A word about the Bishop-in-Residence
The Rt. Rev. Richard L. Shimpfky
After graduation from the Virginia Seminary and serving as
a curate and then as rector of a small Virginia church, Bishop
Shimpfky was called to Ridgewood, New Jersey where he served
15 years as Eleventh Rector of Christ Church, one of the Episcopal Church's
finest suburban parishes. In 1990 he was consecrated
Second Bishop of the California Central Coast (the Diocese of El Camino Real)
with its cathedral in San Jose, the heart of Silicon Valley.
Retired in 2005, the Bishop Shimpfky and his wife Jamel returned
to New York and are living in Manhattan. Arriving, the bishops of
Long Island and New York asked the Bishop to consider two fine
suburban churches but, as he says, "I had been there and done that."
Then he was introduced to St. George's - a church, the likes of which,
he had neither been in nor done!, - and he said "yes" to the Bishop of
Long Island's request that he serve as Bishop-in-Residence in Flushing.
Bishop Shimpfky calls the experience the most challenging, stretching and
exhilarating experience of the last fifteen years! Which is saying a
great deal considering while he was Bishop of El Camion Real he was also
President of the Church's Eighth Province, a province like the
British Empire over which the sun never sets (the Province spans
the geography between and including Taiwan in the east to Utah in the west.)
The Bishop and his wife have three grown children, two of whom
live in Manhattan and one, a married daughter, who lives with
her husband and their two daughters in Ridgewood, New Jersey
(the Bishop's daughter is a member of the vestry of Christ Church,
the parish in which she grew-up.) |
