The Rev. Ruth Woodliff-Stanley
Click here for résumé

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

Ordained:
June 28, 1991, Diocese of Mississippi

Currently:
Rector, St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Denver, since 2007; age 49

A Word of Introduction from the Rev. Ruth Woodliff-Stanley:
Hailing from Mississippi, I was nurtured in faith from birth at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Jackson and have gone on to serve congregations in the Dioceses of Connecticut, Mississippi, and Colorado.  I currently serve a congregation undergoing significant revitalization in Denver.

The defining mark of my priesthood has been intensive work over two decades facilitating engagement across lines of difference at every level of the Church’s life. I have facilitated four Bishop’s task forces in three dioceses to forge a way forward through recent conflicts in the Church. I believe labels and single identity politics wound the Church. Christ unites us in a truth and love far deeper than what divides us. I am bound inextricably through Christ to sisters and brothers on all sides of His holy table.

In the Diocese of Colorado, I serve as consultant to the Standing Committee and the Office of the Bishop. I mentor new clergy and diaconal candidates and serve as diocesan consultant for parishes facing serious conflict. I have served on the Board of the Colorado Haiti Project and made my first trip to Haiti in 2007.

As High Plains Regional Missioner, I serve as a pastoral link to the Office of the Bishop for 27 congregations. In this role, I help connect congregations in common ministry, provide pastoral support to lay and clergy leaders and administer funds and provide strategic leadership with the Executive Committee to support mission in the High Plains Region.

Other Church Service:
Chaplain and facilitator for the Colorado Deputation, General Convention in 2006 and 2009; first clergy deputy from Colorado for General Convention 2012; past consultant for, and new board member for, the Episcopal Church Building Fund.

Education:
Yale Divinity School, Master of Divinity summa cum laude, 1991
Columbia University School of Social Work, Master of Science in Social Work, 1991
Swarthmore College, B.A. in Religion and Psychology, with honors, 1985
Continuing Education in Bowen Systems theory, Jungian psychology and chaos theory

Family:
Married 24 years to the Rev. Nathan Woodliff-Stanley, a Unitarian Universalist minister; two teenage sons.

Hobbies & Interests:
Biking, swimming, and traveling with my family; cooking; growing roses (which my cat, Caroline, then eats), small-time vegetable gardening; dark chocolate salted caramels; sitting on porches; and dancing.

---

 

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?

A Christian’s greatest joy is to serve Christ fully, without reservation. This service can best happen when one’s most developed gifts are required to address a critical need in the Church or in the world, or both. In such intersections of gifts with needs, God uses individuals in communities to further His purpose. For some time now, I have experienced a prompting toward the Diocese of Pittsburgh. I believe this prompting has occurred because there is an intersection between what is needed in your next bishop and the gifts God has given me and led me to exercise thus far in my ministry. God has led me into two primary areas of focus in my ministry: first, facilitating engagement across lines of difference in the Church; and second, re-visioning and redevelopment at crucial junctures in particular ministries.

My work in the first area (facilitating engagement across lines of difference) has included leading four Bishop’s Task Forces in three dioceses since 2003 and a series of approximately 30 public meetings with my bishop across our diocese in Colorado to build consensus across our differences and forge a path forward. In addition, as a trained mediator (training received from Lombard Mennonite Peace Center Mediation Training and Advanced Clergy Clinic in Bowen Family Systems application; Assisi Conferences Two Year Certification in pattern recognition in leadership systems; Columbia University School of Social Work organizational development coursework, and on-site graduate clinical training working with Viet Nam veterans in one of four centers for national research for PTSD, as well as 15 years of semi-monthly phone supervision), I have served extensively over two decades as a mediator and facilitator in contexts of high conflict at the parish, diocesan, and national levels working in multiple dioceses with several bishops. This work has included both short-term and multi-year projects and has involved intensive, rigorous conflict mediation as well as in-depth healing history work. I have worked on conflicts involving property disputes and have helped a diocese develop a plan for how to best address property issues for congregations leaving the Episcopal Church. I have worked internally and externally with parishes involved in high profile court cases in which clergy misconduct resulted in profound fragmentation in churches and the communities where members live.

My work in the second area (re-visioning and redevelopment) comes as the rector of a parish and as a regular consultant to our Standing Committee, the Commission on Ministry, the staff of the Office of the Bishop, and boards within the wider Church. I have been intensively engaged in the work of re-visioning and redevelopment in my own parish, where we have brought a parish back from the risk of closing to enjoy a season of rebirth marked by growth in numbers and stewardship. I have also worked as primary consultant in specific re-visioning and redevelopment endeavors with our Standing Committee, the Episcopal Church Building Fund, the Colorado Episcopal Foundation, and others. I have regular opportunities to study and work with changing trends in being the Church in a radically and rapidly changing cultural context, and I find this work exhilarating.

