Council's new president hopes to be catalyst for bishops
5/5/2003 News media contact: Tim Tanton · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn.
NOTE:
A photograph is available. For further coverage of the United Methodist
Council of Bishops' meeting, see UMNS stories #243, 253, 255, 256, 258,
264, and 266-268.
Bishop
Ruediger Minor sees his election as president of the United Methodist
Council of Bishops as an important symbol for the international body.
Most people look at the United Methodist Church as a U.S. denomination,
he said. Now the presiding bishop is from another country. Minor,
leader of the denomination s Eurasia Area, was elected president during
the council s April 28-May 2 semiannual meeting in the Dallas suburb of
Addison. With offices in Moscow, he is the council's first president
from a former Iron Curtain country. A UMNS photo by Larry Hollon. Photo
number 03-171, Accompanies UMNS #265, 5/5/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
DALLAS (UMNS) - Bishop Ruediger Minor sees his
election as president of the United Methodist Council of Bishops as an
important symbol for the international body.
"Most people look at
the United Methodist Church as a U.S. denomination," he said. "Now the
presiding bishop is from another country." Though he is not the first
bishop from outside the United States to become president, he is the
first from a former Soviet bloc country.
Minor, 64, was elected
president during the council's April 28-May 2 semiannual meeting in the
Dallas suburb of Addison. He had served the previous year as
president-elect and succeeds Bishop Sharon A. Brown Christopher, whose
one-year term ended May 2.
The new president leads the denomination's Eurasia Area, which spans eight time zones. His offices are in Moscow.
In
an interview, Minor noted that the council's executive committee also
has other members from outside the United States. "The world view has
been present always, and for this year (it) may be more visible."
The
council comprises 50 active bishops in the United States; 18 bishops in
Europe, Asia and Africa; plus 75 retired bishops worldwide. They are
the top clergy leaders in the nearly 10 million-member church.
Minor believes his personal history is important for the council.
"I
hope that some of my experience and history I can bring into this
service as a certain ferment, maybe even catalyst … for seeing things
in different ways," he said. For example, some churches - especially
mainline ones - have felt that their voice has been ignored by the
political powers, but he has had experience in dealing with that kind of
problem, he said. "For me, this is nothing new at all."
The
bishop earned a doctorate in church history at Leipzig University in his
hometown of Leipzig, Germany, and went on to the United Methodist
Theological Seminary in the former East Germany. He was elected bishop
in 1986. Six years later, as communism was crumbling around Eastern
Europe, he was put in charge of a new United Methodist mission to the
former Soviet Union. The area eventually became an annual conference.
Minor
credited the denomination with opening "a window to the world" for the
church in the East during the communist era. Since then, during the last
12 to 13 years, he said he has seen new activities and renewal in the
church in Eastern Europe. With new tensions in the world today, it's
important that the church keep its connections, he said.
Upon
being elected council president, Minor presented Christopher and Bishop
Sharon Zimmerman Rader, the group's secretary, with copies of the new
Russian United Methodist hymnal, Mir Vam ("peace be with you").
At
the council's closing worship service, Minor told the bishops that
rough weather might be in the forecast, but Jesus is in the boat with
them. He used the story of Christ calming the storm while the disciples
trembled in fear that their boat would capsize.
"Common Christian
tradition has it that the boat is the church," he said. What happened
among the disciples before they decided to awake Jesus? he wondered.
"Would they not have had a crisis management team?"
With the boat
listing because of the wind, some of the disciples would have tried
stabilizing it by leaning overboard, he said, but "they could not agree
if the wind was blowing from the right or the left."
In a History
Channel series on shipwrecks, Minor noted that model ships were placed
in a water tank to simulate wrecks. "Friends, how often do we think we
are the disciples in the boat, swamped … when indeed we are just
playing a simulation in the water tank?"
For the disciples,
however, the need was real, and they finally awakened Jesus, who said,
"Why are you afraid, you of little faith?"
"The ship of the church is a fragile little boat," he said. "However, the Lord is with it."
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