A woman stopped me in the grocery store last week and said that she wished I were her Mormon bishop. We had a good laugh, but I think she was serious.
Doesn’t matter because it’s never going to happen. The idea of me leading any religious congregation is ridiculous. Becoming the bishop of an LDS ward is insane.
Why? Well, for a whole bunch of reasons, including that I hate long church meetings. But mainly because some members would get their feelings hurt. Hell, some people always get their feelings hurt.
As bishop, I might say something untoward in sacrament meeting, like the loving patience that Joseph and Mary must have needed to toilet train the savior of the world.
This, of course, would not be received well by certain personality types. The offended party(ies) would complain about me to the LDS stake president. Yes, they would. It’s happened before, and I wasn’t even bishop. Who knows how bad it would get if I were?
“Bishop Kirby said only an idiot would be alarmed that a deacon was passing the sacrament without a necktie. President, I almost lost my testimony!”
I’m not entirely sure how it would work from there. Presumably the stake president would pass the word on to a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, who in turn would tell a Mormon apostle, who would then hasten the news to the ear of the LDS Church president.
After inquiring of the Lord, the prophet would come back with an inspired solution:
“Make him the stake president. That’ll shut him up.”
But we don’t have to worry. The idea of me becoming an LDS bishop is every bit as possible as the internet becoming a primary place of grace and wisdom.
This is good. Being a Mormon bishop is tough. I’ve been in a couple of bishoprics, and I know what a bishop does. Most times he gets it right. Other times he doesn’t. He’s human.
Among various groups, stories of bad bishops and other church leaders abound — the bishop was insensitive to their needs, the bishop didn’t let them have a temple recommend, he was a homophobe, he voted for Trump, and so on.
I’ve never had a bad bishop. Surprising, I know. You’d think if anyone had ever been stepped on by a bishop it would be me. I’m not exactly what you might call “correlated.”
Honestly, I wish at least once that I’d had a bad bishop. It would be great material. But the truth is that I never have.
Some bishops have been better than others, but none of them has ever hurt my feelings on purpose or even by accident. Given that we’re talking about me, I’m not sure they could have.
This might change. Now that I’ve moved into a new ward (Rose Summit) in Herriman, I have a new bishop — and he wants to see me this week.
If you don’t hear from me again, you’ll know that it didn’t go well — whether it was inspired or not.