Bishop-elect Rice, 46, sees his election as evidence of a growing desire within the Anglican Church to see the next generation of leaders begin to emerge.

"About 15 years ago," he says, "there were a number of priests, each in their late 40s, who put their hands up and accepted the challenge of leadership in this church. The wheel is turning. It's now time for a new wave of priests to show they're ready to embrace that challenge."

Rice's election has been welcomed by Archbishop Brown Turei, primate of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia.

"I look forward to working with him", he says. Brown, who is himself based in Gisborne, and is also Pihopa o Te Tai Rawhiti -- or leader of the Maori Anglican Church in the Tai Rawhiti tribal region -- says he also looks forward "to introducing David to our people."

The Diocese of Waiapu, which covers much of the east of the North Island, is a cradle of Anglicanism in New Zealand, and it has a reputation for pioneering. When the diocese elected Paul Reeves as Bishop in 1971, for example, it was the first diocese to choose a Maori bishop.

In Rice, Waiapu's electors have made another bold choice. They've chosen a young bishop, a man who was born and raised in the United States, and who, till ten years ago, was a Methodist minister.

Those electors will also have been attracted by Rice's leadership at St Paul's Cathedral. Dunedin's cathedral had been through troubled times -- and now, six years after he began there, the picture is much brighter.

"The mother church of this diocese is now in good shape," says Rice, "and it's one of main contributors to the life of this diocese."

Rice was born and raised in Lexington, North Carolina, and he won an athletic scholarship to Lenoir Rhyne College, where he played tennis and football and took degrees in history and religion.

He later won a place at Duke University's Divinity School, gained a Master's Degree in Divinity, trained for ministry in the Methodist Church -- and in 1989 he was posted to a parish in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In 1991, Rice and his wife, Tracy, came to New Zealand, and for two years he served as minister to the Thames Uniting Parish, before returning to another five-year posting at a Methodist church in his home town, Lexington, North Carolina.

By their third year, they had decided they wanted to make their home in New Zealand. They returned to New Zealand, where he was received into the Anglican Church in Christchurch.

He then served in the Mt. Herbert parish on Banks Peninsula for four years, before accepting appointment as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in 2002. 

Rice will be ordained and installed as Bishop of the Diocese of Waiapu on Saturday, June 7, at the Waiapu Cathedral in Napier.

The Rices have two teenage children.