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Massachusetts Conference Edition
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One church’s attempt to answer the call to environmental stewardshipby Jenny Fleming-Ives, Member, First Churches of Northampton October/November 2008
Over 10 years ago The First Churches of Northampton – a combined United Church of Christ and American Baptist church – began to take seriously the call to faith communities to be stewards of the environment. It started very simply with small attempts by individual church members to promote recycling of items in the church kitchen and to reduce the number of paper goods at church events. Building on church members’ interest the Board of Christian Education took the institutional lead by sponsoring a range of activities with an environmental theme, from fall apple picking and a Blessing of the Animals Service to ‘Keeping the Earth’ and ‘Simpler Christmas’ workshops and an Earth Sabbath. All of this was supported and encouraged with preaching and teaching by the ministry staff. An Environmental Concerns Working Group was formed with representation from each Board of the Church. The Church Council charged this group to accomplish three things: (1) Come up with a plan for each Board and Committee of the Church to promote environmental awareness and stewardship; (2) look to adopting the National Council of Churches Environmental Covenant; and (3) create The First Churches own Environmental Covenant to include in the Sunday worship bulletin. All of this was accomplished by February of 2001 when at the Annual Meeting the National Council of Churches Covenant and The First Churches’ own Environmental Statement were adopted by a unanimous vote. Following this decision First Churches members contributed to the successful passage in June 2001 of the resolution on the Environment and the Church at the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ. Continuing outreach, First Churches joined with other faith communities in the Pioneer Valley to form the Environmental Interfaith Task Force to promote environmental education and activism among congregations and people of faith. The Task Force has promoted the clean up of polluting power plants; held annual updates on environmental legislation with Massachusetts State Legislators; offered public forums on global warming with leading scientific experts in the field; sponsored workshops on sustainable living and on the reduction in the use of toxic chemicals, and assisted faith communities in learning practical steps to take towards healing the earth. We offered public viewings of: “The Inconvenient Truth” and “The Great Warming.” At First Churches, implementation of environmental stewardship into the life of the Church has been an ongoing task. Building renovations have been reviewed with a view to environmental impact; energy audits continue and cleaning supplies have been evaluated in light of toxins. Caring for the Earth and celebrating God’s creation has been woven into worship services and the Christian Education curriculum. Most recently the Youth Group led the congregation in observing a Carbon Sabbath: a sunset to sunset fossil fuel fast where we ate baked beans cooked in a homemade solar oven and read stories by the light of beeswax candles. Together every day we seek to lift up and care for God’s earth through what we do in worship, education, individual and congregational lifestyle choices and in our church’s community, national and global involvement.
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