TEC Sidebar: Bp. Ousley's First Public Forum

Bp. Ousley answers questions from the Episcopal Church in Wyoming; transcripts for convenience.

On January 30, Bp. Todd Ousley participated in a Q&A with the diocese of Wyoming over his nomination as provisional bishop. This followed the Standing Committee of the diocese publishing several videos about how they came to select Bp. Ousley as their nominee and where Bp. Ousley addressed concerns about conflicts of interest and his previous Title IV responses as Intake Officer.

Below is a transcript (without commentary) of the Q&A for your reading convenience. According to the description of the YouTube video, this session includes questions on:

• The role and priorities of a bishop provisional

• Clergy and lay leadership support in the diocese

• Title IV processes and perceptions of conflict of interest

• The election process for a bishop provisional versus a bishop diocesan

• Developing congregational vitality in rural communities

• The role of stewardship and endowment management

• Commitment to respecting the dignity of every human being

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Good evening. Thank you all for attending our public forum this evening as we ask your questions to our bishop provisional candidate, the Rt. Rev. Todd Ousley. Before we begin, we want to let you know that the Standing Committee has posted three recordings to address questions that we have received from members of the diocese, and also that we have four pre-recorded questions with Bishop Ousley around the topics of perceptions of conflict of interest, reconciliation and Title IV cases. We did this knowing that those topics were going to need additional time, and we wanted to make sure we also addressed the other questions that had been submitted. Those recordings can be found on the diocese web page, under Events > Special Convention.

The transition committee has reviewed the questions that were submitted, and all of the questions submitted were incorporated into the final questions to be asked during these public forum sessions. We've also reopened the question form in case individuals would like to submit a followup to this evening session, or for a new topic.

Before we begin, Mary Beth, will you lead us in prayer?

Yes. Let us pray. God, ever our guide, teacher, and staff, steadfast companion: in you we trust. We give you thanks for your presence here with us as we join you in this important work this evening. Clear our minds, ready our hearts, open our ears to hear these words, in these words, what you are saying to us in this moment. Grant us the grace of inner sight as we consider the work you've put before us this evening. We ask these things in the name of our savior Jesus. Amen.

Amen. Now let us get to the questions. Welcome, Reverend Ousley; we appreciate you taking the time this evening to visit with us. This event is being recorded and will be posted, as Brian said, on the diocesan web page under the Events tab > Special Convention.

The first question is about the duties of a provisional bishop. If elected bishop provisional, what what will be your priorities when you begin to serve? What do you perceive as the greatest needs in our diocese, and how will you go about addressing them?

Thank you, Brian. A bishop provisional is one who is called to serve in a moment in time for a specific season or two within the life of a diocese, and that role is essentially to bridge from one moment of episcopal leadership to the next moment, or from one bishop to the next. The Standing Committee as the Ecclesiastical Authority has been doing a a fine job of leading you all in the absence of a full-time bishop, and certainly has been greatly assisted by the work that Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori has done as bishop assisting in Wyoming. What my role will be, occupying a full-time or somewhat less than full-time (yet to to be determined) position in the diocese is, first of all, to listen to you; to take time to get to know the diocese as quickly as I possibly can, to listen to what is on your heart, what your concerns are, where your hopes and dreams are for the future, and to then walk alongside you as well as the diocesan leadership in moving closer toward that dream that you have as the people who are the diocese of Wyoming.

A bishop provisional is not one who comes to place his imprint or her imprint upon the diocese in terms of reshaping you, but rather to be shaped by you and walk alongside, much the way a coach would walk with you to notice where your strengths are, where there are areas that you need to strengthen yourselves, and to offer assistance and support when you do enter into that kind of endeavor. I imagine in the first months that I am serving in Wyoming that I will be making a tour around the state, meeting with congregations, weekdays on weekends, discovering who you are and where you are, discovering where the intersection between your calling, your vocation, and your particular location are situated. It'll be a time of really deep listening to one another, but primarily on my part to listen to you and reflect back what I'm hearing. So the priorities I have in the beginning are to understand, so that I can best walk with you, and help you all to realize what it is that you feel that you're called to do, and who you're called to be as the diocese of Wyoming.

I come to this with a tremendous passion and a great deal of experience working in dioceses that have what I refer to as a mixed economy of pastoral leadership: both lay and ordained persons who take responsibility for the life of the church and living into the vows that we all have taken in our baptism. Also, a keen interest in alternative forms of development of pastoral leaders. For many years the the model was full-time semniary education, and very closely aligned with clerical ordained leadership; but Wyoming, like Eastern Michigan that I once served, is a diocese that embraces baptismal ministry and the giftedness that God has presented to us through both lay and ordained ministries, all of whom are prepared in a wide variety of ways. So I look forward to getting to know you more, and more about your specific preparation programs, and just want to close this part of my response by saying: we do share in common an experience with the Iona Collaborative from the Seminary of the Southwest. We utilize their program and help to shape how the collaborative is being lived out today in the Diocese of Eastern Michigan. So, looking forward to re-engaging that kind of commitment. Thank you.

