For about two or three hours last Friday evening, I was in constant, desperate prayer. I was overwhelmed with anxiety, to the point of tears. My repeated prayer was this: “Please God, please, don’t make me bishop.”

I’ll tell you how I got there, and how God answered that prayer.

It all started last fall. That’s when I decided that if I was nominated for bishop, I would accept the nomination. Now, normally pastors don’t make that decision nine months before the election. But I had to, because I’m the chair of our synod’s election committee. The committee needed to know if I was going to be a candidate or not, because if so, I’d have to recuse myself from most of the work during the election…and somebody else would have to do it.

(Bishops are elected once every six years in each synod of the ELCA. It works like this: on the first ballot, hundreds of clergy and laity can write the name of any ELCA pastor at all. This ballot becomes the nominating ballot. Any pastor who receives a vote on the first ballot has the opportunity to withdraw their name at that time. That is the only chance to withdraw their name.  After that, the second ballot has all the names of those nominated who did not withdraw, and then each ballot has progressively fewer people. After the second ballot, there are opportunities for all remaining nominees to speak, answer questions, and so forth. So, these bishop elections happen in May or June at “Synod Assembly,” an event with several hundred clergy and laypeople. Synod Assembly lasts three days on bishop’s election years, because the process takes so much time.)

So, yeah, I had to decide way ahead of time if I would withdraw my name or not. And I decided that no, I would not withdraw my name. I didn’t want to be bishop, and I didn’t think there was any chance I would be elected, but I just didn’t want to say no to the Holy Spirit. I’ve been wrong about where God was calling me before, so…that was that. I would allow my name to continue, but I knew nothing would come of it anyway.

Then it got complicated. A few months later, I got a phone call from a colleague whom I trust greatly. We talked for a while, and my colleague shared that they thought I would make a great bishop. They had heard that I wasn’t going to withdraw my name, and they encouraged me to really think about it. That was mind-blowing. Me? Bishop?

As the months continued to pass, and I kept working with my committee to plan the election process, I started thinking more and more about being bishop. I started to think, “I might just have the gifts.” I started to think, “I might just be what the synod needs right now.” I started to think, “I could do that job.” And I kept seeing coincidences, little winks that encouraged me to think this might be the time, this might be the calling. Holy crap, maybe this was really happening.

I couldn’t let go of it. I couldn’t stop thinking about the election, because I had so much work to do as it got closer. And because I kept thinking about the election, I kept thinking about becoming bishop. It stressed me out because I didn’t know – I couldn’t yet know – whether it would happen or not. It was all in the hands of the voters (and hopefully the Holy Spirit). But remarkably – and my wife commented on this – I wasn’t scared at all about the possibility of being bishop. It sounded completely doable. I just wanted to know what was next. I wasn’t scared of staying where I was – I love my congregation. And I wasn’t scared of becoming bishop. I just wanted to know.

So then, the Assembly finally came around. I received twelve votes on the first (nominating) ballot, and I did not withdraw my name. The second ballot happened, and I was in fourth place on that ballot. That was enough to move on, because the third ballot included the top seven nominees. And that’s when the election gets interesting.

As one of the top seven nominees, I got to give a speech before the whole assembly. I was supposed to identify myself and share what was most important to me. My speech went something like this:

My name is Michael Scholtes, and I am an Advent person. What I mean by that is that I live much of my life as though I’m in the season of Advent. I live with a sense of longing, of waiting, of wishing, and finally of seeing hope. I think one of the reason I experience life this way is because of my lifelong struggle with depression. I have lived with clinical depression for my whole life, and it has led me into darkness. And yet, I have found that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. And part of the way I’ve found that light is by talking about it. By sharing publicly in my congregation and in places like this, I have found healing both for me and those around me. I think telling the truth about this has led to hope.

I believe also that we are an Advent people. I look around at this synod, and I see brokenness everywhere – broken people, broken congregations, a broken synod – worried about so many things, finding it hard to trust, wondering what’s next. And I think that the way to deal with this is to talk about it. To honestly look at the brokenness and claim it for what it is. If we can do that, I believe that we will find healing. If elected as bishop, I would have a focus on listening to people throughout the synod, and acknowledging and honoring their pain, their suffering, their brokenness. And together, we would look for the light shining in the darkness. Because it is always there.

Or something like that. I don’t know. For once, I didn’t have it written down, so I can’t copy and paste it here. And then, after that speech, the assembly was divided into three groups, and each of the nominees went individually to the three groups to have a Q&A session with them. At my sessions, I went even further into the darkness with them, telling them a bit about my suicide attempt and how I literally saw a light from God that shined in the darkness. They were good conversations, and I felt like I had the opportunity to really share where my hope comes from. It almost felt like I was at an event where I was talking about my book.

And then came dinner. On the way to dinner, at dinner, and afterward, a lot of people who saw me told me that they really appreciated my words. A few shared their own stories with mental illness. And a few told me that they really thought we needed a bishop who talked like that. And then something suddenly snapped inside me.

And I got scared. All at once, I got terrified. Oh my God, I thought. Maybe people will really vote for me on these final ballots. Oh my God, I thought. I suddenly realize what the job of bishop is like. There is so much travel. There will be so much time away from my kids. There will be so much conflict to manage. There will be so much, so much, so much, and oh my God I don’t want this.

It was like a switch flipped. The calm that I’d had inside me for the past nine months suddenly evaporated like mist. My heart raced. I felt a hand squeezing my head, I felt a rock in my stomach. I suddenly did not want this. I did not want this. I did not want this.

So I prayed. I went out to my car and sat there and prayed. Then I went back in for the third ballot. I did not vote for myself, I assure you. And I waited with the rest of the Assembly as reports were presented, speeches were made. I waited as the ballots were counted in the back. All the while, for that entire time, I prayed under my breath, “Please God, please, don’t make me bishop.” I wanted to be voted off on this ballot, so that I could let go of this anxiety now, and not hold onto it overnight until the fourth ballot the next morning. I just wanted to let this go, and let this dream go that had suddenly become a nightmare.

Finally the results were announced. The top three nominees would move on to ballot four. I was a distant sixth, only twenty votes. And as I saw those results on the screen, I started to laugh. And I suddenly knew that God was telling me in that moment, “Honey, this was never about you being bishop.”

I believe that God really wanted me to make that speech. I’m not sure why. Maybe something will come of it later. Maybe a door will open because of that. Or maybe there was just somebody out there in the assembly who needed to hear that. But I believe that God planted the idea in my head that I could be bishop to get me to that point, to get me onto the stage before the third ballot.

I believe that nine months ago, God reached into my psyche and suppressed the fear I would normally have felt at becoming bishop. Suppressed that fear so that I would continue on this path. And then, when I had done what I was supposed to do, God let the fear out again, and let me have just a few hours of terror. And then let me see that God was never calling me to be bishop – that’s just not what I’m made for. But I had an opportunity I’d never had before, to address the entire synod assembly, including several visiting bishops, and who knows what opportunities are on the horizon?

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