The Rt. Rev. George Wayne Smith, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, will oversee three Dallas churches that plan to perform weddings for their LGBT members, according to the Episcopal News Service.

Dallas Bishop George Sumner has refused to allow same-sex marriages to take place in his diocese. In a compromise at the denomination’s general conference this past summer, a visiting and assisting bishop will oversee churches that will perform weddings in the eight diocese affected by bishops who don’t believe in their parishioners’ equality. Episcopal churches in all of the other diocese have been performing same-sex marriages since 2015.

As part of the agreement, Sumner will delegate all sacramental and liturgical oversight of the parishes to Smith.

The three Dallas churches are Episcopal Church of the Ascension on Greenville Avenue, Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration in far North Dallas and Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle on Inwood Road in Oak Lawn.

The churches will begin performing weddings in January. St. Thomas has a long backlog. The rector at Transfiguration hopes couples who were married elsewhere will renew their vows at the church. Ascension has no current requests for marriage, but one partner in a gay couple died while waiting for permission to marry.

Under the arrangement, individual churches will not pay the additional costs that will be incurred. The Dallas diocese will bear all costs. And the arrangement isn’t necessarily permanent. Smith announced he will retire in spring 2020.

Many expected The Rt. Rev. J. Scott Mayer, bishop of the Fort Worth diocese, to oversee the Dallas churches, but Mayer is also bishop of the Lubbock diocese. Since Sumner banned marriage in Dallas, Mayer has welcomed Dallas couples to marry in Fort Worth churches. Some couples took advantage of the offer, while others waited to marry in their own churches.

Among the other dioceses where same-sex weddings have been banned is liberal Albany, N.Y. That city’s Bishop Love has said he will continue to prohibit marriage.

— David Taffet