The Rev. Mark Beckwith
Answers to the Questions of the Bishop Nominating Committee
Episcopal Diocese of Newark
1. What would you propose as an evangelism strategy for this diocese given our strengths and challenges? How have you attracted and increased the active participation of young people (ages 20-35) in your own ministry settings?
II think an effective evangelism strategy needs to be looked at comprehensively and organically. Jumping to a program for the purpose of growing the church will probably not be effective over time. It may settle some institutional anxiety, but will not have the effect of bringing people into congregations and transforming lives. There are many steps that need to be incorporated into an evangelism strategy – and they need to be carefully woven together. One of the first steps should be a process of identifying one’s faith story. How has God in Christ made a difference – in the life of an individual, a parish – and the diocese?. You can’t tell your story unless you know it – and own it.
At some point early on people need to have the opportunity to express their resistance to engage in the enterprise of evangelism. Some of the resistance is personal (in that people are nervous about inviting others into their community), but much of it is institutional. The church says it wants to grow, but in my experience people are anxious about the prospect of growth – fearing that their relationships with the clergy and each other may change, and that the church “system” will be transformed into something that is unfamiliar. Any conversation about church growth needs to honor the fears, anxieties and projections of loss and change. If they are not brought out into the open, unspoken anxiety and fear will derail the strategy.
The Diocese needs to lead this effort. The Diocese needs to model healthy behavior toward evangelism. I would hope that the Diocese of Newark could create a group/committee/task force which would have the task of identifying the uniqueness and giftedness of the Diocese of Newark story. The “Sign of Grace” document, which was sent to prospective candidates, certainly could serve as a start. Then the diocese could draw on the wisdom and skill of marketing professionals in the church to help get the story out to the wider community. I would hope that the diocesan story would celebrate its passion for and honesty in dealing with diversity; and that the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Newark has a long and honorable history of advocating for justice, engaging in critical inquiry – and has intentionally and systematically embraced the breadth of the human family. I would expect that this story would be built on an allegiance to the Gospel message of freedom – and is intentionally prayerful in the nurturing of that allegiance. The Diocesan evangelism initiative could serve as a model and inspiration for parishes to engage in similar work.
My functioning definition of evangelism comes from the 19th century missionary DT Niles: “an evangelist is one beggar telling another beggar where the bread is.” I would hope that the Diocese of Newark could help people and parishes develop the confidence of telling others where and how they are spiritually fed.
While serving as an Associate Rector at St. Peter’s in Morristown, I started a Young Adult Group. We met once a month for a potluck supper, and we played softball in the spring and volleyball in the winter. It turned out to be a wonderful ‘on-ramp’ for young people into the parish. While Rector of Christ Church, Hackensack, we had a similar ministry, but on a smaller scale (although the volleyball was played with greater passion!). In Worcester, I brought a group of adults of young children together, and over time we developed a forty minute, child-friendly family service. That family service has grown in size and diversity – and has provided new and younger leadership in the church.
I think that junior and senior high youth groups are critical to the health and vitality of parishes. I have long been committed to a youth group ministry that provides a community of safety to ask and explore – and a program that dares to challenge their horizons.
2. How do you define the ministry of presence and connection of a bishop as chief pastor? Please provide three different examples of presence and connection from your own ministry.
I have a desire to hear people’s stories. Much of the joy of the work I do as a CREDO Conference Leader is being invited to hear the individual stories of fellow clergy (I lead two conferences a year for up to thirty clergy at a conference). I am told I have an openness, honesty and vulnerability in sharing my own story. I believe that mutual story telling is foundational in developing relationships – and that the process works best – for me, if it begins in prayer. I also believe that a bishop needs to take the initiative in pastoral situations with clergy – seeking them out, especially the isolated and negative (even hostile) ones – and inviting them into a conversation that is marked by clear and appropriate boundaries.
One of the passions of my ministry over the years has been to be present to people who feel pushed out because of prejudice, trauma or loss. Three examples:
- Three weeks ago, a ten year old boy from the church neighborhood was hit – and killed, by a car as he walked to school. The boy’s family lived in subsidized housing. The father was understandably distraught, and his grief was displayed on Boston and Worcester television. Since All Saints Church has had a ten-year ministry of presence in the economically challenged and drug infested neighborhood (organizing neighborhood walks and vigils and facilitating conversations between residents and the Police Department) I went to see the father. Our Church was identified as one of three institutions to which people could send memorial contributions. A parishioner (who lives in the neighborhood) and I helped organize a vigil service at the accident site. The neighborhood came and supported each other and the family. I continue to be in relationship with the grieving Muslim family.
