William A. Doubleday, Priest in Charge

The Wardens and Vestry of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church are pleased to announce that the Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk, the Bishop of New York, has appointed the Rev. William A. Doubleday as the Priest in Charge of St. Mark’s Church in Mount Kisco, NY, for a three year term. At the end of that time he will be eligible for election as Rector of the parish by the Vestry. Father Doubleday is an Episcopal Priest who has been well known as a pastor, teacher, preacher, and leader in the Episcopal Church for more than three decades.

Father Doubleday is a graduate of Amherst College and the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From 2005 to 2011, he served as Professor of Pastoral Theology and Church History and as Associate Dean for Operations at Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, which is in close partnership with Trinity Lutheran Seminary. He also served as Interim Dean of Bexley Hall from 2009-2011, overseeing an endowment of $10 million and a budget of $800,000 a year. He previously taught from 1986 to 2005 at The General Theological Seminary in New York City, including four years as Director of its Center for Christian Spirituality.

In the 1980’s, Father Doubleday served as the Curate at St. James Episcopal Church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and then served successively as the Chaplain of the Morningside House Nursing Home in the Bronx, and later as the Hospice Chaplain, and then as a pioneering HIV/AIDS Chaplain at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center In Manhattan. He is an Honorary Canon of the Diocese of the Highveld in the Anglican Church in South Africa, where he was involved in clergy training and HIV/AIDS education for nearly two decades. He has preached  and lectured widely on pastoral leadership; congregational development; the theology and ethics of human sexuality; the healing ministry of the church;  the pastoral care of the dying; the worldwide HIV/AIDS epidemic; and the intersection of the Church and Contemporary Society. He represented the Diocese of New York as a Clerical Deputy to five General Conventions of the Episcopal Church.   

Geoffrey Smith, Director of Music

Geoffrey Smith is a name recognized by many musicians in the Episcopal Church, having served as a full-time church musician for parishes in Ohio, Connecticut and New York from 1976–1995.  In addition to maintaining a rigorous rehearsal and service schedule at home, his choirs of adults and children in those places toured the east coast, singing in Washington National Cathedral, Albany’s Cathedral of All Saints, as well as numerous parish churches of various denominations.

As an organist he has played recitals and accompanied choirs throughout the United States, in England and in France.  While at Christ Church in Shaker Heights, Ohio he designed and supervised the installation of a significant new mechanical action organ.  In 1988 he was selected from a slate of over 110 candidates to succeed Robert G. Owen at Christ Church Bronxville.  The New York Times hailed his choir there as “the finest parish church choir outside New York City.”  (He was also charged with preserving the historic Æolian-Skinner/Gress Miles organ that was a sister instrument to the organ here at St. Mark’s.)  He has led workshops on hymnody and choral repertoire, and several of his hymn tunes and some of his service music have been published.

He brings to St. Mark’s a lifetime of experience in Anglican church music, nearly forty years as a choir trainer, and a profound knowledge and respect for buildings and instruments of historic significance.