How do you perceive the needs of the clergy in our diocese? What is your vision for implementing support for them in their ministries to their congregations and communities?

Once again, I think, begin with the listening that I think is the foundation to how we we discover how to work together in the diocese. I want to hear directly from the clergy what kind of support that they need. I want to hear from the lay leadership what kind of support they need, and then to work together in crafting responses for that. Not having had those kind of extensive conversations, I will, however, plunge in and say what I suspect some of the conversations may be about.

There's always a theme within a diocese that there's a separation from the diocesan office and the ministry of the bishop, because we're located in different places. So I think bridging that gap and and helping people to understand that I see my role is not occupying an office in Casper, but rather being in service to the whole diocese and meeting you all in your particular needs in your particular locations. I suspect as well both clergy and the lay leadership in the diocese are experiencing a time of, maybe not a total lack, but certainly a certain lack of trust in the office of the bishop, and perhaps in particular with bishops. So, there needs to be some attention given to hearing what that gap, which may be present, what that is all about, and discovering, again together through conversation, how we can rebuild that trust and how reconciliation can occur. I don't have a magic formula for that, but I do have a great deal of experience of working with individuals and groups who have differences of opinion, and have different hopes and dreams, and I'm ready to engage that in the diocese of Wyoming.

Thank you, Bishop. Please share something that you have done well as a bishop, and something that didn't go as well.

Well, let me share what I think has gone well as bishop. A number of the people that mentored me and helped shape me into the the person that I am, and certainly have had an impact on who I am as a bishop, have helped me to realize the the importance of being willing to take a risk to try something new: to be faced with a challenge and say, "how about if we try X or we try Y?" To hear what others offer and to bless that and say "let's give it a shot," and see where that might go. Try it, assess it, and then step back. And if the assessment is positive, continue to move forward. with continual assessment and reassessment and enhancement; but if it's not going well to say, "nice try, but let's not keep going down that path; let's try the next good idea and see how that goes." Doesn't mean that we'd be moving back and forth and constantly shifting what the priorities or the approaches, but that willingness to to think outside the box, to be imaginative, to be creative and to not get stuck in a rut.

I'll bridge, before I talk about something that didn't go so well; I'll talk about something that ended up going well, but I started in completely the wrong way. I hadn't been bishop but for a year, maybe two, and I was really clear that the ministry model that we were using in the diocese, which was essentially a mix of traditionally trained, seminary-trained priests along with with lay people joining in as well, as Mutual Ministry teams: those who've been called forth from a congregation, prepared through a wide variety of means, mainly at the local congregational level, and then commissioned to serve as priests, deacons, evangelists, administrators, et cetera. But I saw that we had a need for other kinds of models, and that we had a need to move into a different way of preparing our ministry teams. And so at a diocesan convention, in my bishop's address, I call for the creation of a local school for ministry — primarily in the beginning for ordained leadership, but to encompass all licensed ministries, and preparation for anybody who sought that additional kind of knowledge and formation. I did not consult widely on that idea. In fact, not only did I not consult on the idea; I didn't consult on the name that I gave it. I called it the Coppage-Gordon School for Ministry, utilizing the the names of John Coppage, who had been the lay person and and first diocesan administrator for Eastern Michigan when it was formed in 1994 and before it had a bishop beginning in 1996, and for the late Bill Gordon, former bishop of Alaska, assisting or assistant bishop in the Diocese of Michigan, and really the spiritual father of the diocese that became Eastern Michigan.

It turned out to be a wildly successful and continuing program, the one that is affiliated with the Iona Collaborative out of Seminary of the Southwest. But I violated all of my core principles by not expressing the idea with a group of leaders and decision makers and getting their support. The good news is, it worked out. It got support financially; it was sound, all of those things; but a key learning was, when you've got that core value that says "even if you know it's a great idea, test it out with others, because it's not just your job; it's not just your decision, but something that has to be shared with the whole people of God, making those decisions together."

Something that I did that didn't go so well — well, choosing which one is actually kind of difficult, because we all do things that, with hindsight, we wish we had done better. But I think I'll dive in and go straight to what I think maybe on a number of people's minds, and that would be why, in my work as an Intake Officer for Title IV matters, discipline with bishops for the Episcopal Church — why are there accusations that I didn't adequately care for people in pastoral circumstances? Fair enough question, and a fair enough assumption on people's part.

