There’s a nice piece on the newly Right Reverend Stephen Taylor Lane, who was consecrated the ninth bishop of Maine today, in this morning’s Bangor Daily News, who caught up with him at a press conference yesterday. He will be bishop coadjutor of the diocese until Bishop Knudsen retires. From the write-up:
Lane said … that he already has put 2,300 miles on the “bishopmobile” and has been Down East to Machias. He plans to continue his travels this summer as he gets to know the state and its people in a position Lane admitted he was not sure he was ready for a year ago.
“I’ve always felt powerfully called to be a minister of the gospel and to be an agent of transformation in the world,” he said. “But I was pretty happy and pretty settled where I was, doing my work until I got challenged [at a retreat]. I made a commitment at that retreat to myself and to God to be open to a new call and very shortly thereafter things came from the diocese of Maine.”
Lane was overwhelmingly elected bishop on Oct. 26 at the diocesan convention in Bangor. He began working at the diocesan office in Portland on April 1.
“I think for me the struggle has been being open to hearing the call,” he said Friday. “Not having my mind already made up about what I thought I was supposed to be doing, and [because I was] being open, here we are in a wonderful new adventure with wonderful people in a wonderful state.”
Lane said that his experience with small congregations — a membership of fewer than 150 — in New York and his administrative skills fit well with what the Maine diocese needs at this time in its history. He said what many small churches need is a change in attitude so that they can look outward and discern what their mission is in the community rather than worrying about what kind of shape the church building is in.
From here.