Mary and I are settling into our new home in Columbia and our new life in Upper South Carolina, and we have been honored and humbled by the warm welcomes we continue to receive from our new diocesan family. In the space of three months since my consecration, I have celebrated many Confirmations, several baptisms, and we have had the moving experience of our first visit to our brothers and sisters in Haiti, about which I wrote earlier. We are blessed to be among you.
I have also been blessed to come into a diocesan staff of dedicated and hard working Christians who have been extremely supportive of me in the beginnings of my transition into the role of your bishop. Since my election, I have been in prayerful thought and conversation about how best to structure our diocesan staff. My focus has been on responsive service to the congregations, institutions and leadership of our diocese through leadership development, training and procedural simplifications. My goal is that everything we do contribute in ways large and small to the development of healthy, growing and vibrant congregations throughout the diocese. To that end, the responsibilities of canon staff will include more direct availability to congregations for training and support””in communications, leadership development, congregational development, administration, finance, and, if and when the economic environment improves, Christian formation among all ages. Quality of support to congregations and skilled ability as trainers will be high values for my canon staff. Furthermore, we will be working toward high levels of responsiveness and hospitality among office staff. It will take time for us to put these processes in place, but with these as primary goals, we will be making a number of organizational and personnel changes in the coming weeks and months….