The. Rev. Kent Harold Richards of Mystic, minister to First United Methodist Church Mystic since 2011, was honored with the Francis Asbury Award by the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church on Nov. 13.

The national award is presented annually by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church to a person who fosters the church’s ministries in higher education at the local, district or annual conference level. Richards was nominated for the award by the Western Massachusetts and Eastern Connecticut United Methodist’s District Superintendent Rev. David Calhoun.

Richards was the co-founder of the Joint Ph.D. program in religious and theological studies at the University of Denver, Iliff School of Theology in Denver, and was the executive director of the Society of Biblical Literature until his retirement in 2010, at Emory University in Atlanta. He is a trustee for Codex Sinaiticus Project, the group worked to bring together the oldest known Bible, the parts of which reside in four different countries. The project created a way to put the ancient book together without the libraries giving up their treasured piece. It is digitized and now online at codexsinaiticus.org. Richards also initiated the Bible Odyssey website and started a public series of lectures in Mystic on biblical text and archaeology.