PITTSBURGH: Neighboring bishop suffragan Kenneth Price nominated to lead diocese
Episcopal News Service. September 3, 2009 [090309-02]
Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio Bishop Suffragan Kenneth L. Price Jr. has been nominated to lead the Diocese of Pittsburgh for the next several years until a permanent bishop can be elected.
Pittsburgh's Standing Committee recommended September 3 to the diocesan convention that Price serve as provisional bishop. The convention meets October 17, a little more than a year after many of the diocese's leaders and members left the Episcopal Church.
Price would assume full ecclesiastical authority and responsibility as chief pastor and overseer of diocesan administration and finances, according to a diocesan news release.
"With his 15 years experience as a bishop, and having been the interim ecclesiastical authority in Southern Ohio, he knows what needs to be done for a diocese in transition," the Rev. Dr. James Simons, Standing Committee president, said in a letter to the diocese.
From January 2006 through April 2007, Price led Southern Ohio after Bishop Herbert Thompson retired and until Thomas Breidenthal was elected. Price has served the diocese as the bishop suffragan since 1994.
"I would see myself coming to Pittsburgh as part of a collaborative effort," Price said in a letter to the diocese. "My job is not to create policy, but to work with the people of the diocese, to lift up their vision of who they want to be, and bring them to a place where they can elect the person they want to lead them as their diocesan bishop."
That process is likely to take two to three years, the release said.
Provisional bishops are also elected by diocesan convention and, typically, only one name is put forward in such elections.
Price would spend all but a few days each month in Pittsburgh serving the diocese, according to the release. He will continue with a limited number of parish visitations in Southern Ohio.
Simons said he sees the election of a provisional bishop with full ecclesiastical authority, especially in the person of Price, as the next steps the diocese needs.
"Even though it has worked sufficiently for us in our first year of rebuilding, we will be better served by moving beyond leadership by committee," Simons wrote in his letter, adding "it also helps that Bishop Price has lived much of his life in neighboring West Virginia and Southern Ohio; he knows our history and understands our culture."
Price also serves as secretary of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops and was appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Windsor Report Reception Committee.
"Ken is a fine Christian man and is one of our most highly respected bishops. He has a good heart and a sensitive pastoral touch, not to mention a contagious sense of humor," said retired Bishop of Western North Carolina Robert H. Johnson, who has been serving this year as assisting bishop in Pittsburgh. He will continue in that position until the October convention.
More biographical information about Price is available here.