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October 2025 Movement Café: Regeneration and Restoration

by | Sep 30, 2025 | Movement Café

October 2025 Movement Café:

Regeneration and Restoration

October 15, 2025

10am PT / 11am MT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET

Sponsored by the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement, the informal, virtual space of the Café facilitates conversation, connection, and community focused on creation care and justice issues.

Register Here

Regeneration and Restoration

The October 15 Cafe will showcase United Methodist Ministries in Ohio and Texas that are regenerating rural and urban communities by growing food, restoring habitat and building community.

The Urban Farm Church is a faith community located in Columbus, Ohio with a mission to create a sustainable urban farm where people center the heart, mind, body, and spirit, and serve their neighbors.

Learn more at urbanfarmchurch.org

Cultiv8 Community is a Ministry of the Horizon Texas Conference. Its mission is to connect neighbors to neighbors, engage people with nature, and restore life-giving habitats. We envision a world where people are connecting with community and caring for nature, so that all life is flourishing, now and for generations.

Learn more at cultiv8community.org

Speakers

Rob Spencer

Rob Spencer is a United Methodist Church pastor in North Texas and has served the community in secular and non-secular ways for the past 30 years, intentionally seeking ways to connect the community inclusively. These connections became the backbone of Cultiv8Community, which he helped launch in 2022.  Cultiv8Community is a nonprofit dedicated to connecting neighbors to neighbors, engaging people with nature, and restoring life-giving habitats through work with land restoration, environmental education, and community building.

Lou Stagnitto

Tim Bruster

Tim Bruster served for nineteen years as senior pastor of the 6,000-member First United Methodist Church in downtown Fort Worth. Following his retirement from active pastoral ministry, Tim was appointed as the Director of Finance and Administrative Services for the Central Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church. And now, as our Development Cultivator at Culiv8Community, he uses his talents to help design and implement a development strategy that transforms land, restores native habitats, and transforms lives through all the other initiatives.

Rev. Ryan Grace

Rev. Ryan Grace has served as a pastor since 2002 at churches in rural, suburban, and urban areas of Ohio. He received a B.S.C. in telecommunications from Ohio University in 2002, then went on to earn his Master of Divinity at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio in 2006. In 2009, Rev. Grace was ordained as an elder in The United Methodist Church. Ryan is now the pastor of the Maize Manor Campus, which includes Maize Manor UMC, Circle of Hope Church, and the Urban Farm Church. Ryan is passionate about creation care and serves as chair of both the West Ohio Creation Care Task Force and the Net Zero Team. Ryan enjoys taking his five children, ages 6 to 26, on adventures near and far. When he’s not traveling or making documentaries, Ryan likes to spend time hiking, kayaking and photographing nature.

Mariellyn Grace

Mariellyn Grace serves as the Director of Mission Engagement for the Ohio Episcopal Area, which includes both the East and West Ohio conferences. She has always been passionate about mission work and was a missionary for 14 years before joining the conference staff. Mariellyn has done missionary work in Jamaica, Arizona, Honduras, Slovakia, Tennessee, Haiti, and Columbus, Ohio. She spent two years as a US-2 working with United Methodist college students, then moved to Columbus as a Church & Community Worker to help start the Charitable Pharmacy of Central Ohio, which provides free medications to those who cannot afford them. After 10 years with the Charitable Pharmacy, Mariellyn joined the West Ohio Conference staff as Mission & Communication Coordinator for 5 years before her role expanded to include East Ohio. As Director of Mission Engagement, Mariellyn often works at the intersection of Volunteers in Mission, Disaster Response, and Creation Care. Mariellyn loves to travel, read, take walks in the woods, and spend time with her family.

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