This summer at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly we will be electing our next Presiding Bishop. Like many synods electing bishops, the ELCA Churchwide Organization is going through a pre-identification process. This is to lift up names and give ample time for prayerful discernment and conversation.
When the Churchwide Assembly begins, the actual nominees will be those who receive votes in the first ballot. Any ELCA pastor is eligible. Those pre-identified will likely receive nominations. There will also be others not pre-identified who will also be nominated at that point.
This is a critical time in the life of our church. It is time for some significant changes in how we organize as a church. I have previously written about this, as have others. I hope we elect a reformer.
Recently, I received the pre-identification letter below.
Dear Bishop Rinehart,
One of the many important decisions to be made by the 2025 Churchwide Assembly will be the election to a six-year term of the next presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). A list of the responsibilities of the presiding bishop can be found here.
The Church Council adopted a continuing resolution that allowed each Churchwide Assembly voting member to identify up to three rostered ministers of Word and Sacrament whom they believe should be considered for this office.
You have been pre-identified as a potential nominee for presiding bishop. If you discern that you would like to be publicly identified as a potential nominee, you are invited to complete a biographical information form. Biographical forms returned by Thursday, May 1, will be distributed electronically to all voting members the week of June 16, following synod assembly season. The biographical information will remain available online until the Churchwide Assembly convenes on Monday, July 28, but will be taken down as soon as the assembly begins.
Please note that the pre-identification process is not a nomination. The first ballot for presiding bishop will be an ecclesiastical ballot on which the name of any eligible individual may be submitted for nomination by a voting member of the assembly. Only those whose names are entered by voting members on the first ballot will be nominated, regardless of whether they were pre-identified.
As part of your discernment process, we share the following information:
a. Members of the administrative team, including full-time salaried officers and executive directors of churchwide units, are expected to reside in the Chicago area.
b. The minimum salary for the presiding bishop is $206,710.
To submit biographical information, complete the form at this link by Thursday, May 1. Please limit your response to each prompt to 200 words. If you do not intend to complete a biographical information form, please let me know at this email address so that I can update my records.
All those who complete biographical forms will be asked to complete a Disclosure Form and a Background Check Release Form as well, in accord with ELCA Continuing Resolution 19.01.B09. Information on completing these forms will be made available at the appropriate time.
Thank you for your prayerful discernment.
All the best,
Dan Eppley
Manager for Official Documentation
Over the last 18 years I have always removed my name from consideration, for various reasons. Well I am grateful for those pre-nominated me, I have not sensed an internal call to the work of presiding bishop.
To be honest, I have a decidedly different perspective on the organizational structure of the denomination. We are too top-heavy organizationally, with multiple layers of redundant management, and a lack of clarity on the roles of the various expressions of the church. We are desperately in need of a more streamlined organization, but there has always been significant opposition to that model. Understandably so. It would require quite disruptive overhaul, with job changes, job losses, and a likely move in the Churchwide Offices altogether. I hope this happens, but I don’t think I’m the one to do it.
One of the people who has urged me to leave my name in suggested that I fill out the biographical information form they sent. “You don’t have to send it in,” he said. “Just fill it out as a part of your discernment.” I did and felt a heaviness while doing it, for many of the same reasons that I am stepping down as synod bishop. Although I have loved the work the last 18 years and continue to do so, I feel another six years would not be good for me. And it would not be good for synod. The synod is ready for fresh new leadership and I am ready for a different challenge. One bishop colleague told me she thought I was tailor made for the work, but I just don’t see it.
So, I am not filling out the biographical information form. I know that often God calls people to do things they don’t want to do. Perhaps I will be swallowed by a whale and thrown up on the beach, but short of that or a personal theophany, I am pursuing a couple of the many other ways to serve the church. 
In the meantime, I will pray, and invite you to pray for the election, and for the 2025 Churchwide Assembly at the end of July.
