Alaskan Priest is Elected to Wyoming See
Episcopal News Service. June 29, 1977 [77228]
Laramie, Wyo. -- The Diocese of Wyoming has chosen a priest from Alaska with a long history of work in Christian education and with Native Americans as its seventh bishop.
The Rev. Bob Gordon Jones, rector of St. Christopher's Church in Anchorage, was chosen on the fourth ballot of a special convention held here June 24-25. At his consecration, he will succeed the Rt. Rev. David Ritchie Thornberry, who has been bishop of the diocese since 1969.
Fr. Jones, a native of Arkansas, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. F. H. Jones of Pensacola, Fla. He is 45 years old.
He is a graduate of the University of Mississippi and the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest. Following his ordination as a deacon in 1959 he served as Assistant to the Dean, Trinity Cathedral, Little Rock, Ark., and remained on the cathedral staff following his ordination as a priest in 1960. His duties at the cathedral included those of hospital chaplain, youth advisor, chairman of the department of Christian education for the Arkansas Council of Churches, and team leader of several groups of young people assisting missionary jurisdictions in Puerto Rico, Alaska and islands of the Caribbean.
From 1962 to 1967 he was priest-in-charge of St. George's-in-the-Arctic, Kotzebue, Alaska, an Eskimo village north of the Arctic Circle and 170 miles east of the Russian coast of Siberia. As a missionary priest he was responsible for congregations in Nome and the smaller Eskimo village of Noatak. Under his leadership the church family grew and a new rectory and log church was built. Reflecting the local culture, St. George's remains the only church in the Anglican Communion where services are conducted before the altar on a magnificent polar bear rug.
Since 1967, Fr. Jones has been vicar and rector of St. Christopher's Church in Anchorage, Alaska. In addition he has been chaplain at the Alaska Native Hospital and priest-in-charge of St. Bartholomew's Church in the farming community of Palmer, 50 miles north of Anchorage.
Fr. Jones was a member of the Executive Council of the diocese, 1965-66, and its vice-chairman 1968-70. A member of the Council of Advice 1967-68, he was elected to the Standing Committee when the Executive Council and the Council of Advice were combined and was re-elected annually as its president since 1972. He has been a deputy to the last two General Conventions of the Episcopal Church. He has been a member of the Alaska delegation to Coalition 14.
Active in community affairs, Fr. Jones has served as president of the United Way of Anchorage, vice president of the Anchorage Child Abuse Board, executive board member of the Crippled Children's Association, treasurer of Anchorage Council of Churches, member of the Health Curriculum Committee of the Anchorage School System, member of the Anchorage Hockey Association, and numerous other civic organizations.
Recent post-graduate education and training includes an intensive, comprehensive, summer long study of Holy Scripture at St. George's Anglican College, Jerusalem, 1976; Pepperdine University, Los Angeles, Calif. (psychology, counseling) 1976; graduate study, University of Alaska (communications) 1974.
While serving as a missionary priest, Fr. Jones married Judy Edwards in 1963. Judy is the widow of an Alaskan priest. The Joneses have two boys, Robby age 13, and Timothy 11.