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The Seamen’s Church Institute advocates for the personal, professional, and spiritual well-being of merchant mariners around the world. Through our Center for Maritime Education, Center for Mariner Advocacy, Port Newark International Seafarers’ Center, and Ministry on the River, SCI promotes safety, dignity, and improved working and living conditions for the men and women serving in the maritime workplace.

Founded in 1834 and affiliated with the Episcopal Church, though nondenominational in terms of its trustees, staff, and service to mariners, the Seamen’s Church Institute of New York & New Jersey (SCI) is the largest, most comprehensive mariners’ service agency in North America.

The Reverend Mark S. Nestlehutt is the President & Executive Director of the Seamen’s Church Institute of New York & New Jersey.

With more than two decades of church experience in Massachusetts, Illinois, Maryland, Australia, and South Africa, Mark joined SCI from Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where he served as Rector. An avid one-design sailor, he spent twelve years as the Rector of Christ Church in St. Michaels, Maryland, a waterfront community on the Chesapeake Bay where his parishioners were comprised of Chesapeake Bay Pilots, Delaware River Pilots, tugboat captains, ship engineers, students at the Calhoon MEBA Engineering School, and others.

Mark’s previous employment and interests include service as an officer in the U.S. Navy, Director of Planned Giving at Opera Philadelphia, and various positions for five years in the field of commercial banking and asset planning, as well as engagement as an enthusiastic rugby player from 1980-2012.

Mark currently serves on the boards of the International Christian Maritime Association (ICMA), the National Waterways Foundation (NWF) and the Life Saving Benevolent Association of New of New York.

 

A native of Atlanta, Mark studied at the
University of Georgia (economics and history) and Georgia State University (international relations and foreign policy). He attended seminary at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts (EDS) with a concentration in Anglican, Global, and Ecumenical Studies, and he holds a certificate in World Mission and Ecumenism from the Boston Theological Institute (BTI).