Several colleagues have already told me how impressed they are with our new bishop's faith and with her gifts for service, and I include a short bio below from our Conference website.

In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you in church. Grace and peace,

Becky

Bishop Sandra L. Steiner Ball was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and raised in Milford, Delaware. She is a graduate of Dickinson College, (B.A. in Religion, 1984), Duke Divinity School (M.Div., 1987), and Wesley Theological Seminary (D.Min., 2003).

She was ordained Deacon and Elder by Bishop Joseph H. Yeakel in the Peninsula-Delaware Conference and has served as an associate pastor, lead pastor, District Superintendent, and Director of Connectional Ministries(DCM). During her last year as a DCM, she also served as interim pastor of Bayside Chapel, a new church start. She was in this position when elected to the episcopacy by the Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference in 2012 and was assigned to the West Virginia Area.

Since 2022, Bishop Steiner Ball has shared episcopal coverage of the Susquehanna Conference with current WPA bishop, Cynthia Moore-Koikoi. They have encouraged collaboration between the West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, and Susquehanna conferences, leading to a deeper sense of connectionalism between the conferences.

Bishop Steiner Ball and her husband, The Rev. Barry D. Steiner Ball, have two daughters and two grandchildren.

"With joy and hope, we welcome Bishop Steiner Ball to serve as the new episcopal leader of the Western PA Conference," said chair of the delegation, Rev. Alyce Weaver Dunn. "Her relationship style and gifts of healing, administration, and bridgebuilding will be a blessing to our Conference. Because we have worked with our sibling conferences of Susquehanna and West Virginia for the past two years, we are already aware of her amazing gifts and deep faith!"

Rev. Alyce Weaver Dunn also shared a word of appreciation for Bishop Moore-Koikoi. "With love and gratitude, we send our beloved Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi to serve in a new mission field! Her gifts and graces will be missed here in WPA, but we celebrate that those very gifts and graces have transformed us over these past eight years."[1]

Prayer

Sovereign God, the days are hot and long in the summer. Teach us to notice the goodness of your creation even so. Teach us to wonder at the summer rain and the cracking thunder, at the sudden growth of the plants afterward, at the bright sunshine that so quickly follows the storms. Teach us to see the leaves trembling in the summer breeze, the cardinals molting so that they have a fresh coat of feathers this fall, the efficiency of the trees as they drop a few leaves and even some fruit in order to protect the health of the organism. Teach us to treasure the sensitivity of our pets, that they notice things that we don’t, and to wonder at the gifts they so generously bring into our lives. You have gifted us so richly in your creation, and we give you thanks and praise. Amen.

[1] https://www.wpaumc.org/newsdetail/bishop-sandra-steiner-ball-assigned-to-western-pa-conference-18421385