The real answer is more complicated, but — and I don't want to spend a lot of time in this question, responding to all those dynamics — but I do want to point out that a key learning for me is that when you think — key learnings, plural, on this — is that when you think, because you've got the title and you've been given the responsibility, to think that you share the full burden for carrying out the responsibility is a mistake. And I've made mistakes in not sharing that responsibility of pastoral support and pastoral care of all of those affected by Title IV matters. I don't want to speak about particular matters because I want to respect the confidentiality and the dignity of all those, whether complainant or respondent or affected communities, but balancing the needs of people who are on opposite sides of concern and the people who are innocents, innocent persons caught in the middle of an allegation or a conflict — that was, it was an inappropriate response on my part. I needed to share that.

And so, a clear learning that I have is: when, whether it's Title IV or it's any other kind of conflict or disruptive moment in the life of a congregation or in the life of the diocese, I can't and should not handle it all alone. I need to invite others into it, that the gifts of the people of God are tremendous, and it's not a good action for a leader or any Christian to believe that we possess the full capacity to respond to those situations. So I'll be looking for partners, for help within the diocese of Wyoming on how we can respond to any of those bumps in the road or hurdles that we find that we must encounter. Thank you, Brian.

Thank you. Mary Beth?

Thank you, Bishop. From your experience in the Episcopal Church's pastoral office, please compare and contrast the different processes that a diocese follows when electing a bishop provisional as opposed to a bishop diocesan. Where do the candidates come from? Who nominates in either process? Who votes? Is there a mandate that a provisional bishop election have more than one candidate?

Good question, Mary Beth. Part of the role that I had as bishop for Pastoral Development is to work with dioceses on elections of bishops, or more broadly, discernment of persons to serve as bishop in a diocese. And I go back to that discernment, that more, that broader kind of definition, because that's what the canons say. If you go to Title III, which are the the canons on ministry, and you go to the section on bishops, it begins by saying that discernment of the vocation to be bishop is accomplished through election. So, what does that mean? What that means is: when a diocese is discerning that they want to call a priest to then be ordained as their bishop, then the church expects that there will be an election. Full stop. Now what does that mean?

Now, the canons are silent on exactly what an election means. So it leaves a great deal of discretion to the individual diocese, although we have patterns and expectations. We have best practices about how those things occur. It has the flavor that the particular diocese chooses, and that is chosen through the oversight of the Standing Committee, which is given the responsibility for that discernment process.

Typically not required, but typically — as in, 100% of the cases that I've been involved with — the the Standing Committee elects or appoints, according to how the the canons of the diocese dictate, or how the convention has specified in ratifying rules of procedure, that typically there would be a Search and Nominating Committee and a Transition Committee. Search and Nominating would be much like how vestry selects a search committee for a new rector in the parish: a group of individuals who put together a profile, a description of who is and what is the diocese of Wyoming, and what are you looking for, that is put out there publicly. And then through a variety of means, you get self-nominations and third-party nominations of people to be considered at that early level as possible bishops for the diocese. That process — then they go through their own process of looking at the information that's presented on paper, doing Zoom interviews, narrowing it down — perhaps a second round of Zoom interviews, inviting people into the diocese for a discernment retreat, usually two to three days, and an opportunity to see a bit of the diocese — it's mutual discernment going on. And then that committee meets and settles on typically a predetermined range of nominees to present to the Standing Committee. It's usually three to five. Those names are presented, and in almost all cases the Standing Committee, with a simple review of the process and the individuals' names who've been presented, will present that slate of nominees — once again, three to five — to the diocese for election in a special or regular diocesan annual convention.

There's also a way for additional nominees to enter in at that last stage through a petition process, but you get — it all ends up in a diocesan convention, with an election between that three to five or so nominees. Nowhere in the canons does it say you have to have three, four, or five; that you can't have more, or that it's okay to have less; the canons are silent on that matter. But we live and breathe in a culture that is accustomed to there being two parties, two possible candidates to vote into office, and then usually — you may not see much about it in the run-up to the election, but you arrive at the ballot box and you discover, oh there's two or three or four other possibilities representing other interests and other perspectives. So for us, an election means there's competition: that there's more than one person on the ballot. That's kind of the American way, and I'm all for it, because I think it supports a culture of — where there's real choice available for the people who are going to be served by the person as a bishop diocesan or as a bishop suffragan, if a diocese has those.

