The chief consecrator will be the Most Rev. Frank Griswold, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Joining in the consecration are visiting bishops from throughout the United States, including bishops from Province IV in the southeastern U.S., who are meeting in Asheville prior to the consecration.

Some 3,000 Episcopalians and friends from churches in the 28 westernmost counties in North Carolina are expected for the consecration. The colorful ceremony will include acolytes bearing banners from the 62 parishes in the diocese, liturgical kites, streamers and five processions of both clergy and lay leaders. Over the main altar at the Civic Center, Asheville architect Crawford Murphy has designed a centerpiece of cascading, intersecting lighted crosses.

A choir of some 300 singers from all over western North Carolina will provide music, and Kyle Ritter, organist and choirmaster at the Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville, and Brad Gee of St. James, Hendersonville, will lead it.

At the Eucharist, every parish in the diocese will be represented on 24 Eucharistic teams, which will use chalices and patens made for the occasion by skilled potters from throughout the diocese.

Knowing who the flock is: Western North Carolina welcomes new bishop G. Porter Taylor

[Editor's Note: The following interview appeared in a recent edition of the Highland Episcopalian.]

[ENS, Diocese of Western North Carolina] - Driving his white Volvo up and down the hills around the University of Georgia, Bishop-elect Porter Taylor breaks into an easy smile, recalling his three criteria for moving to Athens, Georgia, seven years ago: access to the New York Times every day, a public radio station, a good library.

"We're fairly simple people," he said.

His requirements for relocation to the college town and the rectorship of St. Gregory the Great Episcopal Church reflect Taylor's quest -- then and now -- to feed and enrich his mind. It's a journey that will continue as he prepares to become the Diocese of Western North Carolina's sixth bishop.

His first task will be to get to know people. "You can't be a leader until you know who the flock is," he says. "As bishop, there's a certain authority in the office, but there's also the authority that comes in relationships, in getting to know people."

Initially, he'll want "to find out how I can best use my gifts in accordance with the needs of the diocese."

"I'm particularly excited about the teaching, and preaching" aspects of being a bishop, along with building close relationships with the clergy. He sees his first months in the diocese as "a time of listening ... a time to find out who we are together."

And just who is this tall, lean priest with patrician features and a warm courtliness who recently won the hearts of the diocese and election as bishop on the third ballot? Is he a conservative, a revisionist, a liberal?

"People are so hung up on issues," Taylor responds. "That's not who we are ... The church is so consumed by political dialogue. We label everything. But that's not a valid way of doing it."

"We're at a crucial juncture in the life of the Church," he said. "Any time you get to this place, you have to go deeper in the faith. You have to be more rooted in Jesus Christ. We have to find what binds us together before we deal with what we disagree on.

"We have to go deeper inward and work more outward as witnesses in the community."

Standing outside St. Gregory the Great Church, Taylor sweeps his arm to showcase the suburban parish's three buildings, a new memorial garden and a field that's the future site of a planted labyrinth. Inside, Taylor jokingly dubs the style of the new sanctuary, "Episcopal Amish," and indeed, its few appurtenances and Spartan clean lines reflect a simplicity and openness of a people unencumbered by material things. The altar is a long table on an open rectangular platform that parishioners encircle to receive communion.

It is from the low-slung pulpit that the gray-haired Taylor has earned a reputation as one of the best preachers in the Southeast. His sermons are posted on the parish Web site (http://www.stgregoryathens.org/). Some are also collected in Taylor's book, "To Dream as God Dreams: Sermons of Community, Conversion, and Hope," published four years ago and currently being considered for re-issue by Morehouse Publishing later this year.

Morehouse also has moved up the publication date of Taylor's new book, "From Anger to Zion: An Alphabet of Faith" to coincide with his consecration as bishop September 18. (These are essays, devotional material, each based on a Biblical text.)

Taylor's writing also includes the cover of the growing parish's semi-weekly newsletter and a monthly column in the Athens Banner-Herald, the local daily newspaper.

Living in Athens has reinforced "just how much of a Southerner I am," he says later with some amusement. It is as if, at age 53, he has come to appreciate not only the geography and the topography of the places he's lived -- the Carolinas, Tennessee and Georgia -- but also the manners, the cordiality and wholesomeness of the people of this region.

