The posting of the job announcement for our next rector is accompanied by our 2015 St. Mark’s Parish Profile and narrative information that will be included in the St. Mark’s Community Ministry Profile. The narrative responses to eleven specific questions that the DSC included in this profile are provided below.

St. Mark’s Community Ministry Profile Narrative Information

Describe a moment in your worshipping community’s recent ministry which you recognize as one of success and fulfillment. On September 28, 2014, St. Mark’s proudly welcomed the ninth bishop of the Diocese of Washington, The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, to an extraordinary service at which she dedicated the new spaces at our church. The service was a fabulous celebration of a five-year year odyssey that began in 2009 and concluded with a successful $5.5 million renovation of St. Mark’s. The project was named Vision 2020 to symbolize how clearly we see our future as a community. The celebration on this day marked a new beginning for our congregation and allowed us to share in our joy and excitement for the future we have worked so hard to define together.

Describe your liturgical style & practice. If your community provides more than one type of worship service, please describe all. We are an open communion church with a central altar. Our 9am, 11:15 am and 5 pm services are based on Rite II in the BCP, liberally adapted to express our progressive, somewhat non-theistic approach to worship. We incorporate material from the NZPB, Enriching Our Worship and Prayers for an Inclusive Church, along with liturgical elements written by clergy and laity. We strive to balance the desires of those who value innovative liturgies with the longing of others who prefer the traditional language of the Prayer Book. A major distinction of our 9 am service is the Sermon Seminar, with the sermon at the end, followed by a discussion. At 11:15 we follow the usual order of worship. Our choir sings at both morning services; a children’s choir sings monthly at 9 am. The 5 pm service is more meditative, with recorded or live music but without congregational singing.

Occasional innovations include the use of short excerpts from current St. Mark’s Players productions or performances by our Dance Company. This past Palm Sunday featured a reading of the Passion accompanied by a piano, cello and dance piece composed by our Music Director and choreographed by our Dance Company director.

How do you practice incorporating others in ministry? St. Mark’s has a long tradition of lay involvement and leadership in all aspects of parish life. Parishioners are encouraged to take active participant and leadership roles in such things as worship planning, pastoral care, outreach, Christian Education for adults and youth, and a wide variety of parish activities, committees, programs and activities. One challenge is to develop a clearer more consistent set of expectations for and definition of lay leadership to ensure better turnover of responsibility and overall continuity of execution of roles and responsibilities. We live in the tension of how best to establish appropriate structure and processes for what we do, and how we do it, while not stifling the creativity of those who willingly take on roles that serve our community.

As a worshipping community, how do you care for your spiritual, emotional and physical well-being? We engage in numerous practices in which we care for each other and our well-being that are both communal and personal. At each service we share our joys and concerns for the entire congregation to hear during the prayers of the people. This time of sharing is followed by the offering of peace to everyone – hugs, handshakes, introductions and gestures of good will all around. Our Christian Education program invites people to share their story in small trusting groups so that they are not alone in the struggles and triumphs of life and faith. This philosophy of “telling our story” undergirds so many ways where we care for each other. We have several support groups for those suffering from physical disease, and for the caregivers themselves. Once a month, trained lay people offer the laying on of hands ministry during communion. People trust that they are heard and therefore their difficulties are raised up and held. There is an active lay-led Caregivers Support Group that visits the sick, provides meals and some logistical support in times of need. At St. Mark’s it is expected that you will make your needs known, and that others will walk along with you.

Describe your worshipping communities involvement in either the wider Church or geographical community. We are widely engaged in a variety of outreach projects, a number of them with other churches, some of them on our own. We are part of a Capitol Hill Group Ministry and an area wide Samaritan Ministry supported by many other churches. We nurture overseas connections through a Mid-East Working Group to foster awareness of the work of the Episcopal Church there, and for years we have sent groups of adults and teens to rural communities in Honduras. Through our Green Lions we strive for better environmental stewardship both in our church and our neighborhood. Our clergy have testified before congressional and district committees in support of gay marriage and tougher DC gun laws. Members of the parish participate in various ways on diocesan committees.

Our Outreach Board coordinates our projects and partnerships, not only with other churches but with nonprofit organizations who share our commitment to care for others with love, justice and compassion. Our financial contributions are connected with programs where we also have people involved.

How do you engage in pastoral care for those beyond your worshipping community? All are welcome not only to all of our services, but to our open communion, regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof. We offer a form of pastoral care to the wider DC community by participating in “Ashes to Go” on Ash Wednesdays. Our own clergy and laity, along with those from other churches, offer the Imposition of Ashes at various subway stations and other venues around the city. We host several addiction support meetings. We share Thanksgiving and Easter Vigil services with other Episcopal and Lutheran churches in our neighborhood. This year we hosted the Easter Vigil with another Episcopal Church and two other Lutheran Churches in our neighborhood. Our clergy are responsive to non-members seeking baptisms, weddings and funerals. Our Yoga program has been a source of spiritual and physical refreshment for many beyond our community for years. We also have regularly meeting meditation groups open to all, and the Pastoral Counseling and Consultation Services of Greater Washington maintains an office in our building where clients receive pastoral care on a sliding scale fee basis.