When I pray about your future, I see a wide-open sky with immense potential. You are not saddled with the burden of over-investment in convention. You have a new beginning. How you begin is everything. I believe I am called to you because I have gifts and passion for two areas you most need: healing, skillful mediation across lines of difference and radical re-visioning of how to be the Church. You have the incredible opportunity to envision and grow toward the Church God is making now. You are agile, light on your feet. You can run toward the movement of the Spirit. You have the opportunity to be the most missional diocese in the Episcopal Church. All eyes are on you. It’s truly a moment not to miss.

I find the prospect of serving in such a context invigorating, highly engaging, and frankly, thrilling.

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?

1.  I will assemble leaders from every area of the diocese who have a strong desire to grow the Church, making sure to include youth, young adults, and members of young families. Together, we will go to school on the following things:

• cutting-edge experiments in evangelism from across the Church;
• the needs of our local communities;
• reducing the financial burdens of mortgages and property upkeep by using our buildings for initiatives that generate income and help others;
• proven approaches to stewardship;
• the needs of existing and lapsed parishioners in our diocese, including those who may be seeking to return to the Episcopal Church.

2.  I will collaborate with neighboring dioceses to strengthen our own capacity for ministry.

3.  I will position our diocese for pilot projects in partnership with groups such as the Episcopal Church Building Fund, on whose board I serve, to prepare us for mission and ministry in a rapidly changing cultural landscape.

4.  I will travel the diocese listening to the concerns, hopes, and vision of parishioners and calling forth new leaders to help grow the Church.

You have an uncommon opportunity to put everything on the table, reinventing what needs change and retaining what best serves the mission of the diocese. I will work with other leaders to examine all aspects of current structure. However, I will not make quick, unilateral changes or changes for the sake of change.

While it may be tempting to separate the ongoing canonical responsibilities of the Church from the more alluring work of direct ministry, in truth, staffing to ensure proper canonical functioning of the diocese is essential and is missional. Therefore, my first task will be to determine what we need in order to execute superb financial management, administrative practice, and canonical compliance. Once I am assured we are meeting these needs, I will seek excellent ideas from other dioceses and leaders in the wider Church for re-envisioning structure to best support mission in our current cultural context.

 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 most significant challenge the Church currently faces is how to obey the Great Commission in our world today. We can be lulled into putting our heads in the sand and continuing to do Church as it was done a generation or more ago. But this is a choice to die. Dioceses must think in terms of being leaner, more mission-focused, and highly creative stewards. The Gospel remains constant, yet how we communicate it must change.

The first thing I will do as your new bishop to address the challenge of obeying the Great Commission in our day is to listen to you, the members of the diocese, about our most pressing needs and about the resources already present among us. The first step into a new future together is to learn about one another as if for the very first time. For me, it will be the very first time to know you, and I will ask you to engage one another with a huge, open-hearted and open-minded curiosity, leaving aside former presumptions about one another.

I will foster excellence in preaching, music, and liturgy, seeking to develop a richly textured diocesan fabric of worship. I will foster formation for children, youth and adults with a focus on biblical literacy. I will foster mission-focused engagement in our local communities and passion for justice and peace.

I will take full advantage of resources available in the wider Church and help the Diocese of Pittsburgh claim its position at the forefront of dioceses that, by virtue of necessity, are facing into the winds of change with courage and foresight. I will strategize with leaders whom I already know in emerging expressions of church to help us develop greater cultural fluency to address what one emergent pastor calls the “cultural commute” many youth and young adults must make simply to come to church. I will seek to support the development of spirituality in the home, including a deeper practice of Sabbath time for families and for young children.

I will make us more aware of our role in the global community, seeing our life as part of a much larger whole. I will encourage sacrificial generosity and hospitality within our local communities and beyond the boundaries of our diocese and of our country, believing that solidarity with those in greatest need is an essential quality of mature Christian discipleship.

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?”

Perhaps I would begin with a question: what is your deepest longing? I would then engage you in a conversation to learn about the moments in your life when you have seen a glimpse of God’s presence, even if you would not use those words, as well as the moments when you have known the depth of your own despair and the pain of your own limitations. I would then bear witness to the Gospel as I know and experience it: namely, that Christ is the unnamed One who meets us in the place of our deepest longing, offering us our soul’s greatest need, to be reconciled to God and to one another.

I would speak to you about how God became human, lived, died, and rose from death to make this reconciliation possible. I would tell you that I cannot tell you why you would want to be a Christian nearly as easily as I can tell you why Christ wants you to follow him: because your soul has need of his saving embrace and because the world needs you to be his hands and feet, so that the hungry may be fed, the lost may be found, the warring may find peace, those sick may be healed, and the world may once again know the wholeness that comes from God alone. I would tell you that when we follow Christ, we become free of the burden of our own sinfulness, we gain hope in the face of our own despair, and we are given power through the Holy Spirit to be agents of healing, mercy, justice, and unconditional love. I would invite you to come taste and see the goodness of God in a worshipping, mission-focused community. I would challenge you to do two things: to engage with a Christian community in worship and ministry for a season and to read at least one of the Gospels in one day. The rest I would entrust to the Holy Spirit.