ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610280021
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
THE CHURCH HAS been "an everyday presence" for the Right Rev. Frank Neff Powell.
When he took office as the fifth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia on Saturday, the Right Rev. Frank Neff Powell was continuing a lifetime devotion to the church.
Though he considered following his father into banking, or studying the law and entering politics, Powell also contemplated the priesthood.
"I think it was always there" as a consideration, the new bishop said in an interview last week. "It may not always have been first" on the list, but it never left his mind.
The 203 delegates to a special council of the diocese in June affirmed his choice of vocation by electing him bishop out of a field of five candidates.
Powell, 48, led the voting only on the fifth and last ballot of the day, when he received two votes more than the simple majority needed for election. The Rev. Mark Sullivan, assistant to the bishop of Easton, Md., had led earlier ballots, but Powell emerged as the favorite of supporters of the three trailing candidates and received all but four of their votes at the end.
Saturday, Powell was consecrated to the office of bishop in a ceremony at Burress Auditorium on the Virginia Tech campus.
Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning, national head of the Episcopal Church, led a group of dignitaries. There were 21 other bishops, family members - including Powell's wife, Dorothy, and three children - and international visitors from sister dioceses in Bradford, England, and Sudan. Retiring Bishop A. Heath Light played a prominent role in the consecration.
For the ceremony, Powell chose to include symbols and elements of his life in the church.
Growing up in Salem, Ore., Powell lived across the street from St. Paul's Church and grew up with it and the rector's children as "an everyday presence." He was baptized, confirmed and ordained at St. Paul's. There he met Dorothy while the two were high school members of the church youth group. They were married in St. Paul's 26 years ago.
Thirty choir members from that congregation presented a concert in Blacksburg as the prelude to the consecration.
A genealogy that includes several ministers also figured in the consecration. Powell carried a cross in his pocket that belonged to one of his great-grandmothers - an ordained Congregationalist minister. A great-grandfather was an Evangelical Brethren preacher.
The new bishop's paternal grandmother was Episcopalian, however, as was his father.
Powell began his studies at Claremont McKenna College in California still considering a career in banking or politics. But while he was there, "nurtured richly by the college chaplain and the local church," he realized that the priesthood was his real calling.
There wasn't any single blinding revelation, Powell said, but "looking back, I can see that the chaplain and the rector of the local church were all involved in that" realization. "There was a rich worship experience on campus, coupled with a rich involvement in the community" during the late 1960s in the heat of the Vietnam and civil rights experiences.
He graduated from Claremont McKenna in 1970, then headed straight for Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. For 10 years after his graduation in 1973, Powell served small parishes in Oregon. From 1983 to 1990, he was archdeacon and director of programs for the Diocese of North Carolina, with an emphasis on helping small congregations.
In 1990, he and his family moved back to Oregon, where he served as executive assistant to the bishop of the Diocese of Oregon. He left that job to become bishop here.
One of the apparent attractions for people here was Powell's experience pastoring and administering programs for small churches, which constitute a majority of the 60 congregations in Southwestern Virginia.
In pre-election interviews, Powell said he thought the diocese is "about the optimum size" - large enough not to be "in survival mode" but small enough for the bishop to be able to interact personally with clergy and laity.
Small congregations should be encouraged "to be faithful where they are," Powell said last week, "not distracted by big-church" programs or models.
They should "have a sense of pride in who they are."
As bishop, Powell knows he also is going to have to address ongoing denominational concerns over issues of sexuality and authority.
Nationally, Episcopalians - like many other Christian denominations - continue to struggle with the issue of homosexuality in the church, particularly whether homosexuals should be eligible for ordination.
Powell wrote before the election for bishop that he tried "to help others deal with this issue by constantly teaching and preaching that we take Scripture seriously but not literally. I also remind people that we use Scripture informed by tradition and reason to decide issues. God gives us intelligence and insights and history and wisdom to use and apply our reading of Scripture."
The debate over homosexuality - and, before that, disagreements over the ordination of women and use of the current prayer book - have spilled over into questions of authority - of bishops, individual priests, the Bible and the "baptized ministry" of individual church members.
Powell believes individuals, however, are more concerned with churches helping them figure out "how to make sense out of life."
Sunday after Sunday, people in the pews are struggling with events such as being fired, getting married, the death of a child, getting a raise and finding reassurance in life and faith.
People are seeking to discover "how God will speak to them through" the ministry of the church, he said.
"We never know where God is going to call us."
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshots) Bishop Powell. color.by CNB