The Bishop of Rochester, James Langstaff, has announced today that he intends to retire at the end of July 2021. He was consecrated the Bishop of Lynn in 2004 (Norwich Diocese) and appointed Bishop of Rochester in 2010. In 2014 he entered the House of Lords as one of the 26 Lords Spiritual.
Simon Burton-Jones, Bishop of Tonbridge, will take on responsibility for the Diocese from then until the next bishop is in place.
While wishing the Bishops of Lynn and Rochester happy/ fulfilling/ relaxing retirements, I found this from 2009- and putting this together with recent stats- how things have changed:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/22/church-england-cut-bishops
Looking out for a serious episcopal reorganisation some time soon, esp as bishops will have less work to do soon, freed from the time they have hitherto spent on safeguarding and reputation management:
https://www.churchofengland.org/about/leadership-and-governance/dioceses-commission
Thanks for this esp the second. I found the Review ( 2019} the Sees of Beverley, Ebbsfleet Maidstone and Richborough under Reports especially interesting.
Shouldn’t the Bishop of Islington be included in the Review along with the Bishops of Beverley, Ebbsfleet, Maidstone and Richborough for he, like they, exercises a peripatetic ministry with particular reference to church planting?
Time, surely, to reorganize episcopal provision in the county of Kent.
This is too true. What is the point of the Rochester diocese, bar its antiquity? It first came into existence because in the sixth and seventh centuries there was a ‘sub-kingdom’ of west Kent (see the article by Barbara Yorke in Archaeologia Cantiana (‘Joint kingship in Kent, c. 560 to 785’, AC v. 99 (1983) 1-19). The sub-kings would succeed to the ‘senior’ kingdom, which comprised mid-and-east Kent. That sub-kingdom extended at least as far west as Chertsey (note the charter of 666 between Frithwald, ‘sub-regulus’ of Surrey to Ulfar, king of Mercia). Those were the days when diocesan boundaries… Read more »