Rev. Deborah Streeter has served in many different settings during her 40-year ministry, including as a local church pastor in the Northern California United Church of Christ (UCC) churches of Danville, Sonoma, San Lorenzo, Woodside, and Belmont. In her various ministry settings, she often served on ethics committees at local hospitals and universities, and she served as chaplain at Stanford Hospital for a year before moving to the Monterey Peninsula.
She is a proud graduate of Stanford University (1973) and Pacific School of Religion, first with a Master’s degree in Bioethics (1978) and then a Master’s of Divinity (1982). She also taught UCC Faith Polity and Practice as an Adjunct Professor at PSR for five years.
In 1996 Streeter created a ministry connecting faith communities and ocean conservation issues, coining the term “Blue Theology.” In partnership with the Christian Church of Pacific Grove, she oversaw 15 years of hosting youth groups and adult pilgrims in learning/serving visits, including guided spiritual visits to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, service work cleaning beaches, native plant restoration, and citizen science. All while spreading this good news to churches across the country.
For 25 years Streeter has been a weekly volunteer guide at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. In 2008 the Aquarium, in conjunction with Santa Clara University where she previously taught a course on religion and ecology, hired her for a yearlong project called The Living Ocean Initiative with a goal of bringing scientists, environmentalists, and local church religious leaders together as trusted partners.
Streeter has also been a docent at Point Lobos State Reserve for 12 years, an experience that inspired her collection of poems, Dancing on the Brink of the World, and chaired the citizen Advisory Council of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary for nine years.
She served the wider UCC church as an Associate Conference Minister, as Editor of the UCC Conference newspaper, The Pacific, then the oldest continuously published paper in California, established 1851.
Streeter served as campus minister at UC Berkeley for three years and was active at the UCC national setting on task forces supporting campus ministry and encouraging church leaders to be in active conversation with the science and tech communities.
Streeter writes a weekly blog of ocean devotions and preaches widely on ocean and climate change issues. She lives on the Big Sur coast and is a happy hiker, reader, writer, and grandmother. She values her connections to Pacific School of Religion and the great cloud of witnesses she has come to know through this vibrant community.
