Big challenges ahead for new boss of Episcopal diocese

It is likely to be a grand show.

More than 2,000 people, including a procession of 200 local clergy, are expected at Meydenbauer Center to attend the ordination and consecration of the Rev. Gregory Rickel as the eighth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia.

Rickel, 44, who was most recently rector of a church in Austin, Texas, succeeds Bishop Vincent Warner, who is retiring after 18 years as head of the Episcopal Church in Western Washington.

"This whole thing is nothing you train for or plan for — you can't," Rickel said in an interview earlier this month. "This mantle — it's daunting."

Indeed, beyond the grandeur of the ordination ceremony, there are big challenges ahead for Rickel.

He faces declining membership numbers, a region that is known for being "unchurched," and some ongoing debates over biblical interpretation on issues such as homosexuality that have led to two congregations pulling out of the diocese.

In addition, the diocese's cathedral, St. Mark's, is undergoing some turmoil: Two priests were laid off this year for budget reasons and a third is taking early retirement. And a local priest recently made headlines announcing she was both Christian and Muslim.

On top of it, laypeople and parishioners in the diocese want someone who can reach younger people, who can make parishes in this far-flung geographic diocese feel connected, who knows how to be part of a multicultural church, and who is a good manager in addition to being a good pastoral leader, said the Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton, co-chair of the bishop-search committee.

"Everybody under age 35" is a priority, said Rickel, who has an 11-year-old son, Austin, with his wife of 23 years, Marti, a psychiatric nurse. "If we can't master or figure out what to do with that age group, the church is dead."

It's a big concern in a diocese where membership has declined from about 38,000 in 1985 to 31,000 in 2005. "We have to change," said Rickel.

Rickel wants to see firsthand the arrangement that has two churches aligned with a conservative Brazilian bishop meeting on properties in Poulsbo and Oak Harbor that the Olympia diocese owns.

"What's on the paper looks great to me," he said. "But I want to know how it's working on the ground. I think the property issue is key."

He describes himself as "on the progressive side of theology," but also says it is his "fervent hope" that the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion do not break over scriptural interpretation on issues such as homosexuality.

Rickel says he is comfortable continuing Bishop Warner's stance of letting individual priests decide whether to perform blessing ceremonies for same-sex unions.

Next week, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion will meet with U.S. bishops in New Orleans to see whether the Episcopal Church will state unequivocally that it will not ordain any more gay bishops or authorize rites to bless same-sex unions. If the U.S. bishops refuse, overseas Anglican archbishops have promised unspecified "consequences."

Regarding the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding's disclosure earlier this year that she is both Christian and Muslim, Rickel said he agrees with a decision by Redding's bishop in Rhode Island that restricts her from serving as a priest for a year. (Though Redding is in Seattle, she was ordained in Rhode Island, and that bishop has disciplinary authority over her.) "It works for me because I want time to spend with her, talk to her," he said.

Taber-Hamilton said Rickel's work history makes him well-suited for the position.

Rickel has a background in health-services administration in addition to his ministerial work.

At St. James' Episcopal Church in Austin, where he served as rector from 2001 to 2007, he was a white man leading a multicultural congregation that had started as a primarily black church.

"It was important to us that the priest be able not only to value that [African-American] heritage but also be able to welcome the others among us of other races, cultures, ethnicities, social economic status," said Ora Houston, a longtime St. James member and director of congregational involvement there. Houston and about 60 others from St. James plan to attend the consecration.

At St. James, Rickel and others in the parish made Sunday services joyful, emotional, she said. And as an administrator, he was accessible, transparent in his dealings, and someone who listened. At the same time, "he's got a core set of values that people need to operate by, and if they don't, he's got a strong backbone," Houston said.

Houston has a warning to those who will be working with the high-energy Rickel, who, among other things is a divemaster, an avid reader and, she said, known for sending e-mails with new ideas even in the middle of the night.

"He's going to run them to death," she said. "So I hope they take the first year to get their energy level up."

Janet I. Tu: 206-464-2272 or jtu@seattletimes.com. Information from Religion News Service was used in this story.