Letter from Dean Don Compier
January 31, 2024
Beloved BKSM community,
At the end of the current academic year this summer, I will be stepping down as your dean. With God’s generous help, my spouse Yolanda Santos Compier (Yola) and I made this decision entirely on our own.
Throughout my ten years of service our community has been kind, affirming, and supportive. This is why I have repeatedly, sincerely said that being dean of BKSM has been the best job of my professional life. What a great way to end my 32-year career as a theological educator (the last 22 as dean)! I give thanks to God for all that we have experienced and accomplished together, in a partnership involving all of you.
As I reflect on the process that led to our decision, I believe that the shared values all of us have established at BKSM were finding expression.
Please keep Yola and I in your prayers during this time of transition. Remember I am still very much your dean this spring! And above all, please pray for your BKSM board and staff. Your involvement in the coming search process is very important to the journey ahead of us. As always, we are a co-learning and co-teaching community where each person’s contribution is of great importance!
I just cannot thank you enough for all of our blessed times together. I have so many memories of our collaborations that I will cherish all my days. I will always hold you in my thoughts and prayers with deep affection and respect. How good God is! The Love that has brought us this far has so many more blessings to shower upon us in the future! Let us always do all we can to the greater glory of the blessed Trinity!
Warmly yours in Christ,
Don+
The Very Reverend Don H. Compier
Second Dean of Bishop Kemper School for Ministry
Beloved BKSM community,
At the end of the current academic year this summer, I will be stepping down as your dean. With God’s generous help, my spouse Yolanda Santos Compier (Yola) and I made this decision entirely on our own.
Throughout my ten years of service our community has been kind, affirming, and supportive. This is why I have repeatedly, sincerely said that being dean of BKSM has been the best job of my professional life. What a great way to end my 32-year career as a theological educator (the last 22 as dean)! I give thanks to God for all that we have experienced and accomplished together, in a partnership involving all of you.
As I reflect on the process that led to our decision, I believe that the shared values all of us have established at BKSM were finding expression.
- We are a community of prayer and discernment. Yola and I carefully followed the decision-making process described in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. After weeks of intentional prayer, we rejoice in the clarity that resulted. Our relationship with God deepened. We look forward to devoting more time to disciplined prayer and spiritual companionship.
- We strongly encourage ministerial self-care. God got our attention when I experienced an unusual degree of fatigue. I’m still in good shape, but clearly I am called to do more to keep it that way! I must practice what I have always preached.
- We put family first, believing that it is our first vocation. I am called to spend more time with my dear spouse, fine daughter and son-in-law, and delightful granddaughters, as well as with all our extended family in Missouri, Texas, California, Arizona, Mexico, Canada, Spain and the Netherlands.
- We value scholarship in the service of the Church. I am excited about having more time to further my current writing project, contributing chapters to a book about the daily office intended for readers interested in our Episcopal Church’s current consideration of prayer book revision. I believe other projects are likely to emerge in due time!
- We find Christ in the faces of the poor, marginalized, and all who suffer. I am called to devote more time to works of mercy and justice, especially through my involvement with the local Catholic Worker movement.
- We believe in collegiality and collaboration because all the Spirit’s gifts must flourish. During our discernment process I realized that commitment to the communal way is not only synchronic (of this particular moment in time) but also diachronic (across and over time). I remembered what I learned long ago, that very few deans serve for more than 10 years. I have received some of the gifts that BKSM’s development needs, but not all of them. And a theological school, especially one as young as ours, should not become too closely identified with any particular individual. It’s not my school! It is time to create space for a new person to fill the dean’s role as we have begun our second decade. I am very confident that God will lead our excellent board to call the right person to serve as dean for the next phase of BKSM’s amazing journey.
Please keep Yola and I in your prayers during this time of transition. Remember I am still very much your dean this spring! And above all, please pray for your BKSM board and staff. Your involvement in the coming search process is very important to the journey ahead of us. As always, we are a co-learning and co-teaching community where each person’s contribution is of great importance!
I just cannot thank you enough for all of our blessed times together. I have so many memories of our collaborations that I will cherish all my days. I will always hold you in my thoughts and prayers with deep affection and respect. How good God is! The Love that has brought us this far has so many more blessings to shower upon us in the future! Let us always do all we can to the greater glory of the blessed Trinity!
Warmly yours in Christ,
Don+
The Very Reverend Don H. Compier
Second Dean of Bishop Kemper School for Ministry