Corporates now priest's 'flock'

By SELWYN PARKER

The former Archdeacon of Auckland, the Venerable Peter Beck, has quietly left the paid priesthood and joined the ranks of recruitment consultants.

After 27 years as a priest, the former vicar of St Matthew-in-the-City in Federal St has hung up his cassock and, as he puts it, "walked across the threshold."

Instead of counselling the faithful at St Matthew's, he has since mid-January been doing the same for executives from the Wellington offices of his new employer, career management company DBM, the New Zealand subsidiary of the worldwide Drake Beam Morin empire.

Peter Beck doesn't see much difference between the two jobs, if any.

"There's no separation between the sacred and the secular," insists now plain Mr Beck. "I may have taken off my dog collar but I'm still a priest - a corporate priest. People in Auckland said to me: 'Why are you leaving the church?' Well, I'm not leaving the church. I've just walked across the threshold."

The way he describes it, it's business as usual - except that he's wearing a suit and is much better paid.

"This is a bit like the job I had," he said. "I used to be right in the heart of the CBD at St Matthew's and I often had confidential relationships with business people. But now I'm no longer walking alongside. I'm in the middle."

Most of his day is spent mentoring senior executives, and especially chief executives, who often need an impartial ear to bend. "After all, who does a CEO talk to who isn't a stakeholder?" this warden of the corporate soul asks rhetorically.

The topics of conversation aren't too dissimilar either. "We explore significant issues in executives' lives. Where am I going? Who am I? It's very much the role that I was doing as a vicar. You can't talk about your working life without considering the whole of your life."

It was DBM's managing director, Karen Russell, who recognised the archdeacon could do a lot more than deliver a rattling good sermon. "Peter has strong commercial abilities as well as counselling and mentoring expertise," she said.

In truth, he always had a touch of the CBD about him. Naturally entrepreneurial, he came to St Matthew's seven years ago when the church was something of a religious basket case. "It was decaying," said one source.

But the archdeacon could talk the CBD talk and had within five years raised more than $3 million, much of it from the business community.

His diplomacy somehow transcended natural hostilities. While not retreating one step from his anti-gambling views, he was still able to raise donations from Sky City.

By the time he left, he had doubled the size of the congregation. St Matthew's had become a home for music and, in a happy collision of God and Mammon, had even staged some commercial activities, including a fashion show.

To boot, St Matthew's was employing three full-time staff and had a five-storey car park.

The priest had done an ecclesiastical rescue job on St Matthews and now nobody talks of shutting its doors, as they once did.

But it was time for a career change. Peter and Gaye Beck's three children, including twin girls, had grown up. He was 51 and, reading between the lines, feeling a little like an eagle in a sack.

"It was time for me to move on. My priorities had shifted," he said. "It was like: 'Wow, let's explore'." And that's exactly what he's doing, testing his personal beliefs in a wider world.

"I feel much freer to explore my own theology of life and work. As a parish priest I felt somewhat confined by the traditional understandings of the Christian faith.

"I have always been one of those who pushed the edges. Every doctrine is provisional, and most of our rituals and faith are full of metaphors."

In some ways he's got the best of both worlds. The Bishop of Wellington has made the former archdeacon a non-stipendiary priest, which essentially means he can be a priest for nothing while practising for filthy lucre his priestly arts in the commercial world.

Mr Beck insists he has not had to make any compromises in the commercial world and he would not be at DBM if he had to.

"Treating people with integrity is important in a job like this. Nothing has changed. Most people in the business community are people of integrity who want to deal with others in the same way. It's impressive.

"Being a priest is right for me. It's who I am. I've just moved to a deeper and broader perspective. I'm flying free."

Truly, a man to calm the corporate soul. As Wordsworth put it: "The gods approve The Depth, and not the tumult, of the soul."