Rev. Dr. Melinda V. McLain, Pastor

Before coming to Mira Vista UCC, now The Good Table, in September 2014, Melinda served a number of congregations in Northern California as a transition pastor or director of music. An accomplished vocalist, pianist, organist, and choral conductor, she has been the lead musician for Wing It! Performance Ensemble in Oakland and has sung jazz with the Tom Dambly Quartet. She has also served in many settings of the United Church of Christ locally, and nationally as the chair of Evangelism and New Church Development in Local Church Ministries and on the Executive Council. Before seminary, she was an opera stage manager, political organizer, and public relations professional who worked for several non-profits during their inaugural year including: the Los Angeles Opera, the Feminist Majority, and as a chaplain with Marin AIDS Interfaith Network. She holds a B.A. in Music from Rice University, a M.Div. from San Francisco Theological Seminary, and a D.Min. in postmodern ecclesiology from Drew University. She is also working on a music theater piece about the American Dust Bowl entitled, The Broken Land.

Gavin & Melinda, in front of the Adachi Bonsai Tree at The Good Table

GAVIN Raders, co-founder + co-director of Planting Justice

Gavin is a co-founder and co-director of Planting Justice, a father to two amazing daughters, a social justice activist, and a permaculture demonstrator/teacher. For the past 17 years, he has dedicated his life to peoples' movements for peace and social/economic/racial/environmental justice. Prior to Planting Justice, he studied the history, failures, and successes of social movements as a cultural anthropology student at UC Berkeley, and organized on a range of anti-war, anti-nuclear, environmental and human rights issues both on campus and off. He has knocked on nearly 30,000 doors in California, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada as a community organizer with Peace Action West, and those experiences of speaking with thousands of people and walking city streets, knocking on doors, and taking in how land wasn't being used to meet community needs, sowed the seeds of Planting Justice. Rather than fighting against the things that we don't want and continuously reacting against the onslaught of oppressive systems, Gavin decided at a young age to build solutions that bring healing, health, peace, opportunity, and justice to those around him, using his privileges strategically for reparations and redistribution, and creating space for those most impacted by structural violence to live out their own dreams and enact the solutions they know to be necessary, while simultaneously supporting themselves and their families.