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Q&A with Bishop Mark J. Webb

October 28, 2014 / By Christian Vischi / .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

To read about the Rev. Jacob Armstrong's message during the Bishop's Retreat that preceded this Q&A, click here.

Upper New York Area Resident Bishop Mark J. Webb followed the Rev. Jacob Armstrong’s third message during the 2014 Bishop’s Retreat in Lake Placid with a question and answer session.

Although Bishop Webb said he was open to tackling almost any question, he acknowledged that he doesn’t always have all the answers and suggested that perhaps part of the time the session would be more like a conversation.Bishop Mark J. Webb

The following are a few of the questions asked of Bishop Webb:

What was the ministry setting of your last church?

Bishop Webb served three local churches before joining the Cabinet. At his final local church appointment, which he served for almost 14 years, the attendance rose from about 70 on a Sunday to between 500 and 550, and the staff increased from one to about a dozen. “That was such an amazing experience and such a unique experience,” he said.

What do you do to relax?

“That is a piece that I am still trying to figure out, honestly,” he said. He used to grow a “huge vegetable garden,” a passion that started when he was in 4-H and growing up in the country. He also enjoys bicycling, watching movies, “chasing after our kids and watching their sporting events,” and walking. He came back to the garden idea, but he doesn’t want to further entice the eastern coyote that already visits his backyard. “But I may do container gardening in my back room,” he said.

What is your vision for our Conference looking down the road; where do you think we could be going?

“Here is the good news: God has a vision,” Bishop Webb said. “I think it is our responsibility” to listen for that plan. “It is not about my vision. I think that would be arrogant and misguided. … We know that God has a vision. The hard work for us is, together, to discern that vision.” In Gil Rendle’s Doing the Math of Mission: Fruits, Faithfulness, and Metrics, the author asks what is the outcome, what is the difference that God wants to make? What difference is God calling us to in the next two years? What will be different because we are living the mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world?

“There will be different responses to that whether you are living in Buffalo or Albany, but there will be a lot of common areas,” the bishop said. “If every single one of us will go deeper in our relationship with God (and with our sisters and brothers and the community around us) … guess what is going to happen? The Church is going to be relevant and the Church is going to grow.”

How are you held accountable?
“Jodi.” But in addition to his wife, the Northeastern Jurisdiction’s Episcopacy Committee provides a tool to every conferences' Committees on Episcopacy – Upper New York’s committee is chaired by the Rev. Rebecca Laird – that is “a pretty comprehensive evaluation process,” Bishop Webb said. The survey is approximately 18 pages in length, and parts of it are sent to different people in the Conference for evaluation. Bishop Webb is also part of a coaching group whose 10 members come from across the country; and he is in an accountability group as a member of the jurisdiction’s College of Bishops.

Thinking ahead to Annual Conference 2015, are there specific hopes that you have?
“My prayer is that we will fall more deeply in love with Jesus and with one another. If those two things occur, we are golden. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have good old family arguments,” Bishop Webb said.

“It just blows my mind that the Creator of the world would choose me, would choose, you, would choose us, to be the primary way in which the world hears about Jesus Christ. It just blows my mind. And sometimes I say, ‘Surely You could have come up with a better plan.’

“I believe with all that I am and all that I have, what God is already doing through our ministry together, what God is about to do and going to do in us and through us (will be amazing).”