From The Living Church-I haven’t assembled data to back this up, but it surely feels that there is a rising and nearly cresting wave of diocesan bishops in the Episcopal Church who have, within the last year or so, announced their retirement or resignation and called for the election of a successor. This means that several dozen priests across the church — doubtless a number expressed in triple digits — are busy answering essay questions, recording videos, making plans to attend discernment retreats, and preparing to answer questions at walkabout events. And in the affected dioceses, clergy and lay delegates are in discernment, reading essays and making notes, watching videos and forming impressions, talking with their colleagues, all in an effort to decide how they will vote at the electing convention.
I am long past being a rookie bishop, but not yet, I hope, grizzled and wizened to the point of acerbic cynicism. So, from this putative sweet spot of seven-plus years of experience not yet singed by burnout, I offer these observations for the benefit of electors and candidates trying to discern their possible vocation to the episcopate. They are predicated on the assumption that, inside several priests in the church at this moment, there is a future bishop waiting to be discovered and liberated to act according to that vocation, just as within some blocks of marble or wood, an artistic masterpiece lies waiting to be discovered and liberated by the right tools in the hands of a skilled sculptor. What are some of the characteristics that might help identify a bishop in the making? What might the lay and clergy electors of a diocese in transition look for as they prepare to vote?
More here-
https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2018/09/26/a-field-guide-to-bishop-spotting/
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