Bishops I Have Known

In the United Methodist Church, the office of Bishop is the highest hierarchical position. A bishop presides over a Conference, which is usually the size of a small-to-mid-sized state, so most members of the church never get to meet a bishop.

The picture to the right is of me with at least three bishops. The three children are my sisters and myself (I'm the tallest one) and the three men in the photo are, left to right, Bishop Paul Galloway, Bishop O. E. Slater, and Bishop Paul Martin. At least that's who we think they are. This photo was taken about 1966 at Mt. Sequoyah in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I was about 8.

I don't remember much of the trip, but I do remember that my grandfather was in lots of meetings, and we got to spend time with my grandmother. She liked to go out onto the grounds and paint. I have a moment frozen in my memory of her easel set up on a grassy area that gave her a good view of the mountains, and my sisters and I were playing around her.

Fifteen or twenty years later, Bishop Kenneth Shamblin presided when my grandparents renewed their vows on their 50th wedding anniversary. I don't remember much about that meeting either, since we were hostessing the reception right after the ceremony. From the photo at left, you can tell that in addition to hostessing, I was photographer, and did a pretty poor job of it. Or maybe I could blame it on my cheap camera. Thank goodness my skills, not to mention the technology, have made great strides since then.

There was one other Bishop -- he was the father of a high school classmate, but he didn't become bishop until way after we had graduated and lost touch. My friend was Bruce Hearn, and his dad was Bishop Woody Hearn.

What brought all this on was that I was looking in the UMC newspaper a couple of weeks ago, and saw one of my college classmates in a group of people being considered for election to Bishop at General Conference this summer. His name is Tim Bruster, and he's the senior pastor at First UMC in Fort Worth, Texas. (I'd put up his picture, but I'd hate to steal FUMC's bandwidth with my incredibly high-traffic blog)

I remember much more about Tim than any of those other guys. Most of all, I remember our 7 AM Greek class our senior year ... a class I attended less frequently than I should have. You'd think the fact that the class was made up of me and 7 male classmates would have overridden the 7AM starting time, but that demonstrates just how much of a morning person I'm not.

I also remember that he worked as a "Dorm Daddy" at James Dorm. The doors were locked at midnight, but a male student was paid to spend the night on a cot in the lobby to let residents in and out. On Tim's Dorm Daddy night (I think it was Tuesday, but my memory may be failing me), several of the Church Careers students would often end up in the lobby of the dorm studying until the wee hours of the morning.

Tim was always one of my favorite classmates, and I'm just so impressed that he's being considered. I just think that's really cool.