A new chapter at Earth Ministry

Dear friends,

My name is Kevin Raymond, and I’m thrilled to have joined the Earth Ministry staff as program director of Washington Interfaith Power and Light (WAIPL), a brand new project here at Earth Ministry. WAIPL joins other “Interfaith Power and Light” efforts in dozens of states that are helping mobilize an interfaith response to the urgent threat of climate change, including through public policy advocacy and renewable energy and energy conservation measures.

All of us at Earth Ministry are excited that our climate work from here on out will be intentionally interfaith. We believe God calls us in this direction, and that the world’s “table” needs to get keep getting bigger and bigger if we are going to meet big challenges like climate change.

As we ready to launch WAIPL, we’d greatly appreciate your ideas for this program, and also your suggestions of leaders from a wide variety of faith traditions who might be interested in helping shape and implement WAIPL. So, please do send your ideas and names!

A little bit of personal background. Like everyone else, my life path has included twists and turns. My dad was a mountaineer, and I spent a lot of time in the mountains and woods growing up. I was an environmental science major in college, where my introduction to systems thinking helped me see the interconnectedness of all things in a way that was profoundly spiritual, even though I didn’t think of it in those terms then.

It wasn’t until after law school and the birth of my daughters that I finally made the connection between my sense of the connectedness of all things and my growing sense that we live in a universe that is in some mysterious way not indifferent to us. Science alone could not explain the miracle of my children, and that’s when I started to make the connection between faith and creation (and what science tells us we are doing to creation).

Along the way, I attended seminary and on August 24th I was ordained into ministry at Earth Ministry through the United Church of Christ. My home church is University Congregational UCC. I serve on the board of trustees at Western Washington University, and my wife and I race bikes with the Wines of Washington team.

I’m excited about the work ahead with WAIPL, and hope to connect with readers of this blog soon! Please feel free to contact me anytime!