Pastor Jessica Crist installed as Montana Synod Bishop

September 8 marked the installation of the Pastor Jessica Crist as Bishop of the Montana Synod of the ELCA.  Crist, who took office September 1, was elected on June 2, and will serve a six year term as the head of the denomination’s 50,000 Lutherans in Montana and Northern Wyoming.  She replaces the Rev. Richard Omland, who will be moving to Minnesota to take a position with Luther Seminary.

Presiding  and preaching at the Installation service was the Rev. Mark Hanson, Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and President of the Lutheran World Federation.  Also in attendance was former Montana Synod Bishops Richard Omland and Mark Ramseth, state ecumenical and interfaith partners, and ELCA Bishops from the Northwest.

The Installation took place at St. Luke the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Great Falls. Lutherans and Catholics, separated for nearly 500 years since the Protestant Reformation, nevertheless have cordial ecumenical relations in Montana. Not only are they partners in the Montana Association of Churches, but they also have a special covenant of agreement signed in 1999. In addition, the Montana Synod has a special relationship with the Montana Association of Jewish Communities, who will also be represented at the Installation. Tribal elders from Rocky Boy and Fort Peck will also participate in the service.

Bishop Crist is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Divinity School.  She has spent the last five years as Associate to the Bishop, and has served congregations in Montana and Massachusetts. For 18 years she was the Director of the Northern Rockies Institute of Theology, a continuing education ministry that has received national attention. She has been active with the Montana Association of Churches, and served as its President.  Bishop Crist is the first woman to be elected a Lutheran Bishop in the Western United States.

Bishop Crist and her husband, Turner Graybill, are parents of 2 children. Rhiannon is a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and Raphael is a sophomore at Columbia University in New York.