Stanovsky elected a bishop of United Methodist Church
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July 19, 2008 | PORTLAND, Ore. (UMNS)
The Rev. Elaine J.W. Stanovsky of Seattle has been elected a bishop by the Western Jurisdictional Conference of The United Methodist Church.
Stanovsky, 54, a district superintendent in Seattle, was elected on July 19 on the 25th ballot. She is the last of eight new U.S. bishops elected this week at five jurisdictional meetings across the United States. She will fill one of two openings in the church’s Western Jurisdiction. The Rev. Grant Hagiya, of Redondo Beach, Calif., will fill the other after being elected on July 18.
Ordained as a United Methodist deacon in 1981 and as an elder in 1983, Stanovsky has served Washington congregations in Renton and Seattle and headed the Church Council of Greater Seattle from 1990 to 1995. She has been a district superintendent in Puget Sound and in Tacoma, as well as a director of connectional ministries for the Pacific-Northwest Conference and assistant to the bishop.
She will become one of 50 active U.S. bishops, including six serving the 12-state Western Jurisdiction. The jurisdiction is home to 390,000 United Methodists in seven annual conferences that span Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, as well as one missionary conference in Alaska.
An episcopal assignment committee was to announce later on July 19 where Stanovsky and other active bishops will serve for the next four years. *Update: Stanovsky will serve the Their assignments will be effective Sept. 1. A consecration service was scheduled for 2 p.m. PT at First United Methodist Church of Portland.
Endorsed by the Pacific Northwest Annual (regional) Conference, Stanovsky was elected after receiving 53 votes cast by 80 delegates.
She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Puget Sound and a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School.
“I claim my baptism this day and the special callings to which God has called me,” said an emotional Stanovsky after her election was announced. “… May God lead us faithfully forward in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Surrounded by her husband, Clinton Stanovsky, and their three grown sons, she said she has thought a lot about family as of late. “I am so grateful for a family that brought me into the church,” she said.
Stanovsky and Hagiya will fill two vacancies created in the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops by the retirement of Bishop Beverly Shamana and the resignation of Bishop Edward Paup. Paup has been elected to lead the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, the church’s mission agency, effective Sept. 1.
The Western Jurisdiction, convening once every four years, conducted its business July 16-19.
In addition to electing bishops, a jurisdictional conference has the power to:
- Promote the evangelistic, educational, missionary and benevolent interests of the church and to provide for interests and institutions within their boundaries;
- Establish and constitute jurisdictional conference boards as auxiliaries to the general boards of the church;
- Determine the boundaries of annual conferences;
- Make rules and regulations for the administration of the church's work within the jurisdiction; and
- Sppoint a committee on appeals.
The United Methodist Church was created in 1968 by a merger of the Evangelical United Brethren and Methodist churches. Methodists elected their bishops at one national gathering until 1940, when the jurisdictional system was instituted. Bishops in the EUB church were elected at one national gathering until 1968.
*Aldrich is news editor of United Methodist News Service.
News media contact: Marta Aldrich, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org
Grant Hagiya appointed Bishop to the Seattle Episcopal Area
The Jurisdictional Conference worked late into the night Friday on the election of the Episcopal leaders. Grant Hagiya, of the California-Pacific Conference, was elected on the 16th ballot and the delegates continued their work for another several hours with the Pacific Northwest's own Elaine Stanovsky becoming elected on the 25th ballot at 12:41 am. To view detailed ballot results please click this link.
Grant Hagiya has been appointed to the Pacific Northwest conference beginning September 1st. Hagiya has served as Dean of the Cabinet in the Cal-Pac conference for the last eight years and has been an adjunct professor at Claremont School of Theology since 1993. This is his personal statement from the candidate profiles:
"For the last two years, I have been in the formal Doctoral program in Organizational
Leadership at Pepperdine University. My plan was to learn as much as I could about leadership and change strategy from a formal academic program, and apply it directly to the United Methodist Church. My studies have allowed me to research and write extensively about leadership and strategic change as it applies to the UMC. The program has also focused us on our own individual leadership styles and assessment, and enabled us to critically reflect on our own leadership. The theory and research has proved invaluable as we lead Cal-Pac through an organizational change and growth strategy. .
I now know a lot about secular leadership and change theory, and it may help to resource our WJ in the face of the 2008 loss of one Bishop and annual conference. However, with all the thousands of theories we covered, I still believe that leadership comes down to the integrity of the leader. Unless a leader has a consistency with one’s inner being (grounded in faith in Jesus Christ), and one’s outer actions there can be no trust, no followers, and no true leadership. I pray that whatever happens in my life, I will retain my integrity as well as my faith."