Presiding bishop, in last diocesan visit, celebrates with Wyoming Episcopalians and his predecessor

[Episcopal News Service – Casper, Wyoming] The afternoon crowd had swelled to more than 200 in the hotel ballroom here, all eager to hear Presiding Bishop Michael Curry give the Sept. 27 keynote speech at the Episcopal Church in Wyoming’s diocesan convention. As delegates and visitors took their seats, it was hard to find a more eager fan than Karin Ebertz.

On the table next to Ebertz was a copy of Curry’s 2020 book “Love Is the Way.” To hear Curry speak, Ebertz and Dara Corkery had just driven two hours from Gillette, where they are both members of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church. Ebertz, hoping to get Curry’s autograph on the book afterward, told Episcopal News Service that she loves his “very joyful demeanor.”

Curry’s two days in Casper last week, which included a Sept. 28 Holy Eucharist and sermon, marked the final diocesan visit of his nine-year term as presiding bishop. He will step down Oct. 31 after visiting more than 100 dioceses. Wyoming Episcopalians like to think he saved the best for last, and Corkery joked that Wyoming is used to this placement. “We’re the bottom of the alphabet,” she said.

Wyoming Episcopalians felt special in another way: Their convention welcomed not one but two presiding bishops. Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Curry’s predecessor, is serving Wyoming as a part-time assisting bishop while the diocese navigates a leadership transition. Jefferts Schori, in introducing Curry’s keynote, described him as “a wonderful gift” to his fellow bishops, to The Episcopal Church and to the wider Anglican Communion.

“Bishop Curry has the tact and heart of a saint, and he has encouraged greater openness in the [Anglican] Communion,” Jefferts Schori said. She highlighted his leadership in the areas of racial reconciliation, evangelism and creation care, and she emphasized the theme he has made central to his primacy.

“If you don’t remember anything else,” Jefferts Schori said, “it’s all about love.”

Curry began his remarks by returning the love to Jefferts Schori, who “will always be my presiding bishop.” He also couldn’t resist talking up Wyoming’s connection to his hometown of Buffalo, New York, where the Buffalo Bills are now led by a quarterback who previously played for the University of Wyoming.

“On behalf of the city of Buffalo,” Curry said, “I want to thank you for Josh Allen.”

As Curry got to the heart of his remarks, the speech hit many familiar notes. Above all, love one another, he said, invoking Jesus’ command to his disciples at the last supper in the Gospel of John.

“What a different world we would have if we loved each other as God loved us,” Curry said. He issued his own command for the Episcopal Church in Wyoming: “Let the world know you are people of love.”

The diocese previously planned to host Curry in September 2020 for a revival in Jackson, but the revival was cancelled after the COVID-19 pandemic hit earlier that year. Presiding bishops are required by Episcopal Church canons to visit each diocese at least once during their terms. Four years after the revival’s cancelation, Wyoming got its turn.

“We have been looking forward to seeing Michael Curry for years,” the Rev. Megan Nickles, the standing committee president, told ENS before the convention. “We were just thrilled when he made this [his] last stop.”

Curry’s visit happened at an uncertain and uneasy time for the diocese. Its last bishop, Paul-Gordon Chandler, agreed in March 2024 to give up his ordained ministry and submit to deposition after facing a disciplinary investigation. Churchwide officials and diocesan leaders have said little about the disciplinary case against Chandler, though an early diocesan message alluded to an unspecified “indiscretion.”

The standing committee now serves as the diocese’s ecclesiastical authority, and in June, it announced Jefferts Schori had agreed to assist in the interim.

“We all have a duty to call out bad behavior, as well as a duty to help the community make lament and heal,” Jefferts Schori said Sept. 27 in her convention address. “Wyoming’s current leaders have asked me to walk beside you as we seek healing and hope for what God has in store for the future.”

The standing committee is interviewing possible candidates for bishop provisional and could call for a special convention by early next year to affirm a nominee. That bishop then would help the diocese take its next steps toward calling a new bishop diocesan.

