Well Done, South Carolina

I am honored to count Father Mark Lawrence a colleague and friend in the Diocese of San Joaquin for the last nine years. As the schedule of diocesan business would have it, I was with him last Saturday when he got the phone call notifying him of his election as next Bishop of South Carolina. That was an exciting moment, and I cannot imagine that the convention in Charleston could have made a better decision. Fr Lawrence is wise, mature, balanced, intelligent, well-read, Spirit-filled, and humble--quite a rare combination of gifts! We will miss him in San Joaquin, be he will take his place in the councils of the church in a powerful and effective way, and be a salubrious influence on the emerging re-invented Anglicanism.