Rev. Robert J. Mark grew up in the Boston area, the youngest of four children, with a Baptist father and a Presbyterian mother.  He was nurtured by regular worship and Christian education and learned to value the many ways faith can be practiced in everyday life and work.  In 1993, while living and working in a poor community in South Africa, he first felt a call toward ministry, a yearning to pursue peace and justice in the light of faith.  He chose a Christian college (Wheaton in Illinois) and pursued the study of geology and international development, spending his summers leading youth trips to the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana.  After graduation, he worked as a youth minister, coordinated a sister church partnership in Uganda, and then became a project administrator for a biodiversity and sustainable forestry firm.  But the call to fulltime ordained ministry finally sent him to seminary, completing his Master of Divinity degree at Boston University in 2005.  He was ordained to the Presbyterian Ministry of Word and Sacrament in 2006.

In 2011 he was called by the Congregation of Church of the Covenant to  be our pastor.  From 2007-2011, he was the designated co-pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Waltham, and since 2008 the assistant chaplain and McDonald Fellow at The Memorial Church at Harvard University.  From 2002-2007, he was Camp Director at PC(USA)'s Camp Wilmot in New Hampshire and from 2005-2008, he was Executive Director of the Waltham Community Day Center for the homeless and low-income community.  Along the way, he has also completed extensive training in Earthcare, pastoral care, and congregational redevelopment, among other topics. However the study in which he has perhaps been  most deeply invested is reclaiming the Celtic traditions that are part of his own ancestral heritage, and also intertwined with the roots of the Presbyterian tradition.  "On a personal retreat to the Iona Community in Scotland," he wrote, "I felt guidance from the Holy Spirit that my vocation should always center around three elements: Jesus, the earth, and the poor."  That is a vocational journey we now look forward to continuing with him. 

Besides being Covenant's Minister of Music, Tom Handel is Dean of Students and professor of Music History and Musicology at New England Conservatory (NEC). He is active as a solo organist, accompanist, theorist, musicologist and music administrator. He has performed throughout the United States and has given solo organ recitals for the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Society. For more information about Tom, please see his biography at NEC.