From the Dean of South Carolina

Following Bishop Mark Lawrence’s consecration in January, he, the Cathedral Vestry, and I have been working to develop a schedule for my long-delayed sabbatical and also my transition to retirement, originally envisaged to take place within twelve to eighteen months of Bishop’s Salmon’s own retirement.

The Diocese provides periods of sabbatical leave for every seven years of clergy service, which in the fourteen years of my Deanship, not least because of the delay in Bishop Salmon’s retirement, I have not until now felt able to undertake. By scheduling such a leave for the last three months of this year and the first three months of 2009, my hope is to facilitate as seamless as possible a transition to the call of my successor. Bishop Lawrence has enthusiastically agreed to work closely with the Cathedral Vestry and Chapter in seeking God’s vision for the Cathedral during his episcopate as well as the most vocationally qualified person to become Sixth Dean of South Carolina and next Rector of the Cathedral Parish.

Following this parish church’s 45th anniversary in September of its designation as Cathedral of the Diocese, therefore, its next Rector search process will be undertaken from October through March. During this same period I myself hope to make considerable headway – availing myself of material and chapter drafts by Cathedral Archivist Scott Howell – on a bicentennial history, for publication in 2010, of St. Paul’s, Radcliffeborough, its incorporation of St. Luke’s in 1949, and its designation as “seat” of the Bishops of South Carolina in 1963.

In order to enable adequate staffing for my sabbatical, an anonymous gift to the Cathedral has provided for the off-budget, short-term employment of an additional priest, and therefore with Bishop Lawrence’s encouragement I have appointed as Senior Pastoral Assistant for the next several months my friend, and fellow English Literature graduate, the Reverend J. Robert Horn, IV. Robert will work with myself, with the Reverend Mark D. Cooke, and with our honorary assisting clergy through March, prior to my retirement during the Easter Season next year, by which time, by God’s grace, my successor will have been called and will be ready to take the reins.

In almost 40 years of ordained ministry, no more gratifying call to service has come my way than that of Dean of South Carolina. Nor could there be a more reassuring context in which to retire than that of the new horizons afforded the Cathedral of this Diocese by the vision and servant leadership embodied in Bishop Mark Lawrence. I greatly look forward to the next several months of transition under his active oversight and, indeed, to what lies beyond.

Faithfully,
The Very Reverend William N. McKeachie