ENVIRONMENTAL MINISTRY: EcoFaith Recovery, Portland, OR: Rev. Robyn Hartwig: $4,500    

This grant will fund the continued development of EcoFaith Recovery as a ministry of Lutherans and ecumenical partners based in the Portland metropolitan area.  EcoFaith Recovery nurtures faith-based recovery groups and relational leadership networks to help individuals, communities and institutions emerge from our intoxication with consumerism to recover our relatedness to God, ourselves, one another, and the entire Earth community.

To do this, EcoFaith Recovery helps people discover their own stories, creates experiential opportunities for learning and spiritual practice, facilitates spiritual renewal through relational organizing, trains leaders willing to call their primary institutions into recovery, provides stipend internships for seminarians and young adults, and connects leaders and congregations by building and strengthening relational networks. In these life-sustaining communities, people reclaim their stories, their lives, their passions, their various calls to ministry, and their living connection with God. In the process, EcoFaith Recovery engages in theological reform, incites action to reduce the climate crisis, fosters the renewal of community life in the Pacific Northwest, and offers a practical model for people of faith throughout the country.

How will this ELM grant help you in your ministry?

Pastor Robyn: EcoFaith Recovery’s ministry is expanding rapidly. Over 350 people have participated in our retreats, small groups, classes, workshops, networking events, worship experiences, internships, and leadership teams, most of which are conducted in partnership with other Lutheran organizations. With funding from Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries and other sources in 2013, EcoFaith Recovery will offer additional leadership training, implement an expanded communication plan, and develop a three-year funding strategy so it can continue to welcome people of faith into recovery from unsustainable ways of life and into the kind of life-giving alternatives our faith calls us to pursue.