Jan 1. 2026

Dear Friends in Christ,

Greetings in the holy Name of Jesus, whose Incarnation wonderfully restores our human nature and makes us capable of partaking in the divine love he shares with his Father and the Holy Spirit. I pray that the power and presence of that Love is made manifest in your lives in this beautiful season of the Church’s life. On this inaugural day as your diocesan bishop, I write to you about several pressing matters.

The first is personal, and that is my heartfelt thanks to all of you for your trust in me as I begin this new leitourgia for Jesus and his Church. I have been unspeakably blessed by your consecration gifts, the material equipment required to offer the sacramental ministry to which you have called me and fill me with gratitude every time I make use of them. Vested in grace, indeed! And I’ve been even more powerfully encouraged and empowered by your prayers and innumerable words and gestures of welcome and support, which I value more than I can express. The formidable task which stood before me has now arrived, and now that the weight is fully upon my shoulders, I know that I do not bear it alone but undertake it with God’s help and in companionship with all of you.

The second issue regards our common ecclesial life as a diocese. As of today, I am in oversight of every parish in our diocese, including those which were overseen by Bishop George Wayne Smith as a part of Bishop Sumner’s arrangement under the provisions set by General Convention Resolution B012. Given my fundamental and unwavering commitment to the fullness of the Church’s traditional teaching on the human person, I have a canonical duty to provide pastoral support for couples, clergy, and parishes who wish to celebrate same-sex marriage liturgies. I have asked Bishop Dean Wolfe, Bishop-in-Residence at the Church of St. Michael and All Angels – and he has graciously agreed – to oversee marriage rites at the four parishes which currently offer same-sex marriage. Similar provisions will be made for any additional parishes in the Diocese of Dallas in which the clergy desire to offer same-sex marriage to their parishioners. However, prior to such a request, I would expect to have a conversation with the clergy and lay leadership and for the parish to undertake a process of Bible study and dialogue (the details of which will be made available in a separate guidance to those clergy).

In the short term, this means that I will be making visitations, celebrating the Holy Eucharist, and offering the Sacrament of Confirmation in all parishes of our diocesan family. They are my people, and I am their father in God, full stop. The clergy of the diocese may expect a detailed briefing on changes in the discernment process for holy orders that will be in effect for all discerners, regardless of parish, at clergy conference this April.

Finally, I want to address a matter of the utmost moral urgency that challenges the core of our understanding of ourselves as a people united to one another through the Sacrament of the Eucharist in the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I am in total sacramental and moral solidarity with the members of our diocese who find themselves in immigration detention. My fatherly heart is very close to them. This does not preclude or foreclose political dialogue on the appropriate conditions for legal entry into the United States and the number of persons who should be permitted to do so. Thoughtful Christians must acknowledge that a legitimate political ordo could determine both numbers and conditions for legal entry that they personally find unsatisfactory but are entirely appropriate and moral outcomes of a democratic deliberative process. Nevertheless, an informed Christian conscience must recoil at the means by which federal officers are currently enforcing the policies and orders of the executive branch, and the conditions under which most detainees are being held – including, most disturbingly, minors – which are beyond the normal deprivations that those caught in the machinery of the penal system would expect to experience. I urge any who are involved in the administration of the current immigration enforcement regime at any level to seek the counsel of their clergy, given my urgent pastoral concern for the moral and spiritual injury that their participation is causing them. Addressing the challenge of offering a particularly Christian witness amidst political polarization, the moral and ecclesial demands made by our sacramental solidarity, and how we might live out our faith in works of justice will be the common work of the clergy at our conference this April. Meanwhile, I exhort all parishes of this diocese to pray for our brothers and sisters who are in immigration detention by name in the Prayers on the People every Sunday morning. Prayer must be the ground upon which we all stand together in solidarity and repentance. Prayer is the Christian’s first and best recourse, because it is the power given to us to ask for God’s power to intervene in human suffering and injustice. My suggestion would be for a petition such as this: “We pray for God’s mercy on the members of our diocesan family currently held in immigration detention: Juan, Jose, Pedro, Ayoub, Mo, Barbod, Milad, Sahel, Asra, Amir, Hana, Sared, and their families.” The diocesan office will provide regular updates on their status and well-being.

The motto I chose for my episcopate and had inscribed in my ring is 2 Corinthians 5:17: “In Christ, new creation!” It is at the center of my spirituality. May God’s grace move so powerfully in us and through us, that we are indeed made new by Jesus, gifted with his image in our hearts and empowered to join in his New Creation work in the world, doing “all such good works as [the Triune God] hast prepared for us to walk in.”

Faithfully in Jesus Messiah,

+Rob