Bishop Current Reflects on the Churchwide Assembly
Friday, August 1, 2025
Dear Beloved Ones of the Southeastern Iowa Synod,
Thank you for your prayers for the work of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, for the Southeastern Iowa Synod voting members, and for me over these last days and months. What a week! The voting members will have much to share as we return home to our congregations and synod. As I write this, we still have a day and a half ahead.
I write today to offer my deep gratitude for your support, for your prayers, for your curiosity, and for living in the tension of discernment with me. As you know, I had the profound privilege of being considered as a candidate for the role of ELCA presiding bishop. As you know, I believe in the Spirit and in call so I felt compelled to engage in the process—all the while, knowing that my very clear sense of call is to “share the Good News of God through Jesus Christ” with all y’all in Southeastern Iowa. It was a true honor to stand, to receive the prayers and affirmation, to pray with my colleagues and friends as we addressed the church side by side, and then to breathe a deep sigh of clarity when my name was not among the top three candidates.
Here is what I want you to know about my experience of discernment and the experience. The words that I have been using are Affirmed, Proud, and Relieved. What a beautiful experience to feel affirmed in my call as a preacher and leader in our church. As I prepared for my address to the assembly, I was praying about how to balance preaching and pragmatic. I clearly heard the call to preach Jesus. I had another speech that outlined my imagination for priorities, structure, administration, etc. but the Holy Spirit beckoned me in a different direction. I was confident and clear that I was being called to preach to the assembly. Why? Well, one of the things that I am deeply concerned about is that we, in the ELCA, can be afraid to proclaim Jesus. I fear that we are bashful about the Gospel. I believe that the Holy Spirit is calling us to confession, to repentance, so that we might be profoundly transformed by the power of God’s love that transforms the world . . . but more on that later.
I am proud of myself for standing. I am proud of myself for remaining open to the process of discernment. I am proud of myself for taking up the space that I was provided to preach, teach, and witness to our church and the world. I am proud of myself for having the courage to be vulnerable. I am proud of myself for taking the risk that if God through the church had called me to the role that I would have had to go and leave this call that I love as your bishop in Southeastern Iowa. I am proud of you for your support and prayers. I am proud of our Office of the Bishop team for standing in the tension with such love and faithfulness. I am proud of my colleagues and fellow candidates in our loving support for one another in prayer. I am proud of our church for electing and calling Bishop Yehiel Curry. I pray that we will surround him and his family with prayers beginning now and daily.
And, I am relieved . . . I felt the call to be open. I felt the call to address the assembly. And, as the first line of my biographical form reads, “I love serving as the Bishop of the Southeastern Iowa Synod, with its joys and challenges both and I continue to feel called,” so as the results of the third ballot were revealed, my breath exhaled, my shoulders dropped, and I gave thanks to God for the affirmation of my call to serve with you still.
So, as your bishop, I want to share with you the sermon that I preached to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, I pray that we hear God’s love for us and that together, we might listen as the Spirit opens our hearts to the living Word, to the table, to the font, and to the beloved and weary world where God is always making all things new.
Thank you for your continued prayers for me, for the Office of the Bishop, for our synod, for the ELCA, in thanksgiving for Bishop Eaton, Secretary Rothmeyer, for our new Secretary, and for Bishop Curry.
Thank you for the honor of serving as your bishop.
Peace and love,
Bishop Current
Here is the address, or as I like to call it my sermon, for the Churchwide Assembly:
Thank you, Assembly, for the honor of standing before you, as together we discern, by the spirit’s power, our next presiding bishop.
“I believe, Lord, help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)
This is my prayer for our church that the Spirit breathes the Gospel of life into our lungs and reminds us of God’s gift of faith, drawing us to the foot of the cross to remember God’s living and abiding word—
“that God sent God’s Son into the world not to condemn it but in order that the world might be saved through him. that this world is full of humans—created beloved in God’s own image. Every one—even those whom we hate or disregard—is one for whom Jesus Christ died. And nothing—not even death itself—can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus.” (John 3:17, Genesis 1:27, 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, and Romans 8:38-39)
Yes? Yes.
Dear ones, we are humans in need of God’s forgiveness—sinning and falling short by the minute. For fear, division, temptations, betrayal, systems, structures, and all the forces of evil turn our hearts from God and from one another convincing us that we must find a way where there seems to be no way. Dear ones, the Triune God is the way. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the way, the truth and the life. (John 14.6)
The Spirit of the living God is softening our hearts towards repentance of our sins—acknowledging how harm one another and ourselves. And the Spirit opens our hearts to believe God’s promise—really believe that God’s promise of forgiveness, life and salvation is for us and for the world.
I pray that we will commit ourselves to studying the scriptures.
Jesus, even on the day of this resurrection, reminded the disciples of God’ promise in all the scriptures. (Luke 24:44-45). And renewed in the Word, may we return again and again to God’s nourishing table of grace and forgiveness, which draws us into deep listening and relationship where God will transform us by grace, united by the promise of the cross traced in water and God’s invitation together to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ, following the example of Jesus, striving for justice and peace in all the earth. (ELW p. 236)
Where God is present—calling us to boldly and courageously call a thing what it is—a sinful world in desperate need of God’s love. And together with all the baptized, we witness to God’s amazing love, not only when we get it right but maybe and most especially when we get it wrong, so that the world may witness us clinging to our confession, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). And God says—Do not be afraid. Peace be with you. I will be with you to the end of the age. (Mark 5:36, John 20:19, Matthew 28:20)
Dear church, I pray that we might humbly and faithfully pray for the Holy Spirit to lead us and that we have the will to follow
Into the Word
Back to the font
And to the table
And into the world, loving Jesus by loving our neighbors and our enemies, where God is already and always guiding our feet into the way of peace (Luke 1:79).
I believe, Lord, I believe.
Now, Go in Peace. Christ is with you.