way that he was clearly referring to me. Such a statement was pretty new to me. I was not really bishop material.
\n<\/p>\n

It perhaps isn\u2019t uncommon for men in the church to see big callings as a sign of community and divine approval, and I may have had such feelings when I was younger. By the time I hit my 40s, I felt completely certain that I would never serve in a bishopric and was embracing the idea of being an eventual old dude in the eq. I knew some of the old dudes in that situation had felt passed over, but I got to the point that I was looking forward to years of passing on my cranky wisdom to the youngsters.<\/p>\n

It was pretty evident by my late 30s that I was not the church leadership type, though that was probably pretty evident even by age 20. I was appointed to no leadership positions on my mission, none, and that was not because my mission president really thought highly of me as my dad try to spin it when I mentioned that to him. \u201cNo, he made it pretty clear that he did not,\u201d I corrected Dad\u2019s incorrect assessment.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t blame my mission president as clearly I put off a number of unappealing vibes to leaders: cranky, unenthusiastic, undeferential, and completely lacking in any political sense of proper things to say to authority figures. I\u2019ve had a couple of people wonder if I\u2019m on the autism spectrum, who knows? Plus I liked growing a beard, wearing a gray shirt, and sitting quietly in the back. I always had callings in the church, always said yes when called, but not many leadership ones.<\/p>\n

When the stake second counselor pulled my wife and me aside \u201cto get to know us a little better\u201d a couple of weeks before they called me as bishop, he started by asking me what callings I\u2019d had (yeah, they weren\u2019t very subtle). \u201cHe\u2019s pretty much had every calling in the church,\u201d my highly enthusiastic wife who\u2019s prone to some serious exaggeration said of my church service.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I haven\u2019t!\u201d I corrected her, kind of fearing what was coming and didn\u2019t want to give the wrong impression. \u201cI was an elders quorum president once, but that was in a ward that was so small and weak that they disbanded it a few months after we left.\u201d I wanted to get across the point that my one leadership calling had been in such a ward. Apparently we had found ourselves in another such ward.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see, we have a problem here,\u201d the Stake President (I\u2019ll call him SP1 since he was released just a few months afterwards) explained to me when he called me as bishop just a few weeks later. \u201cThis a place where strong Mormon families do not want to live. It\u2019s crazy expensive and the schools are bad. Thank you such much for moving in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melissa Inouye had warned me on Facebook not to move to Anaheim because of the bad schools, but I told her that we were moving to the area for my wife to be a principle at a local charter school where most (eventually all) my kids would go.<\/p>\n

When SP1 invited his counselors in, they all said, \u201cWe\u2019ve been praying who should be the new bishop of your ward for a year now. We had no one. Thank you so much for moving in. Please be the bishop! We\u2019ve prayed about it and feel good about you.\u201d [I hope that\u2019s not insulting to my ward members or a betrayal of confidence to that stake presidency, but I don\u2019t think any of those guys read T&S].<\/p>\n

Kind of a funny way to get called. In many ways, it represents to me how I believe God works: both a product of circumstances and God\u2019s providence. I\u2019d only been there 5 months and couldn\u2019t help thinking I wouldn\u2019t have been called if they\u2019d known me better or if they had options they liked better. But I also do very much believe that God wanted me to serve as bishop, so I believe that circumstances and providence came together in my call.<\/p>\n

But I felt very uneasy (more on that later) for lots of reason (some of which I\u2019ve shared on the bloggernacle over the years). I was a fairly unconventional Mormon. Not only that, the historical research I\u2019d done on Mormonism had been pretty unconventional too (yes, more on the too).<\/p>\n

So much so, that I brought up such concerns to my wife, Lee, earlier that day. I\u2019d gotten a text saying that stake wanted to meet, and all the clues they\u2019d been dropping made me think something was up.<\/p>\n

I expressed some reservations to Lee, including that fact that I was planning to finish a book that I knew would be fairly controversial (not done yet!) and Lee said, \u201cYou are not saying no because of your research!\u201d So I said yes.<\/p>\n

In my posts here, I\u2019d like to share aspects of my journey and observations as bishop. What I experienced and trends that I\u2019ve noticed, lots having to do with what I foresee as an increase in unconventionality among church members and some growing pains that that trend may cause.<\/p>\n

Thanks again to Times and Seasons for inviting me to post and I look forward to all the conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Jonathan invited me to come do some guest posting over here, and we talked a bit about some matters related to the series I\u2019d started over at the JI. When Jonathan invited me to share some of the material here, I had a whole lot of ideas. We\u2019ll see where this goes, but by way of introduction to my guest posting here, I wanted to start by sharing some of my experience with having been bishop from which I was released a little less than a year ago. I got some heads up that I could be called as the next bishop very quickly after we moved to the new ward. \u201cYou know we\u2019re going to need a new bishop this January,\u201d the bishop\u2019s counselor said to me when he gave me my first calling in July. He said so in a way that he was clearly referring to me. Such a statement was pretty new to me. I was not really bishop material.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46651"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46659,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46651\/revisions\/46659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}