- OOn September 11, 2001, I drove our Parish Nurse home because she was concerned about the whereabouts of her daughter who was traveling from Boston to Los Angeles. I was with her when she found out that her daughter was on the first plane to hit the World Trade Center Tower. I spent the whole day with the family, and at the same time occasionally stepped out of the house to relay information back to the church from my cell phone --.and to organize a community prayer service at All Saints Church that evening. Following the community service, I went back to be with the grieving family. I invited the Bishop to preside at another community service at All Saints Church that Friday (which was the national day of mourning) – and I helped the City organize an interfaith prayer service the next week. Since the 9/11 tragedy generated a cycle of fear and prejudice toward the local Muslim community, we began to develop a relationship with the local Mosque. We brought dozens of people from our congregation to their prayer service – and we invited their members and Imam to join us in Sunday worship. We built bridges, heard each other’s stories – and began an important relationship with one another.
- Two years ago, the City Manager of Worcester was forced to resign in what was universally regarded as a political coup. He had been a faithful and competent City Manager for ten years. Since his resignation was immediate, he was set to disappear from the community without any public closure. I enlisted a colleague to help me organize a farewell celebration for the City Manager. We raised some money, put together an ad hoc committee of other religious leaders, and held the reception at another downtown church. Seven hundred people came to offer their gratitude. It was an important event for the city – in that it enabled the community to say goodbye and express their thanks to an esteemed public servant.
3. Please give us examples of your own spiritual growth and development. What have you done in the past to help the spiritual growth and development of others? What aspects of your own life and ministry do you think would make others think of you as a person of God? How have you taught or conveyed your faith to others in the past?
For the past seven years I have been a member of the Fellowship of St. John, living the rule of life as developed by the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Episcopal monastic community located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My rule of life involves daily meditation and at least four overnight visits to the monastery plus a week-long retreat. I have had a spiritual director (currently a monk at the monastery) for over twenty years. In the summer of 2005, I took a course at St. George’s College in Jerusalem, and then met up with two friends to spend three days in silence in the Sinai desert (a trip facilitated by a tour guide) and spend time in some of the oldest monasteries in the Christian tradition.
Over the past ten years, many parishioners – and some staff members, asked me to serve as their spiritual director. Since time constraints and appropriate boundary issues made that impossible, I referred people to a gifted local spiritual director. This merely deepened people’s desire to be in a deep relationship with God. So we gathered to pray and ponder. Together we began thinking of developing a rule of life for interested parishioners. The group sent me to the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Washington DC, and when I returned we spent two years carefully thinking through what a rule of life might be – and how a group of people who lived a common rule would fit into the overall life of the congregation. We began with about fifteen people – I served as facilitator, three or four people took on the responsibility of drafting a rule, one participant kept the rest of the parish apprised of our developments, still others led our monthly meditation meetings. At the end of two years, we settled on a rule, inaugurated it in a Sunday morning liturgy – and were clear about how new people could become part of “the Fellowship of All Saints.” The group named me as the Abbot, and identified two Priors from the growing Fellowship. We invited our Bishop to be our Episcopal Visitor, who meets with us once a year. The Priors now lead a Fellowship of thirty people who live a rule which includes a discipline of daily prayer, members organizing and leading Advent and Lenten Quiet Days – and taking an annual weekend retreat together. The Fellowship has served not only as a wonderful source of support for its members, but has also become a catalyst for more and deeper spiritual formation opportunities in the life of the congregation.
I talk about my faith. I tend to begin one on-one-meetings with staff or parishioners with prayer. I love leading and attending worship – primarily the Eucharist, but have been deeply enriched by Taize worship, Evensong and group meditation. I tell people of my history of Zen practice (during my two years in Japan after college and before seminary). My fiction and non-fiction reading tends to about spiritual exploration. My passion for economic and racial justice tends to convey my desire for a deep and abiding relationship with God.
At All Saints Church, three parishioners and I have taught a twice-yearly, five-week course on various aspects of the Christian faith. While we have covered many important theological issues, our primary intention is to create a community of trust and safety so people feel free to express their doubts and confusion. In my work with CREDO, I begin each conference by telling my story, highlighting moments of insight – and identifying periods of doubt, angst and isolation. Openness and honesty have been the benchmarks for how I convey my faith.
4. What is your theology of stewardship? Do you tithe? Why or why not? How do you articulate that theology in an economically or spiritually challenged environment?
My theology of stewardship is perhaps best expressed in a pamphlet I wrote in 2000 for The Episcopal Network for Stewardship (TENS), entitled: “From Scarcity to Abundance”. Using the feeding of the 5,000 story from Mark’s Gospel, I described how the disciples in the parable react with panic and confusion at the sight of 5,000 people in a lonely place at the end of the day. They are nearly paralyzed by the fear of scarcity. In contrast, Jesus sees the situation as another opportunity to reflect God’s abundance. He challenges the disciples to discover their own abundance, and call forth God’s abundance in the crowd.
