All-School Opening Service

9/7/2016

Welcome to the 2016-2017 school year at St. Christopher’s. Since I have not yet had the opportunity to meet each and every one of you, please allow me take a moment to introduce myself.

My name is Mason Lecky, and I am your new Head of School. While I spent the first 18 years of my life here in the great city of Richmond, I come to you more recently from the cities of Washington, DC, and New Orleans, LA, where I have had the pleasure of serving as a teacher, coach, and administrator at two wonderful Episcopal schools, one for boys in Grades 4-12 and one for boys and girls in grades Junior Kindergarten through 8.

It is very special and exciting for me to be with all of you here today, in my hometown and assembled on the grounds of 105-year-old school for boys that I have long admired. I am eager to teach and learn alongside all of you, and I look forward to many years of growth and partnership as we celebrate the many blessings we share at St. Christopher’s.

And blessed we are indeed. At this time, I would like for each of you to join me in a brief moment of reflection. Take a look around you, quietly, please, and make note of what you see. Go ahead, look around.

Do you see a majestic and manicured campus, thoughtfully developed over generations and lovingly cared for today by our maintenance team?

Do you see experienced and dedicated faculty and staff, women and men who come to this place each day with joy and with a conviction to challenge all of you, students, to become the type of men we all pray for and need in the complex world of tomorrow?

Do you see classmates, young men both older and younger than you who hold you accountable to the ideals of this institution, who willingly serve as your brother’s keeper, and who share with you an ambition to be your best selves, first as human beings and second as scholars?

I see all of these things, and I see and I feel even more. While I cannot point you to it this morning, in just two months on this campus, I know I sense a powerful feeling of community and relationships here at St. Christopher’s, a feeling that we are all a part of something larger than ourselves and that we can count on each other to support us in our victories and our challenges.

I believe it is right and proper for us to actively note and give thanks for the blessings we all enjoy as members of this esteemed community. But acknowledging and routinely making note of our many blessings here at St. Christopher’s is not the end of our charge as teachers and learners; rather, it is just the beginning.

Coleman just did a wonderful job of reading to us a passage from the Gospel of Luke, a selection from the New Testament that provides guidance for all of us commonly referred to as “The Golden Rule.”

One way which we can all “pay forward” our many blessings here at St. Christopher’s is to be kind and generous to those both inside and outside the St. Christopher’s community.

We can treat everyone, regardless of their station in life—young, old, rich, poor, educated and unschooled, women and men from all races, creeds, cultures, and religions—with the same degree of compassion and respect that we would wish for ourselves.

Sounds easy, right? As with many things, this is easier said than done, but it is also easier done with practice. Let us begin that practice here today and continue it every day in which we have the good fortune to gather as a community here at St. Christopher’s.

St. Christopher’s is blessed to be a boys school, a place that exists for and because of boys, but also a boys school that enjoys a unique and invaluable partnership with our sister school, St. Catherine’s, so that we can offer you, young men, an educational experience that provides the best of both worlds—both all boys and co-educational.

I feel extremely fortunate to partner with and learn from my counterpart at St. Catherine’s, Dr. Terrie Scheckelhoff. Dr. Scheckelhoff is kind enough to be here with us this morning, and I’d like to ask you to please join me in welcoming her and thanking her for her leadership and partnership with us. Please stand, Dr. Scheckelhoff.

I will close with remarks about the physical location of our gathering this morning. I stand before you just in front of the now-completed entrance to our Center for the Study of Boys. It is with great intentionality that our Center, which focuses on research, professional development, and programming in the spirit of best practices in boys education, is located here in one of the oldest and most historic buildings on our campus, Chamberlayne Hall. Chamberlayne Hall, as you all know, is named in memory of our School founder, the Reverend Dr. Churchill Gibson Chamberlayne.

Dr. Chamberlayne would be proud to know that his founding principles of teaching the “whole boy,” with an emphasis on honor, integrity, and academic rigor, are alive and well 105 years after his creation of the School and that the Center for the Study of Boys can serve as a guide and an inspiration for St. Christopher’s and for boys schools around the world to fulfill the promise in every boy under our care.

As we continue our service this morning with prayer and with song, I will ask you to reflect on our many blessings at St. Christopher’s—those of majestic place, of dedicated and loving people, and of innovative and boy-friendly programs. In the months and years to come I will routinely ask you to reflect on those blessings, as intentional acts of gratitude. But I will also ask all of us, myself included, what shall we do with our sense of gratitude, how can we walk together in the Gospel of Luke and in other faith traditions that call on all of us to care for one another as we ourselves long for caring as one human people?

Thank you, and let us have a terrific school year together.

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All-School Opening Service