Alabama’s new United Methodist bishop carries on mentor’s mission work, spiritual lessons

When Bishop Jonathan Holston became head of the North Alabama Conference on Sept. 1 , he took over a post once held by his mentor, Bishop Lloyd Knox.

Knox led the North Alabama Conference from 1984-92, after an earlier career as a missionary in Cuba and Argentina. Knox, who died in 2014 at 85, also served as bishop of North Georgia from 1992-96, and that's where Holston met him.

"When he was assigned to annual conference in North Georgia, I had just been appointed to what we call the council of ministries," Holston said. "I was the disaster response coordinator. The first day, Sept. 1, I'm coming to the Methodist center downtown on Ralph McGill Boulevard."

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Although Holston was early for work on his first day, Knox was earlier.

"He's sitting in my office, peeling an apple," Holston said. "He's gotten there before everybody else. My heart dropped."

Holston was startled into silence.

"I don't know what to say to him," he said. "He said, "I'm Lloyd Knox. Have You Traveled? Do you have a passport? You need to get your passport. We're going to Costa Rica. I've got something I need for you to see."

Holston got his passport, then he and Knox flew to Alajuela, Costa Ric.

"It's kind of hilly," Holston said. "You fly over, then you have to dive. When you fly out, you have to go up."

Knox took Holston on daily walks.

"Every morning we would walk down to the city and back," Holston said.

"I said, 'Bishop Knox, what do you expect of clergy?' He says, 'I expect for them to be on the cutting edge of ministry, making a difference for the sake of Jesus Christ.' I said, 'What do you expect of laity?' He said, 'I expect for them to be on the cutting edge of ministry, making a difference for the sake of Jesus Christ.' I said, 'You expect clergy and laity to be missionaries?' He said, 'No, not everybody can be a missionary. But everybody can have a mission spirit.'"

Then Knox left.

"We go there for two weeks," Holston said. "He leaves after the first week. I said, 'What are we going to do?' He said, 'You'll figure it out.' I said, 'How are we going to get home?' He said, 'You'll figure it out.' So, here we are in a place where I don't speak any Spanish. We had done all this work. Wonderful mission stuff. So, he left me there in Alajuela. I made it to San Jose. I got on a plane after a week, and I made it home.

"When I got back, he was in my office again. You know what he said? 'I see you made it home.' What he was teaching me was that the world was a mission. The day of the institutional church had passed.

"The day of the missional church was upon us. He says, 'Learn to deal with the people in your area, how to grow and listen, if you listen to them, they will listen to you. And you will connect.' That's how I got started traveling, because of him. From then I went on to Zimbabwe and to Kenya and then I ended up in China and Hong Kong.

"Then he and I went to India. I spent a month in India with him, traveling all over. He was in Pakistan, and I was all over India. When I got back with Bishop Knox, he says, 'I see you made it.'"

Holston got the message Knox was trying to send.

"From that time on, I knew mission work was connecting with people in ways you never thought you could connect with them," Holston said.

In addition to foreign missions, which included disaster relief, such as responding to Hurricane Andrew. "We'd go to deal with floods, and fires and deal with people's lives. I met them in parking lots and delivered checks to them from good people in Methodist churches who wanted to make sure they had help."

After a tornado hit Tuscaloosa in 2011, Holston's daughter, Brittany, was the one who needed help. She was a nursing student at the University of Alabama.

"My daughter was here in Tuscaloosa when that EF-5 tornado came through," Holston said. She called him while he was visiting a church in Georgia.

"She said, 'Dad, I don't know if I'm going to make it.' I said, Brittany, just get in the tub and cover yourself over. You'll make it.' We were able to get in contact with her later and she says, 'Dad, I walked out to one half of my apartment, and it was if nothing happened. I looked at the other side and it was gone.' Tuscaloosa First was the church that invited her in, along with others.

"In the midst of that tornado that devastated Tuscaloosa, it was the church that gave her a respite, that allowed her to sleep on the floor and have a sense that all was well."

Now a nurse practitioner, Brittany is director of surgery at Emory Midtown in Atlanta, the hospital where she was born, Holston said.

His daughter found her mission right where she started.

"I've learned that mission is who we are," Holston said. "When we're connected with people, we're connected in ways we'd never ever dreamed that we could do so. I've seen people when they didn't have anything; they're struggling to make ends meet. I've taken young people on mission trips and seen how their eyes have opened up."

Holston wants to pass on his sense of mission on to a new generation.

"When we get it down to those young people, that's what grows the church," Holston said. "It's planting those seeds and cultivating those seeds that makes the difference."

Churches should not only be measured in terms of attendance alone but by effective ministry to their communities, he said.

"There are places where there are people where we ought to grow by numbers," Holston said. "There are places where we won't grow by numbers, but we'll grow by the quality of ministry that we have with our senior adults, with people who caught in the midst of poverty."

The disaster coordinator for the Alabama-West Florida Conference has taken supplies to areas hit by Hurricane Helene, Holston said.

"That's who are when we're the church," he said. "Not when we're arguing with one another, but when we're in mission and ministry with one another. That's making disciples. That's transforming the world."

Worship on Sundays needs to be a refueling point for sharing ministry in the community, he said.

"Then you exit to go out in the community to be the best expression of Jesus Christ," Holston said. "You may be the best scripture that they read, by your actions."

Everybody pulling together creates a powerful atmosphere, he said.

"Saturday in the South is football," Holston said. "A lot of people worshipped this past Saturday in Tuscaloosa. Whether they made it to church or not, I don't know. But they certainly had a worship service on Saturday night. In that place there were people of different nationalities, different mindsets, different political understandings, but when they had something they wanted to do together, they did it."

To pull together requires putting down tendencies toward divisiveness, he said.

"The only way we get past that is we've got to see each other as people, not as objects or labels," Holston said. "We need to see where God needs us to be."

Conversation is the best way to defuse division, he said.

"I like to sit down and talk to people where they are and get a chance to see who they are," Holston said.

"That gets us past the things that divide us. We have this mantra of relentless attack that's crept into the church and it's teaching us to never back down from an argument, sometimes to destroy even if the destruction of one means the destruction of many, and the obliteration of sanity and hope. It's this meanness thing and we've got to get past that."

While he started the job Sept. 1, Holston was ceremonially installed as bishop for the Alabama-West Florida Conference on Sept. 22 at Montgomery First United Methodist Church.

Today, he will be formally installed as bishop of North Alabama, Knox's former conference, in a ceremony at Asbury United Methodist Church in Birmingham.

Holston's spiritual journey owes a lot to Bishop Knox, he said.

"Bishop Knox was the guy who opened all that up for me," Holston said. "We started on a journey, and I've never forgotten that."

Holston can separate his ministerial career into two parts: Before he met Knox, after.

"I didn't know what I was doing," Holston said. "Once I met him, I knew exactly what I needed to do."