Towe To Be Honored For Connecting Faith, Business

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By Richard Kaufman
Sentinel Reporter

Back in the winter of 2003 on a raw, rainy day, the Rev. Neely Towe sat down for lunch in a dive restaurant located somewhere between Yale University and Greenwich, Conn.

At the table with her sat David Miller, who at the time taught at Yale and Yale Divinity School, and Morgan Mitchell and Dick Murphy, members of Towe’s congregation at Stanwich Church on Taconic Road in Greenwich.

“The four of us just sat at a table and said, ‘Do you think God has put us together for a reason?’” Towe said. “We all felt it was.”

At that meeting, the foundation was laid for what would eventually become the Greenwich Leadership Forum, an organization that provides a setting for men and women business executives looking to explore how their faith can be used as a compass in decision-making, ethics and leadership. The GLF launched its first pilot series the following spring, in 2004.

Now, 13 years later, Towe will be an honoree at the GLF’s annual dinner on May 9 at the Tamarack Country Club. The cocktail reception is set for 6 p.m., with the dinner and program slated for 7.

A native of Jacksonville, Fla., Towe knew she wanted to be a minister ever since she was a child. However, her aspirations were frowned upon simply because women weren’t being ordained back then. She attended Hollins University in Roanoke, Va., and graduated in 1963, the same year she married her husband, Rolf, “a wonderful Yankee,” as she calls him. The two then settled in Greenwich.

In 1987 Towe graduated from Yale Divinity School and became the assistant pastor at Stanwich. She was ordained senior pastor in 1989, after her predecessor, the Rev. Nate Adams, passed away. Towe was the first female senior pastor in Greenwich and the surrounding area, something she says is very humbling.

Since she was just two years out of seminary school, Towe admits she felt she didn’t know what she was doing. But the church was there to teach her.

“It was a backwards system where they taught me how to be the pastor, rather than my teaching them how to be worshippers,” she said. “It was beautiful.”

It was because of this close-knit atmosphere that the church began to grow. During this time, she began to notice that there were people of influence in the business world who were also strong in their faith, but there was no encouragement at the time to intertwine the two arenas to find an ethical and moral outcome.

“I just saw all these great leaders in my church, and other churches, not being supported,” she said. “So it started out as just my personal warning to affirm them and to say, ‘Gee, I see something so great in you, can I help you use that influence for something positive and beautiful?’”

Towe began to pray, feeling that the town needed a forum in which people could incorporate their individual faith into their work and their respective areas of influence.

The perfect storm for the creation of the GLF began to brew.

Morgan Mitchell, a member of Towe’s congregation, coincidentally came to her with a similar idea. Then another member of the congregation, Dick Murphy, followed suit. At the same time, Russ Reynolds, whose family were early Greenwich settlers, met David Miller at a Yale event, and was so impressed with his work at the university that he invited him to dinner at his house, where Towe and Mitchell happened to be guests.

“The ignition was lit,” Towe said. “Morgan, Russ and I felt David was the perfect catalyst to pull the vague dreams of a Greenwich Leadership Forum into a reality.”

Shortly thereafter Towe set up a lunch meeting with Mitchell, Murphy and Miller. “[We] met David for lunch and asked him if he might consider it, and he said yes, and that was that. It was God’s hand at work, pulling together folks with a similar passion and making us into a working team.”

The GLF launched the following spring, with monthly events held at the Indian Harbor Yacht Club, where Reynolds had been a member. People would meet in the morning around 7:30, have a modest breakfast, listen to a speaker tell their story then jump on the nearby metro north train and go to work.

“We didn’t have a strategic plan, location, money. We didn’t have anything but a vision,” said Towe. “We just prayed that God would show us what to do. It’s evolved. It didn’t start out big, and nobody thought there’d be a leadership dinner with guests and stuff. It was an organic sort of a thing.”

People began to be inspired by hearing others’ stories. Meetings grew slowly, from 40 people to 50, 60 and so on. The GLF still meets one night a month, now at Christ Church, with dialogues and lectures from members and guest speakers, which are moderated by Miller.

The GLF is looking to expand its reach through digital media; most of its past events were videotaped. It’s also trying to organize an annual retreat, which would reinforce the discussions at the meetings.

Even though Towe retired in 2008 and moved back down to Jacksonville full-time, she believes the GLF’s message is extremely important, especially in today’s world.

“We felt it was vital then and now, because the emphasis in the culture these days, especially in the business world, is not on ethics and morality. It’s on success and bottom line,” she said.

Towe wants people to have a podium to say that their life, faith and work are not all separate—that there’s a thread that weaves them together.

A very humble person, Towe can’t fathom being honored at the GLF annual dinner. “I just watched, I didn’t do it,” she said. But Miller credits Towe with having the wisdom to recognize that anything the GLF did ought to be run by business leaders and that it should be affiliated not with a specific church, but with the wider community.

“If it were not for Neely’s insight and initiative, the GLF would not exist today, let alone be celebrating its 14th year,” Miller said.

Although she’s not a part of the GLF in any capacity any more, Towe remains connected to Greenwich. She occassionally visits family and friends. “My heart is here,” she said.

But because she was physically here for nearly 50 years, 20 of them spent with the church, her honor at the leadership dinner on May 9 is well deserved, just as her impact on the community and the GLF is still felt.

Tickets and information for the dinner can be found at Greenwichleadershipforum. org or by emailing info@ greenwichleadershipforum.org.

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