PORTLAND – The Rev. Canon Stephen Taylor Lane believes that he will begin the “grand adventure” of a lifetime today when he becomes the spiritual leader of the state’s 17,000 Episcopalians.

Members of Lane’s new flock will gather at St. Luke’s Cathedral today to participate in his consecration as the ninth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maine.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefforts Schori, the presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church, will lead the event. The Rt. Rev. Chilton Knudsen, bishop of the Maine diocese, will participate in the service that is expected to be similar to the one held in the same church a decade ago when she became the diocese’s first woman bishop.

Technically, Lane, 58, will be the bishop coadjutor until his installation in September when Knudsen, 61, will retire. He and his wife, Gretchen, a high school science teacher, live in Portland and have three grown children, who are scheduled to attend today’s consecration.

Lane said at a press conference Friday with Jefforts Schori and Knudsen at St. Luke’s parish hall that he already has put 2,300 miles on the “bishopmobile” and has been Down East to Machias. He plans to continue his travels this summer as he gets to know the state and its people in a position Lane admitted he was not sure he was ready for a year ago.

“I’ve always felt powerfully called to be a minister of the gospel and to be an agent of transformation in the world,” he said. “But I was pretty happy and pretty settled where I was, doing my work until I got challenged [at a retreat]. I made a commitment at that retreat to myself and to God to be open to a new call and very shortly thereafter things came from the diocese of Maine.”

Lane was overwhelmingly elected bishop on Oct. 26 at the diocesan convention in Bangor. He began working at the diocesan office in Portland on April 1.

“I think for me the struggle has been being open to hearing the call,” he said Friday. “Not having my mind already made up about what I thought I was supposed to be doing, and [because I was] being open, here we are in a wonderful new adventure with wonderful people in a wonderful state.”

Lane said that his experience with small congregations – a membership of fewer than 150 – in New York and his administrative skills fit well with what the Maine diocese needs at this time in its history. He said what many small churches need is a change in attitude so that they can look outward and discern what their mission is in the community rather than worrying about what kind of shape the church building is in.

Knudsen and Lane both will attend the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion this summer in Canterbury, England. Bishops from around the globe meet there every 10 years.

Concern over whether the denomination would split began three years ago when the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, was elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. American bishops approved his election. Several dozen congregations and a few dioceses have left the Episcopal Church because they disapprove of the ordination of gay clergy.

Robinson is expected to attend Lane’s consecration.

“I have a sense that we’re really learning to talk to one another,” Lane said of the controversy. “The church across the provinces has recognized that we need to be in conversation. It’s pretty uncomfortable … but once the conversation starts, it’s harder to stay mad.”

Lane was elected bishop in Maine as his former boss in New York, Bishop Jack M. McKelvey, was preparing to retire this summer. Lane went to work in 2000 in the diocesan office in Rochester, the same year McKelvey became bishop.

Ordained in 1978, Lane served churches in upstate New York for his entire career. He was serving as canon for deployment and ministry development when he was elected bishop in Maine. In Rochester, he was responsible for formation, ordination and deployment of clergy, as well as social justice issues and the Safe Church training program.

Jefforts Schori will spend the weekend in southern Maine. She will celebrate the Eucharist and preach in Spanish after Lane’s consecration at a service of Mission San Lucas, the diocesan Hispanic ministry, at the cathedral. The presiding bishop will conduct services at 10 a.m. Sunday, at Christ Episcopal Church in Biddeford.

Lane will return to Rochester, N.Y., at the end of the month for the consecration of the newly elected bishop there.

The Rev. Prince Singh, a native of India, will be consecrated on May 31, at the Eastman Theater at the University of Rochester. Before his election in February, he was rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Franklin Lakes, N.J. The church is part of the Diocese of Newark, N.J., where McKelvey was before being elected bishop in Rochester.

jharrison@bangordailynews.net

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