Tell about a ministry that your worshipping community has initiated in the past 5 years. Who can be contacted about this project? In late 2009, St. Mark’s held its first 5 p.m. Sunday service on the first day of Advent. From just a dozen attendees five years ago, we now have an ever-expanding list of at least 85 parishioners who attend the service, including several families with young children.

The service provides a quiet, contemplative space for worship and is community-centered. Music – whether recorded or live – is used to augment the meditative nature of the service, and so we don’t sing hymns as in the morning services. The liturgy is stripped to the basics, and we end the service in a large circle around the altar for the Eucharist. Altogether, the service generally lasts fewer than 60 minutes.

More informal in nature, the service ends each week in what we call Holy Happy Hour. It is a time when we have fellowship with existing members and welcome newcomers. Through this service, we have tried many new things, including:

Sharing an agape meal during the service

Holding the service in our courtyard outside during pleasant weather

Meeting at least once a year to discuss the service and what we’d like to see in the future

How are you preparing yourself for the Church of the future? Our current discernment process has indicated a willingness to envision the future as well as uncertainty about a collective vision for the future or how to get there. St. Mark’s is a community that has experienced a reasonably stable history as evidenced by the fact that we have had little turnover in the rector position, (only two rectors in the last 47 years). Recently we completed a significant upgrade to our facilities allowing for more space and opportunity for us as a parish community in addition to the surrounding neighborhood and outside groups. Our demographics indicate that our two largest populations are generally long-term members (55 and older) and a growing number of young adults and families under 40. Creating a vibrant and relevant future that serves the needs of both younger and newer members and those who have been with us for many years will cause us to create a future that may look somewhat different from our past. Our desire for an engaging and energized future may well require us to re-examine some of our long-held traditions in the context of their future relevance. We see the transition to new leadership as a catalyst to build a new future together.

What is your practice of stewardship and how does it shape the life of your worshipping community? St. Mark’s is a parish rich in time, talent and, at times, money. We have been described as the church of the holy activity with many programs run by parishioners who enthusiastically give their time and talent to those projects and activities they embrace. At the same time, with the numerous varied activities going on at St. Mark’s we are always in search of more volunteers and new opportunities to share our gifts.

We are also a community supported almost entirely through the annual canvas and special offerings from our members. We have recently completed a capital campaign that brought in over $3 million, and allowed us to upgrade our parish to that of our dreams. These demonstrate the ability and level of desire parishioners have to support the St. Mark’s they love. However, with the capital campaign over and the church in a period of transition we view enhancing our financial well-being and attracting new pledging members as critical challenges we are facing in the near future.

What is your worshipping community’s experience of conflict? And how have you addressed it? In the fall of 2014, we experienced significant distress regarding the Renewal Works Survey (RWS). Parish leadership requested St. Mark’s be allowed to use RWS as part of the discernment process for the new Rector and made RWS the first major responsibility of the Discernment and Search Committee (DSC). Many members felt that they couldn’t express their spiritual views and beliefs on the RWS form and that it was biased to generate more “traditional” and “evangelical” results. Others felt that RWS raised useful and important questions. Parish leadership convened a forum with three speakers and questions from the floor. Unease remained: after the survey opened for input, 62 parishioners petitioned to scrap RWS, and there was unusually broad and deep discussion on the parish email list. The DSC incorporated these messages, the petition, 188 survey responses, as well as 49 responses outside of the RWS form proper into its report to the Vestry, then presented an interactive Town Hall based around table discussion to review the report and address remaining concerns. Both RWS “supporters” and dissenters feel that concerns have been handled appropriately.

What is your experience leading/addressing change in the church? When has it gone well? When has it gone poorly? And what did you learn? We are usually willing, if not entirely eager, to change, guided by comprehensive discussions and thoughtful leadership, as two examples show. The current discernment process is proceeding with enthusiasm and some anxiety, as most of us are excited about new possibilities and beginnings. Sixteen years ago, a task force convened meetings to consider same sex unions, which the parish ultimately decided to bless. At the end, even dissenters agreed they had been heard and that the parish had decided broadly and thoughtfully.

Change conceived as primarily logistical, e.g. a building sale during the recent capital campaign, can lead to conflict when project managers’ “can do” attitude collides with deeply held preferences. “We talk things to death”, yet some may still feel unheard and unclear about the relationship between parish input and concerns, and the final results. Big decisions are generally not reopened and we move forward, but some parishioners remain alienated.

The DSC has attempted, so far successfully, to frame our listening and resulting decision-making very intentionally, and to risk over-communicating in the attempt to reach one and all.

Please provide words describing the gifts and skills essential to the future leaders of your worshipping community. Enter no more than four descriptions made up of one or two-words each. For example: administration, asset management, preaching, pastoral care.

Articulate preacher Welcoming & engaging Warm & humorous Organized delegator