Please pray for our new Bishop, Dr. Scott Jones, who will follow bishop Janice Huie.  Bishop Jones was my evangelism professor at SMU, is a power speaker and writer, and an intensely practical theologian.  Here is a brief  biography

“Friends in the Northwest District,

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Last night at Jurisdictional Conference Bishop Scott Jones was appointed as our new bishop to begin September 1 when Bishop Janice Riggle Huie retires. A little about Bishop Jones.

Scott Jameson Jones currently serves as the resident bishop of the Great Plains Area of the United Methodist Church serving the states of Kansas and Nebraska.

He was born in 1954 in Nashville, Tenn. and was raised in Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana and Colorado. He received degrees from the University of Kansas (B.A. in Philosophy), Perkins School of Theology of Southern Methodist University (Master of Theology) and Southern Methodist University (Ph.D. in Religious Studies). His dissertation research was focused on Wesley Studies and the History of Biblical Interpretation.

He was ordained deacon in the Kansas East Annual Conference and elder in the North Texas Annual Conference. From 1986 to 1997 he served as pastor of three congregations in North Texas. In 2003-2004 he served as interim pastor at Stonebridge UMC in McKinney, Texas. From 1997 to 2004 he served on the faculty of Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. In 2004 he was elected a bishop by the South Central Jurisdictional Conference and assigned to serve as the resident bishop of the Kansas Area as of September 1, 2004. He was assigned to the Great Plains Area effective September 1, 2012, which included the Kansas East, Kansas West and Nebraska United Methodist conferences. The three conferences joined together to become the Great Plains Conference January 1, 2014.

His most recent books are The Future of the United Methodist Church (2010), Staying At the Table: A Gift of Unity For United Methodists (2008), Evangelistic Love of God and Neighbor: A Theology of Discipleship and Witness (2003), and United Methodist Doctrine: The Extreme Center (2002), all from Abingdon Press. Other books he has written include John Wesley’s Conception and Use of Scripture and Gathered Into One: The World Methodist Conference Speaks. He was co-author of Wesley and the Quadrilateral: Renewing the Conversation. He has been named associate editor of volumes 5 and 6 in the Bicentennial Edition of The Works of John Wesley, the scholarly edition of Wesley’s Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament.

 Scott is married to Mary Lou Reece, who is president of Reece Construction Company. They have three children. 

 A Service of Installation is scheduled for October at Marvin UMC. More information will follow as it is confirmed.

Please be in prayer for Bishop Huie as she completes her appointment here, and for Bishop Jones as he prepares for his appointment here.

May God bless our ministry together”

(From Marlin Fenn, TAC SouthwestDistrict Superintendent)