News and Views

By Melissa Lauber

Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling was reassigned by the Northeastern Jurisdiction Committee on the Episcopacy to lead the Baltimore-Washington and Peninsula-Delaware Conferences. The appointment was announced and celebrated on Nov. 4 at the Jurisdiction’s meeting in College Park, Md.

“I am happy, I am humbled, and I am hallelujah-proud to be the servant leader of the Peninsula-Delaware and Baltimore-Washington Conferences!” the bishop said.

 At a gathering of the NEJ delegates from both conferences and members of her Cabinets, who gathered to celebrate her return as the bishop, Easterling expressed hope and gratitude for the good work and the continuing possibilities for vitality unfolding in both conferences. “Let’s be brave, let’s be bold, lets’ show up and continue what we’re doing and go even further,” she said. “I’m excited and I hope you are too.”

 Bishop Easterling was appointed to the BWC in 2016, following her election as a bishop. She began serving as the episcopal leader of the Peninsula Delaware Conference when the College of Bishops created the affiliation following the retirement of Bishop Peggy Johnson.

 During the Jurisdictional Conference session, Oct. 31-Nov. 4, delegates elected the Rev. Hector Burgos of the Greater New Jersey Conference, to be a bishop. He will begin serving Jan. 1, 2023.

 Other assignments made by the Episcopacy Committee and the College of Bishops included:

• Bishop John Schol to the Greater New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania Conferences,
• Bishop Thomas Bickerton to the New York Conference,
• Bishop Hector Burgos to the Upper New York Conference,
• Bishop Cynthia Moore Koikoi to the Western Pennsylvania and Susquehanna Conferences, and
• Bishop Sandra Steiner Ball to the West Virginia and Susquehanna Conferences.

 Episcopal coverage of the New England Annual Conference will be decided after the College of Bishops meets with that conference’s Episcopacy Committee.

 Bishop Easterling told the delegates that she received the phone call about her assignment from the Rev. TR Chattin at 5:55 a.m. on Nov. 4, immediately following the committee finalized its decisions. “I went into a hallelujah dance,” she admitted. “The tears just flowed. Returning here has been my singular prayer.”

 The bishop encouraged the people of the more than 1,000 churches in the affiliation to continue to share their questions, hopes and dreams with her and she lifted up a favorite passage from Jeremiah 12:5, which guides her work as a servant leader: “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?"

“I don’t feel no way tired,” the bishop said. “I am ready to run on. … I hope we have enough grace within us to go on and walk into God’s preferred future.”

See more news about the 2022 Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference session.