Bishop to leave episcopacy for agency

United Methodist News Service
STAMFORD, Conn.—Bishop Edward Paup has been elected to lead the General Board of Global Ministries, which oversees global missions and is the denomination’s largest agency.
The election came March 11 during the board’s spring meeting. He is to assume the post of general secretary Sept. 1. Until that time, Bishop Felton May will continue as the interim top executive.
Paup, 62, is bishop of the Seattle Episcopal Area, which includes the Pacific Northwest and Alaska Missionary conferences, and is president of the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops. He said he would tender his resignation from the episcopacy, effective Aug. 31, when the Council of Bishops meets in April. The denomination is to elect new bishops during jurisdictional meetings in July.
The election of an active bishop to oversee a church agency is unprecedented in the 40-year history of The United Methodist Church.
U.S. bishops are elected for life and, while some have resigned for various reasons, none has left for full-time leadership of a church agency.
Paup, 62, said he wants to “model the possibility” of moving beyond the episcopal role.
“There are times when some of us are called to lead a particular ministry in our church,” he said.
No stranger to the mission board, Paup became a director in 2004 and serves as president of the United Methodist Committee on Relief. He chairs the board’s health and relief committee and its audit committee and serves on its finance and executive panels.
Paup said he strongly believes in the importance of the role played by the general secretaries of the denominational agencies and commissions and the need for him to resign as bishop to be “in the same category” as his fellow chief executives.
Paup said his interest in mission grew through his longtime involvement with the work of The Advance for Christ and His Church, the denomination’s second-mile giving program. He served as chair of the Advance from 1996 to 2000.
Paup said he has been drawn “to the importance of the mission opportunities that we have in Jesus Christ across the globe.”
The mission agency’s previous chief executive, the Rev. R. Randy Day, was dismissed during the board’s annual meeting last October. The personnel committee didn’t re-nominate Day and instead called for a vote on May as interim leader. The official reason cited was that the board “was looking for a different style of administrative leadership.”
Bishop Joel N. Martinez, board president, lauded Paup as a “highly experienced” choice to lead the agency, with a deep commitment to mission and a “great vision for the church.”
A native of Oil City, Pa., and 1967 graduate of UM-related Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pa., Paup earned a master of divinity degree from UM-related Iliff School of Theology in Denver in 1970. He was named Iliff Alumnus of the Year in 1995 and received an Excellence in Ministry Award the following year.
Paup was ordained a deacon in the Western Pennsylvania Conference in 1968 and transferred to the Rocky Mountain Conference a year later, where he was ordained an elder in 1970. He served as a pastor in Colorado from 1970 to 1989, superintendent of the Utah/Western District from 1989 to 1993 and assistant to the bishop from 1993 to 1996. He was elected a bishop in 1996.
Paup led the Portland Episcoal Area until 2004, when he was appointed to the Seattle Area.
Paup served on the General Council on Ministries from 1996 to 2004 and was its president from 2000 to 2004. He was a member of the World Methodist Council Executive Committee from 1996 to 2001 and served on the General Commission on Communication from 1992 to 1996. He was a General and jurisdictional conference delegate in 1988, 1992 and 1996.
He is a member of the board of governors of the Columbia Tower Club in Seattle and the board of trustees of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. From 1996 to 2004, he was a board member at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, Willamette University in Salem, Ore., and the Northwest House of Theological Studies in Salem.
Paup and his wife, Carol, have three daughters and five grandchildren.