The Rev. Tom Berlin, lead pastor of Floris United Methodist Church in Herndon and formerly of Winchester, has been consecrated a bishop in The United Methodist Church. He will serve the Florida Annual Conference beginning in January.
Berlin, 59, was elected Nov. 2 at the jurisdiction’s meeting at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, according to information from the church’s Virginia Conference. He received 213 votes out of 346 valid ballots cast. He needed 208 to be elected.
Berlin was the first bishop elected at the meeting.
His two-year term of service begins Jan. 1. In the United States, bishops are elected to serve for life.
Berlin was the endorsed candidate of the Virginia Conference. He grew up at Braddock Street United Methodist Church in Winchester and he received a call to ordained ministry while serving as a summer counselor at the Tennessee Outreach Project (Mountain T.O.P.) mission camp in Ozone, Tennessee.
After graduating from Virginia Tech, he earned his master of divinity degree from Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta and entered ordained ministry in Virginia in 1988. He subsequently was appointed pastor of the Brucetown-Welltown Charge in Frederick County followed by appointment as pastor of Toms Brook United Methodist Church in Toms Brook.
Since 1997, he has been lead pastor of Floris United Methodist Church in suburban Washington, D.C. The congregation has grown from an average worship attendance of 400 when he began his appointment to 1,200 before the pandemic, according to information from the Virginia Conference.
In recent years, Berlin has taken on denominational leadership roles in efforts to help the church “cross its deep divisions over LGBTQ inclusion,” according to information from the Virginia Conference. The Council of Bishops appointed Berlin to serve on the Commission on a Way Forward that developed proposals for the special 2019 General Conference intended to resolve the decades-long debate.
“When that special session of the denomination’s top-lawmaking assembly failed to end the turmoil, Berlin was part of the team that negotiated the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace Through Separation,” information from the Virginia Conference states. “The mediated agreement is heading to the next General Conference, which is now postponed by COVID-related complications to 2024.”
Berlin was among the centrist members of the negotiation team, according to information from the Virginia Conference. He has backed proposals that would leave same-sex marriage up to local churches and gay ordination up to annual conferences.
“He and other new bishops are coming aboard as the denomination deals with the continuing fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising congregational disaffiliations amid a denominational splintering without the formal separation of the protocol,” information from the Virginia Conference states.
In The United Methodist Church, bishops are ordained elders who are called to “lead and oversee the spiritual and temporal affairs of The United Methodist Church.” Bishops, in consultation with district superintendents, are responsible for appointing clergy. They also preside at annual conferences, jurisdictional conferences and General Conference, the denomination’s top-lawmaking assembly.
Berlin and his wife, Karen, have four daughters.
His first job was delivering newspapers for the Winchester Evening Star.
Credit: Source link
