The Rev. Dorsey W. M. McConnell
Click here for résumé

Video from the Nominee Walk-about on March 20, 2012
at St. Brendan’s Episcopal Church, Franklin Park

Ordained:
December 1, 1983, Diocese of New York

Currently:
Rector, Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts; serving since 2004; age 58

A Word of Introduction from the Rev. Dorsey McConnell:
I grew up in a military family, and after graduating from college and finishing a Fulbright Scholarship in France, I continued to move around, working as a polo groom in California, a wrangler in Argentina, an actor and a news editor.

Among other influences, I came to know Jesus Christ through a low-church Anglican mother, a liberal Anglo-Catholic stepfather, an Easter sermon on the Prologue to John preached by a strung-out addict in an urban parish with a Marxist priest, and an evangelical/charismatic church on the upper West Side of Manhattan where I found a home and finally gave up resisting. When I think of the Big Tent that the Episcopal Church has been, those are some of the images that come to mind.

My ministry has taken me from parishes in New York City to Seattle to Boston.  I have been chaplain at universities (Yale) and to labor unions (Local #3, I.B.E.W.).

From 1999 to 2002, I helped found and lead the New Commandment Task Force, a national reconciliation effort within the Episcopal Church, bringing together laity and clergy, liberal and conservative, to see themselves and each other as members of the one Body of Christ.

I love building and working with professional and lay ministerial teams, equipping people for reconciliation and mission, such as we are doing at home in the urban neighborhoods of Roxbury and the South End, as well as abroad by helping indigenous multi-denominational Christian evangelism and development  in Uganda.  I get goose bumps over the possibilities of building consensus, bridging divisions, holding a community together and growing it in Christ.

Other Church Service:
Various committees and commissions in four dioceses; two General Conventions; several post-Katrina parish and diocesan mission trips to the Gulf Coast.

Education:
The General Theological Seminary, M.Div. cum laude, 1983
Fulbright Scholar, Paris, France, 1976
Yale College, B.A. cum laude, 1975

Family:
Married 31 years to Elizabeth (Betsy) Marsden, a clinical social worker in private practice; one son, who attends college.

Hobbies & Interests:
Cooking, reading, kayaking, snowboarding with son, Nordic skiing, hiking and fishing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

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Answers to Questions Asked of All Nominees

1. Why do you feel called to be the Eighth Bishop Diocesan of Pittsburgh and what experiences equip you for this call?

I began to learn about reconciliation in 1962, when I was nine, as I watched my mother prepare to greet her dinner guests. Twenty years earlier she had barely escaped occupied France. Now, as the wife of an American general, she was to welcome a group of senior German officers into her home for an official evening. The doorbell rang. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes briefly, and in the very next moment she was greeting them warmly as they came into the hall.

She told me later it had been hard, but that she knew God wanted her to forgive and to welcome. I was annoyed. “I still don’t see why you had to do it,” I sniffed. “They’re the enemy, aren’t they?” “They were the enemy. They’re allies now,” she corrected me. And seeing I was still put out she said, “Darling, learn this: life is long, and we need each other.”

I have never gotten over those words. When I came back to Jesus Christ as a young adult, I saw in the Church the one real hope for reconciliation in the world, the Cross and Resurrection of Christ bringing together a human race at odds with one another and with God. I have found my own fears and suspicions of others challenged and swept aside by the imperative of His love. I have found mercy for myself that I could give away, and I have received it from others. I have been in the middle of this work in every place of my ministry over thirty years: with parishes in conflict, in national work bridging the divide between liberals and conservatives, in industrial ministry with both labor and management, crossing boundaries of race and class, working across barriers of tribe and religion in East Africa. In each setting, I have learned more and more of the power of Christ to “create in himself one … in place of the two, so making peace.” (Ephesians 2:15)

So, when someone put my name in for bishop, and I read your profile, I was struck hard by the possibility that this might be a “Macedonian call” (Acts 16:9), an unsought and sovereign summons to use the collected experiences of my entire life and ministry to serve God’s glory in Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania. I thought, what if God’s purpose here is to bring forth a reconciled, and reconciling, church out of the ruins of schism? What if the local power of this Church can move, through strengthened and renewed parishes, new plants, new works, new ways, to heal the city and countryside, transforming neighborhoods and towns to look more like the Kingdom of God? And what if the bishop could actually be a visible sign of this unity and its enabler, a witness to the Resurrection in Christ’s power flowing through the churches, a teacher, pastor, visitor, healer and person of prayer helping to raise up such fellow servants in all orders of ministry? I can think of no more exciting work, no clearer way of showing that I am actually learning what my mother hoped to teach me.

 2. The Diocese of Pittsburgh is significantly smaller than it was in 2008. Given that we now have 32 participating congregations, a) how would you foster growth in the ministry, stewardship and membership of our parishes, and b) what do you see as the best way to approach our diocesan organizational structure?