So why, in a bishop provisional situation, is there only one nominee? Well, once again, if you go to the canons and you look at what the canons have to say, the bottom line is: not much. The canons still say that the process of discernment — but it says, "discernment of vocation to be a bishop" is through the process of election. And we tend to read that — that means you must have — the convention must gather and there must be an election to get a bishop provisional. Fair enough, possible interpretation. However, that vocation to be a bishop is really about electing someone a bishop for the first time. So, we scratch our heads and we wonder, what does that mean when it comes to be bishop provisional? But what we — our best practice is, we follow a pattern of: there's an electing convention, either special or annual, and we have an election for a person. And elections can be accomplished by the typical ballot; it can be by affirming or not affirming a resolution; each diocese is going to determine the particular method of election that it wants to use. But we still get down to the question — and this is certainly very important here in Wyoming — why in the world do you only have one person? That's a good question, a really good question. Why didn't the Standing Committee put two or three, or three to five, names out there? Couple of reasons for that.

The most common reason, and I think the reason in this case, is that when a Standing Committee engages a conversation with someone who is already a bishop, their pool of possibilities is limited only to persons who are serving as bishops in the Episcopal Church. And that could be a retired bishop, or could be an active bishop. Part of the other calculus for the Standing Committee is: are we looking for somebody to be part-time or full-time? Typically retired bishops are only interested in part-time work. Some of the those are interested in part-time — that's quarter-time or third-time — but at most half-time. This Standing Committee has determined something between half and full-time is what they wanted to consider. So that limits the pool a bit more.

The particular challenges that a diocese is facing is going to limit the pool further, in the same way that it limits in an election for a diocesan. That is: only people who are drawn to the opportunities and the challenges and feel a vocational pull to that. But perhaps even more importantly is something that you could never even guess is an issue by looking at the canons, and that is: bishops are reluctant to be on a ballot with another bishop, or for there to be more than one bishop standing for election as provisional. Now for me, I wouldn't mind if there was another bishop on the ballot; but because I've been around the church for a while, I know that the Standing Committee only had a limited pool. They had a had an excellent pool of possibilities to consider, and they talked to a number of people before they talked to me, and what they discovered is that there was not a coming together — either there was not the vocational connection, the timing was not right, the time demands were beyond what that person was open to at this point; or, as I think I said to to one group, it's kind of hard to keep straight which group I said it to — but I think I said to one group that I know one case — an excellent bishop who was contacted, who is from a place in this country that, shall we say, until, oh, the last couple of weeks, didn't know much about snow or about cold freezing weather and really couldn't imagine himself in Wyoming where you do have familiarity with winter and snow and cold. So lots of factors go into it.

I was not initially available, and it was not on my radar screen to be considered as the sole or multiple nominees in Wyoming. But when it became apparent that I could be available, I was reached out to by the Standing Committee, and I said I'd be happy to enter into that discernment together. And so that gets us to where we are today. Thank you, Mary Beth.

Thank you.

And we're glad that you are with us today.

Thanks, Brian.

Did any of your experiences in Eastern Michigan Diocese help you develop ideas that you believe could help us in equalizing our support for our small rural churches here in Wyoming?

Absolutely. The Diocese of Eastern Michigan — and for some of you, if you know Michigan, you'll understand what I'm talking about — but it's the the northern two-thirds of the eastern half of the lower peninsula of Michigan. Another way to describe it is: take out Lansing and Detroit, and Detroit Metro and Lansing Metro, and it's kind of everything on the eastern side of the lower peninsula. Within that, you've got the city of Flint and you've got Saginaw, Bay City, Midland, a tri-city area that has close to half a million people, maybe 250,000 up to half a million in the Flint area; and then you move — the bulk of the Diocese of Eastern Michigan, representing about forty of the congregations in the diocese, are in areas where I used to jokingly say (although in some places it was true) there are more elk than there are people. Certainly more deer than there are people! So the the primary focus of my ministry, although not exclusive, was to far-flung remote rural and isolated congregations.

One of the things that was impressed upon me in my five years as canon and eleven years as bishop in the Diocese of Eastern Michigan is that you cannot assume that every congregation is going to be the same. You can't even assume that every smaller congregation is going to be the same as another small congregation, even if it is within thirty or forty miles from that one. Instead, you have to look at the individual and the context, and the hopes and dreams of that congregation, and to work alongside them in discovering best ways to move forward. Number of times that I found that old tapes were being played, that history was intervening in our conversations where people had had experiences of feeling left out, of a feeling as if the folks in the "home office" in Saginaw, or, previously, when we were part of Michigan, the "home office" in Detroit — didn't understand them and didn't listen to them. So it was very important that I be present, diocesan staff both in the office and the field staff be present in congregations and understand the local context, and together brainstorm and experiment on ways to respond to their unique circumstances. It — for me, that was lots of fun because it meant that there was tremendous variety in every day, tremendous variety in the ministry, and it also meant that we didn't get stuck in a rut and we also respected the dignity not only of every human person but the dignity of every place and every congregation, by honoring who they are and what their needs were. We had congregations in team ministry; we had congregations being served by one priest who had multi-points; we had congregations being served by Lutheran pastors, even American Baptist, later to become Episcopal priest, and a Reformed Church of America pastor. We looked beyond the typical boundaries and into, what are the resources in the places that we have, and leverage those, and work, even if it means pushing against the canons and at times stepping a toe across the canonical boundary in order to meet the needs of the local congregations.

