Dear Earth Ministry\/WAIPL community,

I am so excited to write to you today (April 8) to make the announcement of our next Executive Director. Our board and staff have been working for the last six months to prepare for this moment. We developed a job announcement, sought stakeholder input on the process, heard from over 50 candidates, and conducted multiple rounds of interviews. We believe that we have found the person who is uniquely qualified to lead us into the future.

Our new Executive Director is Rev. AC Churchill (they\/them). AC will be moving with their family to Tacoma from Irving, TX, where they are now serving as pastor at Irving North Christian Church. Before moving to Texas, they served a church in Corvallis, OR as Director of Justice, Witness, and Missions, as well as gaining experience in chaplaincy and work with children and youth. They share our values of putting faith into action for justice and liberation throughout the world. AC attended Brite Divinity School where they earned a Master’s of Divinity in 2014 and have two Bachelor of Science degrees from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. They are an ordained pastor in the Disciples of Christ tradition and have served churches in that denomination as well as in the United Church of Christ. They are skilled in faith-based advocacy and have personal connections to the Pacific Northwest.

Throughout our interviews and conversations, we have found them to be insightful and gracious. We are especially looking forward to learning from AC about their work in community organizing, especially faith-rooted organizing models. They have shared with us their sentiment on beginning this journey with us by writing, “I cannot fully express how excited I am to be joining the already amazing Earth Ministry\/WAIPL team. The staff, board, and Interim Executive Director have shown me so much welcome and I am confident their hospitality is a reflection of the larger EM\/WAIPL community. I am looking forward to meeting y’all as well!”

As a board and staff, we know you will want to greet AC and welcome them and their family to our community. Their first day on the job will be May 2, 2022. Their first weeks in May and June will be filled with learning about Earth MInistry\/WAIPL, our history, our policies, and our traditions, as well as getting settled in the routines of the organization. AC will likely attend our Trivia fundraiser on May 10<\/a>, but the big welcome event will come in the summer. We anticipate that in August we will have a virtual meet and greet when we can really experience AC’s leadership together.

If you have questions or thoughts about AC’s transition to Washington State and to our shared work at Earth Ministry\/WAIPL, please do not hesitate to contact me at lkwbaumgartner@gmail.com<\/a>.

Peace,
Rev. Laura Baumgartner (she\/her)
Chair, Earth Ministry\/WAIPL Board<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earth Ministry\/WAIPL is thrilled to share that our new Executive Director is Rev. AC Churchill (they\/them). AC shares our values of putting faith into action for justice and liberation throughout the world and is uniquely qualified to lead us into the future. We can’t wait to welcome them in May!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15911,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","comments-off"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/earthministry.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/logo-for-website-slideshow.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthministry.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthministry.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthministry.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthministry.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthministry.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17415"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/earthministry.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17513,"href":"https:\/\/earthministry.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17415\/revisions\/17513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthministry.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthministry.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthministry.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthministry.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}