Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori spent a busy weekend in the Diocese of Arkansas, consecrating its bishop in Little Rock and visiting two churches in Pine Bluff.

Bishop Jefferts Schori asked to visit and preach in a small congregation on Jan. 7, the day following the consecration of the Rt. Rev. Larry R. Benfield as Bishop of Arkansas. Bishop Benfield told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette that he chose Pine Bluff because it is only town with two Episcopal churches within an hour’s drive of Little Rock where the consecration occurred.

Grace Church was host to the Presiding Bishop for a reception and 45-minute question and answer session. The congregation then joined members of Trinity Church for a combined service at that location about three miles away.

Bishop Jefferts Schori commended the Millennium Development Goals originally developed by the United Nations when asked where she would like to see Episcopalians devote their time and energy. Her responses to questions about church property ownership and gay bishops suggested her approach on those issues would not differ markedly from those of her predecessors. One woman asked why the church should focus on social issues instead of spiritual ones.

After starting to define the mission of the church, Bishop Jefferts Schori stopped and asked the woman how she would define it.

“I know what I want from the church. I want the church to help me in my relationship to God, not in my relationship to other people,” the woman said as reported by the Gazette.

“The church actually defines it as both,” Bishop Jefferts Schori said. “Jesus said the Great Commandment is to love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. You hear it over and over again in the gospels and the epistles that you can’t love God, whom you’ve not seen, if you don’t love your neighbor, whom you can see.

“The genius of a community like a congregation is that gives us these people. And they may not be the people we would choose. But God gives us these people to learn how to love them. In doing that, we learn to love God more effectively.”

Bishop Benfield is the first bishop consecrated by Bishop Jefferts Schori. Co-consecrating bishops at the Episcopal Collegiate School gym were the Rt. Rev. Herbert A. Donovan, Jr., retired Bishop of Arkansas, the Rt. Rev. Larry E. Maze retired Bishop of Arkansas, and the Rt. Rev. Barry Howe, Bishop of West Missouri.

A convert to The Episcopal Church while earning his master’s in business administration at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, Bishop Benfield was ordained in 1991 after graduation from Virginia Theological Seminary. He has served his entire ordained ministry in Arkansas. A Tennessee native, he worked in the banking industry prior to ordination.

In a related development, it was announced that Bishop Benfield will remain as the unpaid rector of Christ Church, Little Rock, a cure he has served since 2001. He told the Democrat Gazette that the unusual arrangement will provide him a “pastoral base from which to be a bishop.”

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