St. James’ Announces a New Renaissance Leader, The Rev. Ken Kesselus
New La Grange Pastor is Former Bastrop Mayor
While St. James’ Episcopal Church continues its search for a pastor, they are fortunate to have found a priest to provide periodic service and leadership in the meantime. As their support priest, the Rev. Ken Kesselus of Bastrop has pledged to help St. James’ to build back to its pre-COVID growth trend.
The Rev. Kesselus––Ken, as he prefers being called––is no stranger to this kind of success. And he’s done it in so many different ways.
He spent over 18 years as rector building Bastrop’s Calvary Church from a small, struggling congregation to its present-day vibrancy. His leadership was responsible for quadrupling Calvary’s congregation in an era when church attendance was precipitously declining.
At the Diocese of Texas level, Ken has served in many leadership positions, plus serving on the Executive Council of the national church. He even detected greatness in one Andy Doyle when he, Ken, directed kids’ camps at Camp Allen when the now Bishop Doyle was on the senior staff there. (Bishop Doyle is now the charismatic head of the Diocese of Texas.)
Seminary of the Southwest cited Ken as the Distinguished Alum for 1997. Texas A&M’s Progressive Farmer magazine named him Rural Minister of the Year in 1995. He chaired many committees for the city of Bastrop including the important Long Range Planning Committee for the city schools.
Always very involved in the community, Ken for 40 years has been helping make his native Bastrop a better community. He was designated Citizen of the Year there in 1986 and later served on city council and elected mayor (2009-2017).
While being a life-long left-handed tennis player, he’s also always loves writing. He authored a long-running periodic column in the Bastrop newspaper in which he delivered commentary on the life in that storied community.
He has published a fourvolume history of Bastrop County and other histories as well as three biographies of significant Texans. Bastropians know him as the official historian of the area: He now chairs the Historical Commission there.
Currently, he is working on what he believes is a unique and creative project: a collaboration with five others writing a mystery novel in a “100% collaborative process” in which no one is the leader.
With all this activity, why La Grange? And why St. James’?
La Grange, to Ken, is the Bastrop of his childhood and early career: a place where you know your neighbors. Where kids can still ride their bikes in the streets and walk to school with their buddies. La Grange is a neighborhood, a community as he sees it. A visit to the H-E-B is gonna put you face-to-face with your fellow parishioners, your friends, your detractors, the guy whom you just followed through a red light and who is apparently the only one in the county who doesn’t know about the right turn on red law. Thank goodness you didn’t blow your horn at him.
As for St. James’, “I just fell in love with the congregation,” he says. He’s seen what so many others have noticed, that St. James’ has a special something, a je ne sais quoi that binds the members together, that conjures family, comradery and belonging. His mission is to “help y’all sharpen the tools you already have,” that “lead to even better communication with the community.” Indeed, helping his fellow man is Ken’s go-to mantra for life; it’s his drive, his motivation.
According to Jameson, “while we are seeking a permanent priest, we are pleased to have a part-time priest with such magnetism.”
Jameson noted that Ken’s Bastrop connections are in a long line of such lineage. The first St. James’ rector, William G.W. Smith (1876-1891) was also from Bastrop. It was he who oversaw the construction of the Queen Anne Revival church in 1885, and built the altar rail, the Bishop’s Chair and the lectern that is still in place in the sanctuary.
The congregants of the little red-on-yellow church across from H-E-B are excited about Ken’s presence. They hope many of their neighbors will come visit and experience the joy that Ken always brings wherever he goes.
So, with the arrival of the Rev. Ken Kesselus at St. James’, let the new – though temporary – “Ken Era” begin.