Bishop Committed to Her 400 Churches and Her Bike

Quickly changing into clerical garb, Bishop Mary Ann Swenson blessed the ground at Pico Boulevard and New Hampshire Avenue where the apartments and a child-care center for 40 children will be built.

Swenson, 57, who in her capacity as bishop of the California-Pacific Conference oversees 400 United Methodist churches in Southern California, Hawaii, Guam and Saipan, is a committed environmentalist and social activist. Almost exclusively, she rides a bicycle everywhere or uses public transportation.

"When you ride the Red and Blue Line and city buses, you will see the people of Los Angeles in a way you don't see when you're in your car," she said.

The United Methodist Church, with 8.2 million members, is the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination, after Southern Baptists. But like those of most mainline denominations, its membership has been declining -- by about 40,000 a year over the last decade. In the California-Pacific Conference, membership has decreased from 2,000 to 3,000 a year to about 95,000 a year now.

The bishop attributes the decline in church membership to a material wealth that makes people think they have no need for church, distractions from popular culture, and the church's failure to reach out enough to new areas and new potential members. She uses her bicycle riding as a way to connect to people and bring them to the church.

Whether it's to her office in Pasadena, a preaching engagement in South Los Angeles or visiting a church in Murietta, near San Diego, you can count on Swenson and her husband, Jeff, to arrive on their tandem bike, with a small Bible, a change of clothes and shoes tucked away in a bike trunk.

People are surprised when they learn that the bishop rides a bike everywhere.

In June, the Swensons -- she in a flowing, black evening dress and he in a tuxedo -- rode on their bicycle to the Crystal Ball, a fundraiser for the Methodist Hospital in Arcadia at the Santa Anita racetrack.

"It was kind of amazing to see the bishop ride up on a tandem bike and ready to go," Arcadia Mayor Gary Kovacic said. "It's not the image you have of a typical bishop."

Elected a bishop in 1992, Swenson served for eight years in Denver, covering Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana.