VIRGINIA: Presiding Bishop to lead Johnston consecration
Episcopal News Service. May 24, 2007 [052407-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will be the chief consecrator May 26 when the Very Rev. Shannon Sherwood Johnston becomes bishop coadjutor of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.
Joining Jefferts Schori as co-consecrators will be Virginia Bishop Peter James Lee, Virginia Suffragan Bishop David Collin Jones, Atlanta Bishop Neil Alexander, Michigan Bishop Wendell Gibbs, and West Virginia Bishop Michie Klusmeyer. Alexander will preach. Diocesan officials expect at least 25 bishops to participate.
The consecration service will begin at 10:30 a.m. in Washington National Cathedral and will be webcast live via the cathedral's website.
Johnston, 48, rector of All Saints' Episcopal Church, Tupelo, in the Diocese of Mississippi, was elected January 26 out of a field of five nominees on the third ballot during the diocese's 212th Annual Council meeting in Richmond, Virginia.
Johnston will become the diocese's 13th bishop when he succeeds Lee, 69, who has told the diocese he plans to retired by 2010.
Johnston has been the rector in Tupelo since 1994. Then-Alabama Bishop Robert Oran Miller ordained him to the diaconate and the priesthood in 1988 after he graduated first in his class at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.
He served first as curate of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Selma, Alabama, from 1988 until 1990 when he was called to be rector of Church of the Advent in Sumner, Mississippi. He has been involved in a number of diocesan leadership positions during his time in Mississippi.
More information about Johnston, including his answers to questions put to each candidate by the search committee, is available here.
The Diocese of Virginia comprises about 90,000 Episcopalians worshipping in 195 congregations.