Wyoming's got a lot of similarities to Eastern Michigan, and it's part of the draw that I feel. It's the kind of place I love, the kind of ministries and vitality that I'm interested in and that give me energy in my own life in ministry. Thank you, Brian.

Thank you, Bishop.

As Christians, we are commanded to practice humility. How in your daily and professional life do you practice humility?

You're right, it's at the heart of the Christian call, that all of us have to have humility, to know that we are people who are are grounded — humus, earth — that we are not elevated; and part of the the seduction, the the temptation of the ordained life, is to fall in a trap that is quite often perpetuated in the church by clergy, by the laity, and by the system itself: to elevate clergy, to act as if they are are special. I like to turn that on its end. And language that we use is really critical for that. You'll notice in my conversation — I pointed this out to other leaders within the diocese — I don't use the language of somebody being called up or raised up. I talk about all of us being called forth into ministry.

So for me, ways that I can exercise humility is: a reminder that I am but one person, one person with a particular vocation, a particular calling, a particular ordination that has reordered my life and given me particular responsibilities. It doesn't make me more important. It does not make me better. It does not make me special. Rather what it says to me is that I have a place at the table, just like you do. My place may be to do per particular things and to live out that responsibility in certain ways, but that's not an an expansion of myself, or an expansion of authority, but rather it's a restriction of responsibility, a narrowing of it, so that my role becomes defined. And I have to remind myself — and I, it's not just me, it's you reminding me and reminding each other — that we have a lane and we need to stay in our lane. And when we see something that can utilize our assistance in another lane, to offer a hand, to not lord authority and responsibility over others, but rather to to be curious, to ask questions and to engage in mutual understanding.

Those — that's one way I can also root it in scripture and in the prayers of the church. I go to the Psalms often; it's one of my favorite parts of scripture. There's all kinds of — a number of Psalms I could point to, but as a whole, the Psalms provide me a reminder that life is sometimes about praise and adulation; sometimes it's shaking a fist at injustice or even at God; it's lament and sorrow; it's all kinds of things — that life is complicated, and there's not just one perspective and one experience, but rather it's multiple perspectives, multiple experiences, and all of those need to be taken into account. That brings humility.

Another is with the Book of Common Prayer, and I could go on and on about how that serves as a to tool in helping with humility. But the the notion of those collected prayers and the wisdom of the ages that are brought together in that document and then brought to new life again — every time we pray and utilize the Book of Common Prayer and its resources is a way of remembering that there's something so much larger than me, not only God, but also the church itself, and the people like you who are the important constituents of the church, who are truly the body of Christ in each and every place where we live and move and have our being. I'm a part of that, that great puzzle. I'm a part of the saints on Earth, but I'm not the saint. I'm but one person, with a particular role. And I would invite you, that if you find me in a place where you think I need a good dose of humility or maybe even a slice of humble pie, point it out. I'm open to that conversation. Thank you, Mary Beth.

Bishop, you've had a chance to visit Wyoming, so please describe your ideas for developing congregational vitality, especially in our rural, lightly populated areas.

Once again I'll begin with where I've gone before, and that is about listening to people in the circumstances, listening to the the people who are right there on the ground who make up the congregation or the mission area that we're talking about. Do I have some experiences and some things in a back of tricks that I could pull out? Absolutely, but I'm not prepared to pull something out of the bag or to talk about a previous experience and impose that upon a congregation or an individual. But rather, I want to listen; I want there to be that mutual exchange that gets us moving together, and in that understanding, that I think we can discover together, how to support the the development and the ongoing vitality and mission and ministry in particular places.

