For People with Bishop Rob Wright

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The loudest voices want you to believe the only way forward is to pick a side and dig in. Jesus shows us another way. 
In this episode, Bishop Wright has a conversation with Bishop Sarah Fisher, 9th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of East Carolina, about a different kind of strength: the courage to stay centered on Jesus when everything around you begs for distraction. Bishop Sarah shares what it feels like to begin a brand-new bishop with 66 worshipping communities. They get honest about labels, social media noise, and why identity can be both something to honor and something that cannot be the headline. The headline, if we’re reading the bible right, is that Jesus is Lord and the Church is called to witness to good news in the 21st century.
They dig into why church matters right now, when people feel worn down by division, war, and purposelessness, and start looking again for meaning and community. From Flannery O’Connor’s “truth makes you odd” to Walter Brueggemann’s “dangerously odd,” they explore how Christian leadership offers an alternative to the status quo without doing harm. They close with a shared anchor verse, Ephesians 3:20, and the invitation to stay astounded by what God can do “infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” Listen in for the full conversation. 
In no particular order, Bishop Fisher loves Jesus, the Church, organization and congregational development, poetry, Holy Scripture, her family in all of its delightful and quirky forms, thrift stores, singing, practicing and teaching yoga, vegetables, laughter, playing in the kitchen and sharpie markers.
She hopes to love, in as much as it is possible, the way that Jesus loves; to serve the Church with fierce compassion and care; to learn as long as it’s possible. She seeks to see and respond to the needs of the world, specifically with an eye to racial injustice; to love those who the world casts to the margins; to use her voice to heal and never harm.
Bishop Fisher is a native of Athens, Georgia and has served parishes in the Diocese of Chicago and the Diocese of Atlanta. She and her spouse and best beloved, Mandy, who is an Episcopal priest, live in New Bern, where they frequently function as human tennis ball dispensers to their two black labs, Bayton and Maggie.
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Jesus does not look at a hurting world and offer merely technical solutions. He sees the deeper wound, speaks to the heart of it, and sends ordinary people to carry hope into ordinary places. In Matthew 9:35–10:8, Jesus shows us three kinds of sheep: the harassed and helpless, the lost, and those sent among wolves. At every intersection of life, this passage asks us to decide who we will be.

In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation about Jesus’ image of three kinds of sheep as a way of understanding the spiritual crossroads many of us face. They discuss shepherdless sheep who feel harassed and helpless, and lost sheep who may be surrounded by faith language yet still feel untethered from meaning and the good news. From rising despair to uncertain truth, the conversation lands squarely in the realities many of us know well—especially when life seems to be moving faster than our spiritual resources can keep up. Together, they consider how Jesus meets people at the point of their deepest need and sends ordinary people to carry hope into a weary world.

Then they turn toward the sent sheep. They reflect on what it means to be commissioned under Jesus’ authority, sent like sheep among wolves, and called to public witness that can carry real consequences. Bishop Wright offers a practical image of a “script” that works like jazz: a clear melody for discipleship with faithful improvisation shaped by the moment, your workplace, your family, and your community. Listen in for the full conversation. 
Read For Faith, the companion devotional.
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Hunger rarely looks like the stereotype. Sometimes it looks like a parent who works full-time but cannot make childcare and groceries fit in the same month. Sometimes it looks like grandparents raising grandchildren, a family navigating a health crisis, or someone who just lost a job and needs help for a season. Loving like Jesus means serving those who are the most vulnerable in real and tangible ways. 
In this episode, Bishop Wright has a conversation with Ashley and Sean Davis about the real faces of food insecurity and why a food pantry can be a lifeline without ever stripping away dignity. Their story starts with a major health issue that forced Ashley to step back from a corporate banking career and ask a hard question: what kind of work actually helps people? This discerning question led them to sell their California home, move to Cartersville, Georgia, and search for a place where they could stop feeling anonymous and start building community. That search led them to The Episcopal Church of the Ascension, where everything “felt right,” and soon after to the Red Door Food Pantry, where Ashley became executive director in 2024. 

They dig into the measurable impact and the human impact and how The Red Door Food Pantry grew from a ministry of Ascension into a nonprofit while continuing distributions through the church, and serving thousands of households across Bartow County and beyond. They discuss improving access through technology, mobile pantry plans, and partnerships that bring mental health support, housing resources, health services, and recovery connections right to distribution days. Listen in for the full conversation. 
About the Red Door Food Pantry:
For decades, the food pantry was an outreach ministry of the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, and it distributed the same 8-10 items of food every week to about 30-50 people. Purchasing food at retail prices required the food pantry to use restricted funds to meet budgetary needs. Thus, the food pantry was “in the red,” with only about 10 months of operating expenses to fall back on. However, by joining the Atlanta Community Food Bank (ACFB) in 2013, the Red Door Food Pantry was able to buy food for about sixteen cents a pound– thus giving it greater buying power and by helping it attain solvency. In 2022, the Red Door Food Pantry was designated 501(c)(3) status as a public charity. Learn more and give here.
From the archives: Read an article from our diocese about the Red Door Food Pantry and partnerships, including our own Episcopal Community Foundation.
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This episode is Bishop Rob Wright’s sermon from the ordination and consecration of Bishop Sarah Fisher, ninth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of East Carolina, given on May 23. 
In his sermon, Bishop Wright answers an important question: what is a bishop for? You’ll hear a clear, memorable vision of Episcopal leadership as itinerant service, scripture-shaped preaching, guarding the faith, and doing “balcony” work that spots patterns and faces the challenges we’d rather avoid. The hat doesn’t make the leader. The work does. 
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Togetherness is not a warm slogan, it’s the only way we meet the scale of what’s in front of us. From the start, we press on a simple question: how do you remember the past honestly without letting it turn into bitterness? 
In this episode, Bishop Wright has a conversation with Senator Jon Ossoff about faith, leadership, and what it takes to build a better world when the headlines feel like a steady stream of bad news. Ossoff traces his moral education through the legacy of Congressman John Lewis and the civil rights movement in Georgia, including the historic alliance between Black and Jewish communities in the South. He shares the powerful symbolism of being sworn into the US Senate on scripture belonging to Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, the Atlanta rabbi whose temple was bombed in 1958 for supporting Dr. King and the SCLC. They discuss what interfaith coalition building looks like when it’s real, not performative, and why serious faith traditions should pull us alongside each other when the stakes are high. Listen in for the full conversation. 
Born and raised in Georgia, Senator Jon Ossoff serves as our Senior United States Senator. Since his election, Sen. Ossoff has built bipartisanship in the Senate to achieve meaningful legislative results for Georgia — even in a divided Congress. In his first two years in office, Sen. Ossoff passed into law more standalone bills than any other freshman Senator. Sen. Ossoff’s legislative achievements include laws to protect children online; to strengthen public safety; to tackle the opioid epidemic and prevent fentanyl trafficking across the Southern Border; to investigate unsolved lynchings and Civil Rights murders; to strengthen mental health care services for veterans; and to fight corruption and improve security in U.S. prisons. Mentored by civil rights legend Congressman John Lewis, Sen. Ossoff previously led a small business that produced investigative journalism exposing war crimes, public corruption, human trafficking, and organized crime. Sen. Ossoff lives with his wife, Dr. Alisha Kramer, and two daughters in Atlanta.
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