Mark Harris Earl

September 11, 1949 – March 17, 2020

The statistics around the life of the Rev. Mark Earl cannot hope to convey the essence of the son, father, brother, husband and pastor who died as gently as he lived March 17, 2020, following a brave battle for his health. As he moves into eternity, the impact of his life will also live on where he brought love and hugs, fullness of joy in the ordinary, selfless devotion to God and God’s church, to family and friends, and to every community that felt his grace and presence.

Mark Earl was born September 10, 1949, to parents Harris and Marcia Earl, Wesleyan missionaries to Colombia. Life there provided him an opportunity to develop Spanish fluency, a gift he used to bless parishioners and to intersect fluently with strangers…who instantly became his friends.

His early education included Alliance Academy in Ecuador, where he attended high school. He was a graduate of Indiana Wesleyan College and Asbury Theological Seminary.

Ordained a United Methodist elder, Mark served as pastor in churches throughout New Jersey: Central United Methodist Church in Linwood; Rancocas and Masonville United Methodist Churches; Seaville United Methodist Church; Broad Street United Methodist Church in Burlington; Hillsdale United Methodist Church; and Christ United Methodist Church in Lakewood. Having retired, his ministry also included service as chaplain to the United Methodist Committee on Relief’s (UMCOR) annual U.S. Disaster Response Academy, and a member of Cross Ties Sunday School class at First Gainesville United Methodist Church in Georgia.

Mark’s family will remember him for the joy he felt in their every accomplishment and his devotion to them, his genuine investment in the concerns of others…even those he met in a store or on the street, his love of time on any body of water, cooking for others (particularly his famed pancakes and oatmeal), his willingness to be transformed by music, particularly classical and the theological inspiration of the Wesleyan hymns, and his lifelong willingness to learn. In recent years, Mark, already grateful for the simplest of things, was inspired by the teaching of Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr.

Mark Earl’s character was well expressed in “The Practice and Presence of God” by Brother Lawrence, born Nicholas Herman. As a man who felt the constant companionship of God, there was “no distinction between the time of business and the time of worship” for Mark. His family notes that he felt the presence of God whether he was working in his kitchen, the garage or worshipping in a church. Like Brother Lawrence, Mark would never have embraced a description of him as “great,” but all would agree that he personified the “virtues that posterity calls great.”