Photo Courtesy of Bee Moorhead
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article identified the author in error. The author is the Rev. Becca Edwards, who is a newly ordained deacon in the Rio Texas Annual Conference. We regret the error.
Texas Impact | June 29, 2026
“All my life you have been faithful. All my life you have been so, so good. In every way that I am able, I will sing of the goodness of God.”
That was the refrain that Bishop Cynthia Harvey wound through the sermon she preached to open the 2026 Rio Texas Annual Conference in Corpus Christi last week. The bishop related her experience visiting First United Methodist Church Kerrville in the days after the July 2025 floods. The church held a worship service for volunteers, survivors, and community members even as it served as a shelter and emergency operation center. The bishop recounted the feelings of heaviness in the room that day and the way it felt to sing about God’s faithfulness given all that had happened.
The topic of God’s faithfulness has been on my mind these last few months as I have prepared to be ordained at this year’s Annual Conference.
Deacons are called to ministries of word, service, compassion, and justice and to serve as a bridge between the church and the world. My work at Texas Impact embodies that call. I interpret the needs of the world for the church, preaching and teaching people of faith about why environmental issues are central to our faith. I also bridge the gap between the world and the church, talking to lawmakers and others about how our faith informs our understanding of important environmental issues.
All of this was on my mind as I sat in the teaching sessions at this year’s conference hearing about the church’s response to the Hill Country floods. Pastors shared the ways they used their church buildings as shelters and emergency operations centers and how they sat with terrified parents waiting to hear about their summer campers. When a pastor from Hunt, Texas, shared that his church had given flood victims choir robes to wrap up in, I was overcome by both the magnitude of the tragedy and the weight of the commitment a person makes in ordination and the gravity of my call.
I came to ministry as a second career. My graduate program at Texas Tech focused on making buildings more resilient to windstorms, like tornadoes and hurricanes. I learned how to collect wind data in all kinds of environments, I learned about emergency management. I spent time inspecting damaged buildings along the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. In my program we talked about disasters from many angles - economics, policy, meteorology, and engineering. When I went to seminary, I assumed I would leave all of that behind.
But what has become clear to me in my two years of residency in ministry is that the world needs all kinds of gifts right now. And that means the church does too.
When I filled out my paperwork for the candidacy process, I felt lacking when asked about my preparation for ministry. I cited my experience as a regular church attender, my times volunteering for vacation Bible school and teaching Sunday school and my time on the Board of Trustees. I never once considered sharing with the Board of Ordained Ministry that I had done damage investigations after Hurricane Katrina as “preparation for ministry,” but it was. I never would have considered teaching climate science to undergraduate students as “preparation for ministry,” but it was. I never would have considered my research on air quality, hydroclimate extremes, or atmospheric turbulence to be “preparation for ministry,” but as it turns out, those were too.
As climate change heightens the risk of impactful weather, it is appropriate to ask ourselves as faith leaders, how can we think creatively, like that Hill Country pastor with the choir robes, about the ways we use our church buildings and other resources to serve unexpected needs in our communities.
The Saturday morning after ordination I listened to thunderstorms sweeping by my hotel on the way from the Gulf to the Coastal Plain. The radar indicated that those storms were part of a system of storms covering the southern half of Texas with heavy rain. San Antonio was covered by a patchwork of green flash flood warnings.
That storm came after many heavy rainstorms this month, making flash flooding a growing concern for many communities in Texas. Ironically some of those communities are simultaneously facing dwindling municipal water supplies in a way that might require drastic action.
Ministry never stops and even as we celebrated our connection at Annual Conference, we were still mindful of the increasing dangers our community faces from extreme weather.
A program from the 2026 session of the Rio Texas Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. (Photo Courtesy of Bee Moorhead)
Bishop Harvey spoke of singing of God’s faithfulness in the midst of an emergency in the Hill Country. As people of hope we are also called to sing of God’s faithfulness in the midst of a climate emergency in the world.
Frederick Buechner said that “Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” Natural disasters are no one’s “deep gladness.” But understanding the science behind what causes impactful weather is. I have been fascinated by storms since I was a child in south Florida, when my mom picked me up from school during a tropical storm with her jeans rolled up to her ankles after wading down the flooded street from our house.
When I sing of God’s faithfulness in the context of my own life, I feel deep gratitude for the ways I have been prepared for this ministry, this moment, and this call from the very earliest days of my life. And for the ways I have been led to this place and this work, even when the path was unclear.
This year’s conference theme was "Adelante con Esperanza," moving forward with hope. We hope not because we can see the path forward, but because we know that God is with us. It is deeply humbling and a source of great joy to affirm my commitment to being part of God’s work in the world through ordination this week. May God give us grace and energy for the work ahead.
The Rev. Becca Edwards is a newly ordained deacon in the Rio Texas Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. This post is republished from Texas Impact's Substack blog.