Our economy is based on the assumption of scarcity. Most of us have been trained well in the dynamics of scarcity, and live in its fear. Classical Western theology tends to reinforce this notion, with its medieval emphasis on original sin and human unworthiness. I believe in a Kingdom economy, which is based on the assumption of abundance. Stewardship provides an opportunity to teach people – in a very concrete and personal way, about God’s abundance and the freedom into which it invites us.
My wife and I have been tithing since 1982, the year we were married. Prior to that, I was reluctant to embrace tithing – or proportional giving, because I felt that my decision to be ordained – and the modest income a priest’s income would provide, was as much a financial commitment I would make. My giving was determined on the basis of what I thought I could afford – which wasn’t much. My wife challenged me to engage in an exercise of proportionate giving with a tithe as a goal. I grudgingly went along with it – and very quickly discovered a spiritual – and financial, freedom that I didn’t think was possible. I no longer felt that I was held hostage by money – or a lack of it. This sense of freedom has grown over the years, and now that our children are graduating from college, we are considering the prospect of increasing our annual giving to more than ten percent.
Three years ago, we revised our wills – and have tithed the first ten percent of our net assets (upon our deaths) to God’s work in the world. We will revisit the ten percent benchmark every ten years or so – with the idea that it could be raised to twenty to twenty-five percent. Working with several parishioners – and a lot of consultation help from the Episcopal Church Foundation, All Saints has created an Arbor Society, comprised of parishioners who have made provisions in their Wills or Life Estates for the future benefit of the Church. My wife and I are charter members of this group, and in its first three years the Arbor Society has grown from four to thirty households.
This is an important stewardship witness and opportunity that needs to be given more attention throughout the church.
We need to keep talking about abundance, particularly in the context of the growing gap between rich and poor. In a TENS publication I wrote in 2001, entitled: “From Lust to Repentance: the Story of the Prodigal Son”, I argued that greed is the dominant metaphor in the Western world. Moreover, greed reflects a deeper and more insidious attribute – lust, which I define as the desire to keep filling ourselves up. The younger son in the Prodigal Son parable is the embodiment of lust, and in some ways represents the lust of the Western world – at least in relationship to the “third” world. The discipline of Christian stewardship – of our finances, our bodies, our time and our environment, is a critically important witness that the church needs to make. We are overfeeding ourselves – in more ways than we are aware. The Church needs to address the greed – and lust, and invite people into a disciplined practice of repentance – and to live into a deeper, and more abiding, abundance.
5. We are known for our full inclusion in the body of Christ of all sexual orientations. How would you help us to continue this inclusion along with making concerted progress in other areas such as race, class, ability, economic justice and the plight of our cities?
I think it is important to speak of the giftedness of the entire human family. The resistance to the inclusion of all sexual orientations, a resistance that is felt in parts of the country – and in entire Provinces of the Anglican Communion, and uniquely in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with the inauguration of same-gender marriage, has been made from the perspective of scarcity. The argument in opposition to GLBTI people is that they reflect some sort of flaw or sin. I believe that the Church needs to claim the voice of abundance – and that all of God’s people are gifts, and their sexual orientation, class, ability and/or race reflects the giftedness of God. The Church needs to create and support liturgies and communities in which all of its members can claim their giftedness – and live into of the freedom given them in Christ. I tend to paraphrase the Roman Catholic notion of the “preferential option for the poor” to be a preferential option for people who have been pushed to the margins.
For the past twenty years, I have been committed to urban ministry. My passion comes from a commitment to identify the city – in its racial, socio-economic and ethnic diversity, as places of abundance. There has been a tendency to turn our backs on the inner city, primarily because inner cities have long been identified as regions of scarcity. Shortly after I arrived as Rector of All Saints, Worcester, there was a murder in the neighborhood. A drug deal had gone very badly. Members of the parish considered what we could do in response that would be helpful and hopeful. We created a procession of hope: we marched through the area – praying and singing and blessing with water – all done with the intent of reclaiming the neighborhood as holy ground. We staged these “processions of hope” three different times, the last with members of a local synagogue. The marches had deep meaning and healing power for those who participated: but many residents – who we didn’t know – and who were by and large different racially, linguistically and religiously – had no clue what we were about. We could identify ourselves as neighbors only because we lived in the same census tract. We had no relationships with one another. We discontinued the processions because we began to detect a spiritual arrogance on our part: that we were bringing the presence of God to places where God was absent. We were not the first missionaries to think this way.