Although he was born in Rock Hill, South Carolina, both of Taylor's parents were from Asheville and he moved there with his family when he was three. His father, Dick Taylor, now deceased, was vice president of Hadley's Sweaters in Weaverville, and the Taylors were a family of what's known in the South as "Yellow Dog Democrats." The late Senator Bobby Kennedy was one of Taylor's early heroes.

The Taylor family lived in the north section of town, not far from the old Grace Elementary School (and Grace Episcopal Church, though the Taylor family were faithful members at Trinity, downtown.) In the late 1980s, Taylor's parents moved to Pawley's Island, South Carolina, where his mother still lives.

His twin sister, Sally, is an ordained Methodist minister who lives in Princeton, New Jersey, where she directs a three-city food bank. Her husband, Rick Osmer, was Taylor's roommate at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and also was ordained a Methodist minister, but is now a Presbyterian clergyman who teaches Christian Education at Princeton Theological Seminary. Taylor's older brother, Dick, is an attorney in Chapel Hill and is senior warden at the Chapel of the Cross there.

As a boy of 13, Taylor clearly remembers sitting in the sanctuary at Trinity Church in downtown Asheville one day. "I had a moment I knew I wanted to be a priest."

But, he added, he had an "upside down view of what priesthood was all about." At the time he thought priests were people who walked on water.

Later, at age 29 and living in Atlanta, he investigated the discernment process, but again, he said he "didn't feel worthy."

He described his view like an old Groucho Marx joke: "I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member."

In his mid-30s, Taylor's father became very sick, and "for the first time I knew I was mortal. I knew my father would die, and therefore, I would die." If he wanted to pursue this calling to ordained ministry, he said, he knew it was time to get on with it.

So, he was 43 when he was ordained.

"My ministry has been incredibly enriched by my teaching background ... It worked out the way it was supposed to work out," he said.

Taylor's personal philosophy mirrors that of theological author Ronald Rolheiser who in his book, "The Holy Longing," posted four non-negotiable essentials for a Christian life: a life of prayer, a commitment to social justice, the ability to live in community, a tender heart.

Taylor is a graduate of the School of Theology at Sewanee, Tennessee, and also has a Ph.D. in literature and theology from Emory University. Before his ordination to the priesthood, he taught English at Belmont University in Nashville, and before becoming rector of St. Gregory the Great in Athens, he was assistant rector at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Franklin, Tenn.

Taylor's wife, Jo, grew up in Winston-Salem where her family helped build (literally) St. Timothy's Church there. She and Taylor met in English class their sophomore year at UNC-Chapel Hill, and they were married the day after graduation.

She earned a B.S. degree in nursing, and later, because of her interest in painting, sculpture and drawing, she took another degree, in art, at Georgia State University in Atlanta. In the mid-1980s, she eared her master's degree in Public Health from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

For the past 15 years, Jo has been involved in research in long-term care. She is employed by Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, but also works for Emory University. Her specialty is falls prevention, but her overall work is improving the quality of care in nursing homes. Widely published, she is considered one of the top voices of authority in falls prevention in the country.

Her intent is to continue to work once the family moves to Western North Carolina, but to re-evaluate it after a year.

"I'd like to take this opportunity gradually to reduce that (volume of work) to let the art come through," she said, her eyes flashing as she broke into a smile that lighted her whole face.

"I'm very excited about Western North Carolina. I'm looking forward to traveling and visiting the churches in the diocese," she said. "I plan to start slow and be open to all things."

She will also be moving closer to a sister, Ann Abbott Rawls, who lives in the diocese, in Roaring Gap.

An avid gardener whose herbs and blooming plants ring their cheerful brick home a mile or so from their church, Jo Taylor talks with animation about the Taylors' two children. Son Arthur, a sophomore at Eckerd College -- a Presbyterian school in St. Petersburg, Florida -- is an interior person, interested in athletics and drums; he serves as an editor of the college literary magazine and wants to be a writer and/or a psychologist. Daughter Marie, is 14, going on 15, the feisty, dramatic, independent soul in the family. She'll be a high school sophomore this fall, and is an artist, pianist, and soccer player.

Relocating with the Taylors will be a Springer spaniel, Thomas, and a cat, Angel.