I would need a sound car and a good cell phone. I would hope to spend a lot of time on the road, especially in the first year, getting to know the clergy and laity of your congregations, not just in formal visitations, but informal evenings of food, conversation and prayer. I would hope to be a broker of ideas and resources among the parishes of the diocese, a helper for you to see possibilities in partnership with each other that you might miss on your own, and a steward of resources to help make those visions a reality. So, I’d want to learn about your trials and aspirations, and begin to see how the gifts and needs of each parish might connect with those of other congregations across the diocese, how the hopes of one community might spark imagination in another. As parishes ask, “What difference for the Kingdom can we make in our neighborhood?,” as they invite and help organize their neighbors toward that difference, and as they communicate with each other their successes and dreams, I think people will take notice of the Church and respond by moving toward us.

As for stewardship, someone on my vestry said recently, people contribute to the work when they believe in the work. I’d want to help the clergy and lay leadership of each parish discover and carry out the most important work you believe you should be about for Christ’s sake, and help liberate you from the things that detract from that work. As churches do this, people believe and join and give.

I know you have as many commissions and committees as you did before the split, and that this structure is probably inappropriate to your current size. But I suspect these groups are serving another function besides their stated purpose: namely, they bring you together, especially across the old lines, to pray, talk and consider the work of the Church. That conversation has built trust and community; so I’d want to join in the prayer and the talk for a while, and hear the history, and then consider with you the next work God may want us to undertake. I would listen to the pieces of that work as they were imagined and described, put them together, fill in the gaps and articulate the whole design, then recommend an administrative structure best suited to help make that vision a reality. Such an administration would be lean and appropriate, and it would have buy-in from all the stakeholders in the diocese. As for diocesan staff, I know there are budget constraints, and I would suggest the priority would be the positions that most enable your bishop to get out of the office, into your communities and into the civic affairs of the Pittsburgh area.

3. What challenges facing the Church today energize you and, as our bishop, how would you lead us to respond to them?

I believe the present trials of the Episcopal Church are actually part of a tectonic shift in American Christianity, a breaking open of the visible Church to reveal the Church that is to come. This new birth is being announced by five critical questions. How will the Gospel be heard as a compelling voice by people struggling spiritually in an increasingly secular culture? How will attractive communities of grace best be planted and sustained — both in residential areas and in universities and even places of business? How do we as Church move from looking mainly inward, to looking mainly outward, and find the key to our own life in helping to change the lives and neighborhoods around us through the Gospel we enact? How do we raise up and develop leadership, lay and ordained, that is entrepreneurial, strategic and adaptable to these conditions? And how do we marshal the resources to sustain this vision over the medium and long term? Yes, I am energized by these challenges! And I’d want to lead a practical conversation around these questions that resulted in some targeted efforts within two years which might include: a leadership development initiative for lay leaders, in partnership with their clergy, who are seeking to revitalize parishes by addressing critical needs in their immediate surroundings; building up high-quality local training of candidates for the diaconate and priesthood; working with the process of PLANPGH to see where the goals of the city might intersect with opportunities for the Gospel; an initiative to promote relational evangelism among young people and encourage growth of an “emerging church” in Pittsburgh. (These are only suggestions to get the conversation rolling.) And I’d undergird this with two other pieces: I’d want to nurture the vocations of the clergy, bringing us together frequently as a collegium for fellowship, study and prayer; and, I’d want to help them provide lay people with more opportunities and resources to build their own faith development, from young to old.

4. How might you respond if a person who was not a Christian approached you and said, “Why would I want to be a Christian?”

“Years ago, when I was in your position, a friend warned me to think very carefully before becoming a Christian. He said it would ruin my pleasure in my own sin, and I have since found he was right. And there are other consequences as well. It will seriously hamper your self-centeredness and your pride. It will make you love people you don’t even want to like, forgive people you have every reason to hate, and help people without any thought of gain. And it will bring dozens, hundreds, even thousands, of additional family into your life, who don’t look or talk or think like you — brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. Since most of us can’t manage the ones we already have, that is also something to think about.

“Of course, there are huge advantages. You will finally know who you are and why you are on this earth. You will find endless mercy, limitless grace, compassion without ceasing, love beyond bounds. You will experience real joy, again and again. You will have an abiding sense of God’s care for you, and you will never again depend on the kudos of the world. After years of trying to create your own universe and run it (which never goes very well), you will be released from the endless task of proving your self-worth. You will discover that serving Jesus Christ will use every fiber of your being, every cell of your creativity, talents you never knew you had, in pursuits you never would have imagined. In short, you will discover the grace and truth of God in this life, and in the age to come, life everlasting.”