Mydea Reeves Karpeh is the Chair of the Green Team and Project Manager for the People's Rain Garden at Peoples’ Community Lutheran Church.
Brad Schlegel has been an active member of the Synod Creation Care Ministry for about 5 years. He leads the Creation Care Team at St. Mark's Lutheran in Baltimore City. He advocates for cleaner water, less trash and plastic, and less air pollution.
Bernie Penner, Esq, Bernard (Bernie) Penner is a retired environmental attorney and lifelong member of Zion Lutheran Church, the historic old German congregation located across the street from City Hall in Baltimore. After spending more than 20 years working in the field of environmental regulatory compliance for the State of Maryland, Bernie is now primarily focused on understanding the way people of faith traditionally view their immediate relationship to the environment and moving towards a deeper awareness of how every human interaction with the planet affects all life, which in turn impacts their conscious contact with God.
With a few kindred souls,
Susan Meier, started a Green Team at her home congregation, Faith Lutheran (Cockeysville, MD). They started with lighting audits and installing programmable LED fixtures programmable thermostats. The Council approved their congregation’s “Covenant to Care for Creation.” Susan supports other local groups who work for ecological justice such as Baltimore350.org and Sunrise Movement Baltimore, as well as groups working to prevent homelessness, such as the COVID 19 Response Team of the Baltimore Fair Development Roundtable and the United Churches Assistance Network (UCAN) in Baltimore County. In her search for harmony in all things, she has been volunteering as a mediator for the Conflict Resolution Center of Baltimore County and has been seeking ways to level the playing field of opportunity for members in her community who are struggling to survive, let alone thrive.
Marty Reisinger, Reisinger is a life-long environmental advocate who saved glass when there was no place to recycle it! He is one of the co-founders of the local Baltimore350.org group and a member of several other regional and national groups. He was particularly involved with the successful anti-fracking campaign in western Maryland where he now resides most of the year in his “green” house. He raises berries and gardens there as well as conducts webinars for the GRIN-Global project, teaching plant genebank personnel around the world. Marty maintains the website for the Creation Care ministry.
Catherine Rice is a retired Civil Engineer with experience preparing environmental impact statements for highway projects in Maryland. She also worked on transportation policies in regards to meeting federal clean air and clean water requirements. After retirement, she became a Watershed Steward for Howard County. She spearheaded a large rain garden project with a grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust and the Creation Care Ministry at First Lutheran Church in Ellicott City. She would be happy to assist congregations in "greening" their landscaping!
Larry Ryan and wife Debbie have been active members of St. Peters Lutheran church in Ocean City Md since 1984. Larry grew to appreciate creation through his experiences hiking and camping throughout the wilderness areas of the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire. Larry retired from teaching in Worcester County in 2017 after 34 years.
