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The question put to the Rev. Michael Barlowe is on the minds of many Utahns as they quiz four candidates for bishop:
"Where do you see the Episcopal Church in Utah in three years?"
Barlowe's answer, given recently to a group of Episcopalians in Ogden, is both a joke about the state's culture and a wish -- and it is greeted with applause:
"I'm not the prophet," he says. "But I would hope we'd be a much larger church."
Indeed, growing the church is very much on the minds of Utah Episcopalians as they come to the end of an 18-month process of selecting a new bishop to replace the Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish, Utah's 10th Episcopal bishop.
The 11th bishop will be elected May 22 in a special convention at St. Mark's Cathedral in Salt Lake City.
Like many mainline Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Church is losing members.
Utah, which had about 6,000 Episcopalians in 1996, when Tanner Irish was consecrated, now is down to 5,200 -- a 13 percent drop during a period in which the state's population swelled by 37 percent.
On any given Sunday, notes the Rev. Scott Hayashi, another of the finalists, only 1,600 are in the pews of Utah's 25 Episcopal congregations.
And yet, for Episcopalians, growth is not so much about having numbers to boast about as sharing what members see as a historical, richly liturgical and welcoming form of Christianity.
Rather than talking numbers, they talk about congregational development and mission, two priorities stressed by all four candidates.
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