After the ash settles and the news cameras have left: what happens to the caregivers, whose own lives have been upended?

The Los Angeles fires of January 2025 took hundreds of lives, 16,000 buildings, and two beloved Episcopal communities: St. Matthew’s in Pacific Palisades, whose sanctuary stood while everything around it burned, and St. Mark’s in Altadena, whose church and school were lost entirely to the flames.

We listened to an unflinching conversation with the leaders and spiritual caregivers of these communities – a conversation about spiritual care in a climate-changed world, where recovery is a posture, not a season.

Panelists

The Rev. Canon Melissa McCarthy
Priest-in-Charge, St. Matthew’s Pacific Palisades

The Rev. Canon Melissa McCarthy is an Episcopal priest with more than twenty years of experience in parish ministry and church leadership. She currently serves as Priest-in-Charge of The Parish of St. Matthew in Pacific Palisades, where she is helping lead the congregation through a season of recovery, transition, and renewal following the devastating Palisades Fire.

Before coming to St. Matthew’s, Melissa served for nearly nine years as Canon to the Ordinary and Chief of Staff to the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. In that role, she worked closely with clergy, congregations, and lay leaders throughout the diocese, with particular responsibility for congregational health, clergy transitions, conflict, crisis management, and disaster response.

As a leader, Melissa begins with relationships: listening well, building trust, and working together. Her ministry is deeply shaped by the conviction that when we are in good relationship with God and with one another, we can accomplish whatever God is calling us to do. She has found in her years of ministry that there is always a life-giving way forward for everyone through any challenge if we are willing to listen to one another and remain open to where God may be leading us. This allows her to approach conflict, uncertainty, and change with curiosity and creativity.

When she is not engaged in the work of ministry, Melissa enjoys spending time with her family, working and training with her dogs, and being outdoors. She is happiest on a trail in the sierras, especially when the day ends with a swim in an alpine lake.

Grace Wakelee-Lynch
Missioner for Disaster Resilience & Recovery, Diocese of Los Angeles

Grace Wakelee-Lynch (she/her/ella) serves as the Missioner for Disaster Recovery and Resilience in the Diocese of Los Angeles, where her work currently centers on the 2025 LA Wildfires. In this work and beyond, she finds meaning in using faith as a vehicle for community-building and resilience.

Grace’s background is primarily in food banking. She served as the Program Manager at Feeding the Foothills, a Feeding America food bank near Sacramento, during several major wildfires. Most recently, she worked at the Foothill Unity Center in Pasadena, a multi-service nonprofit providing food assistance and case management, where she supported survivors of the Eaton Fire.

The Diocese of L.A.’s Disaster Recovery and Resilience Team focuses on ensuring a just recovery for impacted areas, with a particular emphasis on vulnerable populations and those excluded from governmental recovery pathways. This mission is carried out through three main pillars: financial support for survivors, preparedness and resilience-building within the Diocese, and emotional and spiritual support for impacted clergy, lay leaders, and communities.

Grace is joined on the team by Rev. Payton Hoegh, Chaplain, and Whitney White, the Recovery and Resilience Coordinator focused on the Eaton Fire.

The Rev. Payton Hoegh 
Chaplain for Disaster Resilience & Recovery, Diocese of Los Angeles

A priest in the Diocese of Los Angeles, The Rev. Payton Hoegh serves as the Chaplain for Disaster Resilience & Recovery leading the team’s efforts to support emotional and spiritual wellness as well as spiritual preparedness in crisis-touched times.

Payton’s pastoral work with disaster-impacted and threatened communities is informed by many years as spiritual director and chaplain for young adults serving with Los Angeles’ Episcopal Service Corps program as well as hospital chaplaincy service while preparing for ordination.

Alongside his local and regional work, Payton is Program Director of the Center for Spirituality in Nature where he designs and facilitates creation-attuned contemplative programming. He writes and speaks extensively on the importance of mindful spiritual practice, spiritual ecology, and ecological faith to nurture and preserve health and wholeness. He is a co-author of the Episcopal Church’s Love God, Love God’s World curriculum and on multiple resources exploring the intersection of spirituality, ecological belonging, creation engagement, care, and justice.

About the Fires

In Pacific Palisades, St. Matthew’s Church sanctuary – rebuilt after destruction from a previous fire – remained standing but the campus, school, and surrounding landscape were severely impacted. Clergy and parishioners lost their homes. The congregation returned to worship in the church in the fall of 2025.

Miles away, in Altadena, the church building of St. Mark’s was destroyed. The long-serving school on the church property was devastated. The surrounding neighborhoods, a historically Black community in Los Angeles, were severely burned, and many homes were leveled.

In the wake of the fires, clergy, chaplains, lay leaders, and like-hearted companions have admirably cared for their traumatized communities while tending their own hurt, grief, and loss.

A grant from Episcopal Relief and Development provided funds to create a new Disaster Resilience & Recovery ministry team to support rebuilding, restoration, renewal emphasizing the material work to reconstruct these communities as well as the emotional and spiritual efforts that are necessary for true, holistic recovery and preparation for challenges to come in a climate-changed world.