 NEW CAMPUS MISSIONER ACCEPTS CALL
Bishop Dean Wolfe has announced that the Reverend Michael S. Bell has been called as a new Campus Missioner for the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas, to begin work Sept. 8.
He will be based in Manhattan and will have responsibility for ministry with college and university campuses primarily in the western portion of the diocese. He joins Campus Missioner the Rev. Susan Terry, who is based in Lawrence with primary ministry in the eastern half of the diocese.
Bishop Wolfe said, “We are so thrilled to welcome Michael Bell to Kansas and to our diocesan staff. I believe his substantial experience in diverse fields will be an excellent addition to our program and will allow us to continue to build on the strengths of our campus ministries.”
Bell said he sees his work as Campus Missioner as helping to “cultivate ministerial leadership in communities around every college and university campus in the diocese to better welcome and nourish those who seek a loving relationship with God and compassionate fellowship with others.”
Bell is a transitional deacon who was ordained in June in the Diocese of Los Angeles. He most recently worked as a parish administrator at St. John’s Pro-Cathedral in Los Angeles, assisting the congregation in adapting parish operations for growth and development. He also co-chaired the committee that planned and oversaw the recent ordination and consecration of two suffragan bishops for the diocese.
A fifth-generation Texan, Bell received his undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University – Commerce and has a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. He received a Certificate of Anglican Studies from the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont (Calif.) and has taken classes at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. He also has a Master of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Before moving to Los Angeles three years ago, Bell lived and worked in New York City, where he was active at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan. Before pursuing a call to ordained ministry, he was a management consultant, held senior positions with a healthcare system and a global pharmaceutical company, and has been an avid hospice volunteer and advocate.
Of his impending move to Kansas, Bell said, “Yes, it’s bittersweet to leave my friends and colleagues in southern California, but I know there are welcoming hands and warm hearts of new colleagues and friends awaiting me in the Diocese of Kansas. Once the word was out that I was headed to Kansas, I was delighted by the number of Kansas connections that suddenly emerged from my network of friends and colleagues, and many folk have had wonderful things to say about the diocese.”
Among those connections, Bell’s late grandparents lived in Wichita, and a cousin still resides there.
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