But there's also a principle that I want to articulate about this, and that is that we live in a world where information and expectations are coming at us fast and furious. And we look around our world, and we think, "gosh, maybe we should do this or maybe we should do that," or, "how come we don't have this particular program," or, "we need to have this particular ministry in this place." What I would say is: breathe in and breathe out and let's talk about it, because authentic Christian ministry is born of your own vocational call and of the vocation that a particular congregation or ministry has, which does not mean that every congregation is called to do everything, or that every congregation is called to do everything in that particular community. So, got to discover what your intersection of vocation and location are, what are your passions as a people of God in a particular place, and what resources do you have to animate those passions; and then focus there. That may mean some places have a primary ministry on service in the community to the homeless or to the hungry. It may be that certain congregations have a call to ministry to go deeper in how you serve the elderly in your community. It may mean that you've got a call to serve college students or young adults or youth. But it doesn't mean that everybody is called to serve those in the same ways. God wants us to bloom where we're planted, and to do what we're called to do, at this time, in our particular place; so the conversations are going to be around discovering what those are. I'll be a a third party coming in, and part of what I'd like to do is — some described as a windshield tour, or alternatively as walking the neighborhood. I want to hear from you, and I want to see what's going on. I may have some thoughts. Those will be posed as questions. What about the following: have you considered who your immediate neighbor is? How are you responding to that neighbor? So asking questions out of curiosity and an open spirit, and about opening up some clarity about what God is calling you to do in that place. Thank you, Brian.

Thank you, Bishop. In the context of our faith tradition, is it healthy for a diocese to have its Ecclesiastical Authority held by an unpaid Standing Committee for years?

Good question, and the answer is, there is no ultimate answer to that question. But let me answer what I think maybe some of the things that are behind that question. We are the Episcopal Church, and that name gives us an important marker about how we understand our identity. And "episcopal" means that we've got bishops. It doesn't say that every place has to have a bishop at all times, but there is an ideal that is established, that's present within our name; it's throughout the Book of Common Prayer, one of our governing documents, because there's roles for bishops and the default in some cases — not always — is a bishop. And there's also, as you read the Constitution and Canons, it's very clear that there's an expectation that there is a bishop in place, and we don't stray from that. There's an expectation, a normative expectation, that there's a bishop in every diocese.

For a variety of reasons — illness, death, departure — by various means, there can be a vacancy in the office of bishop in a particular place, and so our canons provide a mechanism for continuity of leadership when there is not a bishop, and that is for the Standing Committee to be the Ecclesiastical Authority. While most dioceses — once again, a normative practice if all is going well and schedules coincide — there is a seamless transition between one bishop and another. In a few, there is a small gap — a month or two or three, maybe six — between the bishops for a variety of circumstances, and the Standing Committee has to step in. It's healthy for the Standing Committee to be prepared for that role, and to exercise that role; to seek assistance from bishops, either as an assisting or, if there's a suffragan in place in the diocese and the canons allow it, or the call of a bishop provisional to be there to assist. Then there are circumstances like Wyoming has been in, where there's a lengthier period of time where the Standing Committee has to step in. Is that good or bad?

I want to answer the question from a slightly different angle, and not set it up as as a dichotomy between good and bad, but rather to say very specifically: in Wyoming you've got a gifted Standing Committee. You've got an outstanding staff. Together they have done amazing work to continue and advance the ministry and the mission of the diocese of Wyoming. For that I'm very thankful. But when you ask a group of volunteers to take on the full task of a bishop, except those things where they must ask for support — it's a really large job, and when it's volunteers doing that, they're doing a lot of work at great personal sacrifice of time and energy and in other parts of their life, because they all had a full-time life before taking on this role as Ecclesiastical Authority. So it's not healthy in the long term for a Standing Committee to have to continue to have that role.

One of the solutions, and it's the one that your Standing Committee has chosen, is to go through a stepwise process. And that is to first engage a bishop to be a part-time assisting bishop, to handle those things that the Standing Committee determined it needed assistance with, and those things that require a bishop to be involved — ecclesiastical discipline (Title IV), ordinations, visitations to confirmations, visitations to congregations for confirmations, receptions and reaffirmations, all things that the Committee can't do. Then they've chosen this second step: to have a bishop provisional in place. All of which is going to give the Standing Committee a chance to transition back into the more normative role of being a leader alongside the bishop, to act as a support for certain canonical responsibilities, but not have the full responsibility; to act as a check and balance on the authority and responsibility for the bishop; to be involved in consents for the election of bishops in other dioceses; to be involved in the process with the bishop as a partner in ordinations in Wyoming. So I'm looking forward to continued working with the Standing Committee, but also I'm thankful that they'll be moving into a time where they can get a bit of a breather, and we can get back to what the Episcopal Church sees as the the more balanced responsibilities that are held in leadership, both paid and unpaid, in the diocese. Thanks, Mary Beth.

Thank you, Bishop, for that answer. How can the diocese and Title IV do a better job of protecting members of the Episcopal Church when they express heart-filled Christian love, which may involve a hug?

