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Church installs new rector
(by Megan Burrow - August 26, 2008)
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| Photo Courtesy Of Grace Episcopal Church
Rev. Robert Rhodes was recently installed as the new rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Westwood.
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Rev. Robert R. Rhodes, Grace Episcopal Church’s new rector, has had a long and winding journey to his place behind the pulpit at the Westwood church.
He grew up as a Baptist in St. Louis, Mo., drifting away from the church in high school as many teenagers are prone to do. He was a painter, and earned an undergraduate degree in fine arts from Fontbonne College in St. Louis. The catholic school had required religion courses every student had to take, and Rhodes enjoyed them so much he took theology each semester. He discovered the Anglican Church after going to Christ Church Cathedral in St. Louis to borrow some books from the church’s extensive library on the recommendation of a professor.
At the time, Rhodes said, he was looking very seriously at Buddhism and Hinduism, “something that engaged all the senses.” When he stepped into the cathedral he was awed by its beauty and began attending services with his girlfriend, now his wife. “The ceremony was beautiful, and ordered,” Rhodes said with feeling. “It had its feet in the ancient church, but dealt with the issues going on today.”
After years of attending the church, the couple took confirmation classes and was confirmed by the bishop of Missouri in 1996. Around this time, Rhodes approached the dean of the church and said he wanted to do something more. He wasn’t happy at his current job, a position at a medical library at Washington University, and was considering going back to school to study theology and possibly teach one day. The dean suggested Rhodes could study theology and eventually be ordained.
“It was not something that had even occurred to me,” Rhodes said. “But after he said it, it was like everything clicked. Even my background in art was pointing toward it. Trying to make connections, seeing God’s hand in the world and revealing it.”
In 2000, Rhodes started seminary studies at the General Theological Seminary in New York City and did field work as a seminarian assistant and then as an assisting deacon at St. Mary the Virgin in the heart of Times Square.
In the summer, the church would leave its doors open, letting in the breeze to cool the air. There was a door on 46th Street and on 47th. As the church would celebrate mass, people would just walk through its doors to the next block. “It was a very interesting experience,” Rhodes said. “You would hear the world and you experienced the world. There was this sense of its bleeding in, and that maybe something that we’re doing in there was bleeding out too. There was a sense of the boundaries, but also a sense of them being porous. There was a real sense of the holy and the secular mixing, which I loved. That’s what the church is about.”
From that experience, Rhodes learned much about the parish’s role of being in service to the community that surrounds it, even though in that case “the community was sometimes a bizarre one.”
Rhodes served as a curate at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Ellisville, Mo. after completing his master’s and then served for just under two years at a parish in a little town in Louisiana that was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina.
Because the town was so economically devastated, not just by the hurricane, but by job losses and population decline, the parish had a hard time supporting a priest. Rhodes began looking for a new job, and in what Rhodes describes as perfect timing, the position of rector became available at Grace Church.
Rhodes says because he just started in June, he is still learning about the community and the congregation. He would like to learn more about the outreach programs the church is involved in, what the needs of the community are and further engage with the outside world.
“There has been a sense for a long time that the priest serves the needs of the congregation, but the priest does that so the church can be the church for the world. This is not to say we can solve the problems of the world, because we know we can’t do that, but to say, ‘this is what the kingdom is supposed to look like. It is growing in the world even though the flower hasn’t bloomed yet.’”
Rhodes says his fine arts background informs vision of the church and his sermons, making them more vibrant and visceral.
“One of the dangers of Christianity is we’re somewhat of a book religion. You can sort of reduce scripture to an instruction manual.
“As an artist, I try to offer different images so the connection can be made so it doesn’t feel like God is this being out there somewhere, imposing things on us as an alien force, but as a lover that’s calling us back to him.”
Grace Church, an Episcopal church in the Diocese of Newark, is located at 9 Harrington Avenue at the Five Corners in the heart of Westwood, adjacent to the Firemen’s Memorial Park. Mass is celebrated each Wednesday at 9 a.m. and each Sunday at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. For questions or more information about Grace Church or its schedule of services, contact Mary Beth King, Parish Secretary or the Rev. Rob Rhodes, rector at 201-664-0407 or visit the Grace Church Web site at www.gracewestwood.org.
Megan Burrow's e-mail address is burrow@northjersey.com.
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