But it didn’t feel right. Without our knowing it, when we stopped the processions we began to develop a ministry based on imago Dei – that we all are created in the image of God. We began to meet our neighbors. We held events for kids. We learned each other’s stories. Instead of operating from the hubris of thinking that we were bringing God’s blessing into a blighted area, we ventured into the neighborhood for the purpose of discovering where else God was working. We learned from each other – mostly about the diversity and depth of God. We learned about the difference between seeing someone as an object of interest and relating to a neighbor whose life and story can open others up to deeper dimensions of God and create greater opportunities for shared compassion. And we learned about God’s passion for justice – and that we all are called to work with similar passion so that the image of God as reflected in the face and life of a neighbor is given the opportunity to bloom into yet another one of God’s great ideas.
That is the sort of ministry I would hope to encourage in the Diocese of Newark.
6. Please list and explain two major characteristics of your own leadership style that you see relevant to the ministry of the next Bishop of Newark.
I feel called to be a leader. I like serving as a leader – and feel comfortable in the role of leadership. For four years, as a CREDO Conference leader of a team which includes three priests and one Bishop, I have learned to claim my authority, in spite of occasional self doubts. Similarly, in leading eight CREDO conferences of up to thirty clergy, I have learned how to be present to clergy – and lead them at the same time.
A first major characteristic of my leadership style is clarity. I have learned the importance of being clear in my role as leader. I know the difference between being a leader and a martyr. I feel I am clear – and appropriate, in identifying my vulnerability. As a leader I have learned that it is important to step away from the operations of the system I am leading for the purpose of deepening my clarity of the system itself – and my role in it. For two years I worked with an executive coach, who helped me sort through some of the tensions and confusion of my role – and guide me from being more of a manager to a visionary leader. The coaching experience has enabled me to better claim the gift of abundance. If I were to become Bishop, I would engage the services of this same coach, with whom I worked exclusively over the phone.
As an ENFJ, it is relatively easy for me to be a visionary. The challenge for me is to develop clarity of that vision – and then articulate it with constancy and consistency.
Part of this clarity is to be up-front and clear about any agenda – for a meeting, a project – or a desire that I may be carrying into a particular situation.
The clarity of the Gospel has challenged me to step into places of margin for the purpose of helping to give voice and presence to those who have been ignored or silenced. While at St. Peter’s, Morristown, I organized a group of community and religious leaders who created Morris, Shelter, Inc. Our purpose was not just to provide shelter to the homeless, but to welcome them back into the full community. Similarly, as a new Rector at Christ Church, Hackensack, I helped organize and served as the first President of the Inter-religious Fellowship of the Homeless of Bergen County. We provided shelter and rented apartments – trained hundreds of volunteers and built some affordable housing – but most importantly we were able to create an effective advocacy network involving shelter guests and congregational volunteers.
My second leadership characteristic is that of collaboration. I seek out other people’s opinions, especially those who represent a different or minority point of view. I think it is important to keep people at the table of conversation. My leadership style is to draw people in – and work very hard to keep them there. If I sense that group dynamics or a political agenda is operating beneath the surface, I bring it out into the open in a way that (I hope) others are able to hear it.
7. Given the climate of our time and what you know about the history of action in the Diocese of Newark, how would you inspire and lead our diocesan congregations to respond to the issues and concerns of the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion and the world?
I believe in the genius of our Anglican tradition. That we are the via media. Our Church was created in tension, and for 500 years has sought to live in tension. I thrive on living in the tension between rich and poor, black and white (and brown and yellow), gay and straight (and the full spectrum of the GLBTI community), high-church and low-church, urban and suburban. Being in the midst of that tension gives me energy – and provides me with spiritual clarity. It is in the midst of tension where I have been most able to discover God’s abundance.
I think it is important to be as clear as possible in identifying the presenting tensions on any given issue – and see how they can contribute to forward movement. However, I do not believe that living in tension calls me – or the Church, to be neutral. I think it is important to take a stand, to be clear – and to be respectful of a differing point of view.
The Diocese of Newark has had a distinguished history of offering significant leadership in the areas of social justice. If I were Bishop, I would feel honored to continue that tradition. I have served as a prophet in many situations over the years. Speaking truth to power is an important – and needed, dimension of a Bishop’s ministry. Yet it needs to be said that public leadership can be a tricky business. It is very easy to lose sight of the issue at hand and get lost in the very human need for attention and approbation. I have found that my best corrective is a consistent spiritual practice, critically supportive friends and colleagues – and an unimpressed wife.
I feel strongly that the Church needs to make a more effective witness in the area of economic justice – in this country and around the world. If I were Bishop of the Diocese of Newark, I would frequently draw the distinction between charity and justice – and that while we need to respond to human need with acts of charity, our Gospel challenge to secure justice is broader and more long-term. I see the challenge of the church is not so much to help people beat the odds, but to work at changing the odds. That was Jesus’ witness. I think it needs to be ours as well.