Jefferts Schori concluded her presiding bishop term in 2015, and since then she has remained active, serving several dioceses. She assisted the Diocese of San Diego from 2017 to 2019 while it was in the middle of a leadership transition, and later she was an assisting bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles. She now travels to Wyoming each month for one week, bookended by two Sundays for congregation visits.

As the former bishop of the Diocese of Nevada, where she still lives, Jefferts Schori noted some similarities between Nevada and Wyoming. “I know something about the culture in this part of the world,” she told ENS after Curry’s keynote. Wyoming Episcopalians are versed in the “total ministry” model of being the church, in which clergy and laity share in leadership.

“All the baptized are the leaders in the church,” she said. “That’s been a hallmark of this diocese.”

That is particularly important in this geographically large diocese spanning all of Wyoming, the least populous state in the country with about 580,000 residents. The Episcopal diocese’s membership was about 5,800 in 2020, according to the church’s latest counts. Most of the diocese’s 45 congregations range from about 30 to 40 members, said Nickles, the standing committee president. Some larger parishes have up to 150 members, while other congregations are among the smallest in The Episcopal Church, with fewer than 15 people.

Nickles serves as priest-in-charge at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Powell, more than three hours northwest of Casper. St. John’s has a “deep pool of lay leadership,” she said, and many lay leaders are trained to take on liturgical roles. Four members are licensed as lay preachers. The church also has an active food pantry.

The diocesan offices are in Casper, a city of about 60,000 residents. Once a year Episcopalians come together here or in another host city for a kind of diocesan family reunion. This year’s convention was held at the Ramkota Hotel & Conference Center on Casper’s northwest side, near where Interstate 25 crosses the North Platte River. During breaks in convention business, Nickles seemed to bump into familiar faces at every turn.

“Convention is always a time of renewal and friendship, because everybody truly does know almost everybody,” she told ENS.

And everyone at the convention made clear their great appreciation for Curry’s visit. After dinner Sept. 27, the presiding bishop attended the evening’s festivities, which included karaoke. The night kicked off with a rousing diocesan chorus of “Ragtime Cowboy Joe,” the University of Wyoming fight song, after which Curry gamely donned a Wyoming Cowboys cap that the convention had gifted him.

The next morning, Sept. 28, delegates made their way to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in downtown Casper for Holy Eucharist, with Jefferts Schori presiding. The Scripture readings appeared to support the convention’s theme, “Love Always,” and they included the passage from the Gospel of John that Curry cited a day earlier in his keynote.

Curry has given countless sermons for occasions like this during his nine years as presiding bishop. Preaching at St. Mark’s, he acknowledged at one point that by now he relies on some well-worn stories and remarks. “If my wife was here, she’d say, ‘Don’t you tell that again,’” he said.

After nine years, though, when he tells an old joke, he’s confident it will get a laugh. (It did.) When he tries to fire up a congregation, he knows the people in the pews will respond. (They did.) And if he keeps coming back to the old themes, there may be no reason to stray from the tried and true.

“If it’s not about love,” he boomed, “it’s not about God.”

It was a signature refrain from Curry’s past diocesan visits and sermons, and Wyoming Episcopalians welcomed it anew with enthusiasm, mixing claps and cheers with shouts of “yes!”

“God love you, Wyoming,” Curry said to conclude his sermon.

The message was received both by the worshipers packed into the nave and by those in an overflow room in the parish hall. About a dozen people watched the service there on a video feed. During Communion, Curry and Jefferts Schori walked the bread and wine back to distribute the elements in that bright, sun-lit room.

After the service, Nancy Engstrom and her husband, Chuck, were all smiles. Nancy Engstrom was an alternate delegate to the convention, and as members of St. Mark’s, the couple had volunteered to serve as ushers in the overflow room. They echoed prevailing sentiments in the diocese about Curry’s visit.

“We’re delighted to have him here,” Nancy Engstrom said. “He’s a dynamic speaker, and so filled with love.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.