Bishop Smith grew up in Oklahoma and is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. He has served as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Dakota since 2004 with periodic stints as assisting bishop of Louisiana and Dallas and as dean of Gethsemane Cathedral in Fargo. He currently serves as the Chair of the Communion Partners Bishops’ Advisory Committee. Before that, he served as canon missioner and vicar of Episcopal congregations on the White Earth Ojibwe Nation in Minnesota, and curate of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church and chaplain at Oak Hall School in Ardmore, Oklahoma. 

Married to the Rev. Lisa White Smith since 1980, he is the father of three adult children and “Papa” for nine grandchildren. Bishop Smith is a Benedictine oblate of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota where he is working on a Graduate Certificate in Spiritual Direction. The title of his D.Min. thesis project paper was “The Word is Near You: Forming Preachers in Native American Congregations of the Episcopal Church.” He occasionally writes the daily devotionals for The Living Church.