Well, boy, that's a big topic, Brian. I think it's important to note that we've learned a lot, particularly in the last thirty to forty years, about our own sense of our personal space, our own sense of bodily autonomy. We've learned a lot about how different people perceive physical contact in different ways. We have safeguarding and Safe Church programs that help reinforce our learnings and our expectations. So having requirements that the leadership at the congregation and diocesan level, throughout all levels of leadership and interaction, have that training at Safe Church. And safeguarding is really critical now.

It's also important with clergy — because Title IV only pertains to clergy discipline, not discipline of lay persons — is that we have mechanisms where people can feel safe to report their concerns. One of my first acts as bishop provisional will be to work with the persons who serve as Intake Officers and others within the Title IV program of the diocese, to get clarity on who those personnel are, what their roles are, and to discover together how we can impact more positively what is happening within Wyoming. The other is to work with congregational leaders and and diocesan leaders to to ensure that everybody is current with their safeguarding and Safe Church training, and to safeguard all of the people within the diocese and the people that we serve in the communities.

Hugs, that was the the heart of the question that you had. I think we have to be sensitive to our own space and the space of others. Just an example of place is that we can very innocently fall into something that makes people uncomfortable: it's Sunday morning, we've experienced the Liturgy of the Word and we're now at that bridge moment, and we exchange the Peace. What is your congregation's practice, or, can we even say what its practice is? Because, what is the preference of the individuals sitting in the pews, whether they're longtime members or their first-time visitors? Do you wrap your arms around them and give them a hug? Do you press your body against them when you're hugging, like you do with with a loved one in your family, a big hug to your kid or to your spouse; or do you prefer to extend your hand and have a handshake; or is it just a nod or leaning over the pew and giving the sign of peace to them, like that? Everybody's got different boundaries, and I think being aware of our own preferences and the preferences of others, it's a good place to test that out at the exchange of the Peace, because we're not all the same.

So we are in a time where people do find themselves with Title IV allegations for something that is characterized as just a hug. Sometimes it is just a hug and it's misinterpreted; other times it may appear to have been just a hug but there was more to it. Regardless, we're in a moment in our culture where we have to be very aware that there can be misinterpretations and there can be right interpretations, and they both can really spin out of control, and people get hurt in the wake of that spinning. So we still have a lot of work to do as a church and as a society. Thanks, Brian.

Thank you, Bishop Ousley. What experience do you bring managing endowments, and what human resources would you recommend connecting us with as we strive to steward our Foundation funds according to the call of Christ?

I served in, let's see, one, two, three congregations as a priest. Two of the three had significant endowments, and so I'm in both of those, particularly the one where I served as rector, Church of the Holy Comforter in Angleton, Texas, near the Gulf Coast. That congregation had a setup where there was an endowment board elected by the vestry, and, you know, separate from the vestry. When I arrived, what I discovered in that congregation is that, really, one family controlled most of the management of that, of the endowment fund; and one member of that family was also the secretary of the vestry, and another member of the family served in the school, and I found there to be conflicts of interest in all of the proceedings. And so we worked to — both rector and vestry — to bring their management more into line with best practices and financial expectations of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Texas. And it developed a much healthier relationship between vestry and endowment, where they had been in opposition with one another. The other thing that happened there that I was particularly proud of is that what had been seen as, described as good stewardship of the endowment, was also so very conservative in how the funds were utilized that we were missing opportunities for mission and ministry — while we saw the endowment grow beyond the inflation rate. So, rethinking endowment in terms of mission and ministry was a critical aspect at Holy Comforter.

The next place where I saw that was in the Diocese of Eastern Michigan, which for its size had significant endowment funds. And while I served as canon, we had a capital campaign to enhance that, those funds. One of the things that we did there as well was, we took a look at — before I say what we did on that, I want to say that there was a Trustees of the Endowment; there was the Diocesan Council that worked together, but they had separate responsibilities, management of the funds and management of diocesan ministry and mission, which required funding, some of which would come from endowment. Once we developed a closer relationship and understanding between those, the same thing happened as happened at Holy Comforter, and that was that they saw that what they were doing with the endowment was to grow mission and ministry, not to watch the value of the endowment grow beyond our capacity to grow our mission and ministry. So it became, I think, a much more effective model in stewardship.

One of the great things, I think, about the diocese of Wyoming is that you have a long track record of utilizing your Foundation funds. If Jessica were to chime in, she would remind us of the difference between Foundation funds and endowment funds and other funds, so — but to think of those resources as something that need careful management and also creative vision and ministry, you've done so much of that in recent years. There have been some rocking moments in relationship between Foundation and diocesan directed ministries, but there's good work being done to bring those groups together and respecting the roles that both have. So I look forward to being able to be a part of those conversations and help utilize my background and my passions for imagination, creativity, and responsible stewardship to be exercised in my role as bishop provisional. Thanks, Mary Beth.

Bishop, what do you see as the role of our lay leadership in the future of the Episcopal Church?

I think the the role of all leadership, lay and ordained, is going to to shift multiple times over the next generation or two, and beyond that I have a hard time having a vision. Things are moving so quickly. But over the next fifty years, I think we're gonna see multiple kinds of shifts between those, but in particular lay persons. I think what we're going to see is a continued pattern — and that goes back a number of years, probably most clearly in some lay empowerment movements in the 1970s, but certainly before that as well — we're going to see a continued move toward a balance between how lay persons and ordained persons work together in mutual ministry, recognizing that it's collaboration in the name of Christ that we're all called to do, not to be in competition with one another.

Some specific areas that I imagine the church is going to have to wrestle with: what is in some places a clergy shortage, and a clergy shortage that is exacerbated by a church who has in some cases unwittingly become overly clericalized, overly focused on the role of the clergy. Now, that doesn't mean I don't think we need clergy at all — no. I think we need clergy; we need priests, we need deacons, we need bishops, we need equipped and formed and active, passionate lay people. But I think the balance of how ministry is conducted in in different places is going to continue to shift toward that mutuality in ministry, and a letting go and embracing of new ministries being called forth by lay people.

One of the ways we saw that in Eastern Michigan, and I know is continuing in the Great Lakes and I know much is in place, and there's dreams of taking further in Wyoming, is to open up the varieties of levels and capacities for formation programs to people who are both discerning a call to ordained ministry and a call to a, maybe a more enhanced lay ministry, or at least more information and and formation about how to undertake the lay ministry that they are involved in. So I see a lot more rubbing shoulders with each other, of getting our hands dirty together and working alongside with each other.

One of my great visions for how the church is called to function is that we're not a pyramid with bishops in the top, at the top, with priests and deacons and lay people below that. It's not an inverted pyramid, where you've got the bishops on the bottom and the priests next to them and the deacons up there and then the lay people crushing all of us down below at the point. But rather, to take that pyramid and turn it on its side, and actually turn it into a triangle. First turn it on its side, and expand the edges into something that is a circle or a sphere where we can set a place at the table, where there's room for all of us, room to expand and include others, and to honor and acknowledge that some of us have particular roles at the table and others have their own particular roles, but together we come together at the table and celebrate the Feast. Thank you, Brian.

Thank you, Bishop, and this is your last question for the evening before we go into the vote. And this is the question: what is your personal feeling on the Baptismal Covenant, "respect the dignity of every human being," when the government is trying to not recognize LGBT members that reside in our congregations?

For me it's a really simple answer, and that is that the the church has clarity on the promises that we make, the commitments that we hold, and those are most poignantly and clearly articulated in our Baptismal Covenant. Right now, what we hold as a people, a portion of that being respecting the dignity of every human being as it's being played out in the life of LGBTQ+ members of our society, is that our values as Christians, as the Episcopal Church are being challenged in the public sphere. I believe it is our call in our own individual ways, and as a diocese, and as the Episcopal Church, to stand up with clarity about our baptismal call and our challenge to our society, to live into those values. Doesn't mean that everyone will — no, it does not, doesn't mean that every one of us have absolute lockstep agreement on how we interpret those baptismal vows — no it does not, but I do think that it means that we have a responsibility as Christians to engage the public sphere, to be unashamed of who we are, to stand in solidarity with our LGBTQ+ friends and neighbors and colleagues, to stand with them, to stand up for their rights, their opportunities, and to continue as we do as the Episcopal Church to welcome all children of God, all children of God into our faith community, and into our service in the name of Jesus Christ the Risen Lord.

Another way to say it, quoting my former boss, the former Presiding Bishop Michael Bruce Curry: when we say all, we mean all. Thank you for the question and the opportunity to respond, Mary Beth.

Bishop, thank you for joining us this evening. We appreciate you being with us at a late time, two hours ahead of us, so we do greatly appreciate this opportunity. All right, this will conclude our first public forum, and we thank you all for taking the time tonight to tune in and to get to hear Bishop Ousley. We appreciate that. We'd like to recognize the members of the Standing Committee for their dedication and commitment to serving the diocese these past several months. We'd also like to thank those members of the Transition Committee on discerning the questions asked to our candidate. We have opened up the question form once again to allow for people to submit questions, new questions or follow-up questions to tonight's presentation, and that will be open for one additional week. We also want to thank Jessica for hosting this webinar, and for Genie for the communication that's been sent out for all of these events; and this recording will be posted on the diocesan web page within a few days; and our next public forum, which we hope you tune in as well, is on Saturday February 8th at 2 PM, and there will be different questions. We look forward to seeing you all at that recorded session as well. Good evening and God bless.