Check here for some of the stories and activities from our Green Team.
Our church has a “Green Team” who work across the many activities in the church community to encourage sustainability: in the operation of our building, in the activities and lives of our congregation and larger community, and to work to educate and work for environmental justice in the larger world.
Check out the solar panels which went up on the Christian Education Building in fall of 2019! Not only do the panels lessen our environmental impact, but they are a message to the community about our church.
When people driving past our building see those panels, they learn something about our values as people of faith seeking to be good stewards of God’s gifts and God’s earth. They might even be inspired to go to solar themselves. Perhaps they will also be inspired to explore the church community which congregates beneath those solar panels and puts its faith into action in such a visible way.
Our church has been certified as a GreenFaith sanctuary. GreenFaith includes organizations from diverse religious traditions who wish to demonstrate and grow their commitment to environmental stewardship. The certification program was a two-year process which included activity requirements in the areas of Spirit, Stewardship, Justice and Communications. Some components of the requirements were including ecological themes in some of our worship services, participating in interfaith environmental activities, conducting educational programs on the theme of environmental justice, and implementing good stewardship practices, examples of which were reducing our energy usage, reducing waste, and conserving water.
As one of our activities supporting a greater appreciation for the spiritual in the environment, in 2017 we dedicated an outdoor labyrinth, open to the public.
We are also a certified Earth Care congregation.
Our Mission Statement
“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.”
Psalm 24:1All of creation is a gift and a blessing from God, and God created and calls humankind to till and to keep the earth, to serve and preserve the abundance of life as God created it. As stewards of God’s creation, we strive to live justly in relation to our fellow human beings and the environment in ways that honor and sustain God’s work on Earth.
Our mission is to lead the transformation of the congregation into an intentional community which joyfully worships our Creator, continually educates ourselves and our surrounding community about our place and purpose in the world, and actively works through our ministry and mission to restore the goodness of God’s creation. We challenge the leaders and members of our congregation to consider the environmental impact of our choices and decisions in our actions, programs and policies, and to integrate care for creation into everything we do as a church.