The Care of Creation Task Group attempted to contact every church in the Presbytery by telephone in the summer of 2007 to learn how they feel called to care for creation and how the Task Group can help.  Pastors of 61 out of a total of 74 churches (82 percent) were able to be interviewed.

The most striking result of the survey is that ninety percent of the pastors that responded to the survey would like their congregations to be more active in creation care. That result reflects a striking anomaly: most pastors think creation care should be very important, rating it at 87 out of 100, but few see it as important to their present ministry, rating it only 60 out of 100. That anomaly reflects the fact that pastors and lay leaders are already stretched too thin. Very few can take on creation care as a new, stand-alone ministry. In order to increase their commitment to creation, most churches need to find ways of integrating that concern into their present ministries, making creation care part of everything they do.

Many churches have begun to do that. Forty-six percent are involved in learning and teaching about the natural world. More than half have taken steps to reduce energy use and to avoid using Styrofoam.  Three-quarters are doing at least some recycling. At first those activities sound like steps that any responsible organization should take to reduce its environmental impact, but in a church those steps can become more than a routine way of doing business. Done thoughtfully and prayerfully, those activities can become rituals like saying grace before a meal, rituals that remind us of the many ways we’re connected to the whole of creation and allow us to experience and honor our covenantal relation with God and all of God’s creation.

A few churches have gone much farther by developing specific creation care activities that link directly to their core ministries.  One urban

church has become a center for community-supported agriculture, a partnership between that urban community and a farm in Baltimore County. That partnership has begun to attract neighbors who were not previously involved with the church. The partnership feeds those neighbors, allows them to experience God’s abundance, and quietly invites them to notice other things that the church is doing. That partnership has now become a vital part of that church’s outreach.

Another urban congregation has become involved in community gardening, which provides healthy food at minimal cost.  But there are other benefits. Gardening as a community is deepening the church’s sense of identity and providing an intergenerational connection – the older members know how to garden, while the younger members have the muscles to do so. And it turns out that the spiritual, economic, health, and social benefits are all connected, so that improving any one tends to improve the others too. For that church, gardening has become an important way of building the community.

Other churches, urban and suburban, have begun to adopt Earth-friendly ways of caring for church property, ways that attract birds and other wildlife and enable us to sense our connectedness to all

continued in next column . . .

creatures that share this planet. Church members are beginning to adopt Earth-friendly methods in their own gardens, and as they do so, they model covenantal living for the wider community. There are other benefits here too. Frances Kuo, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, has shown that simply planting trees in the public housing projects of Chicago makes for healthier, more vital neighborhoods. (1)  People spend more time outdoors; kids play in more creative ways. It even turns out that housing projects with trees have less crime than neighborhoods without trees. That’s partly because more eyes are outside, but indoor crimes like domestic violence are dropping too. As Kuo puts it, “there seems to be something about leafy things that invites people to take a deep breath and to see the bigger picture.” And in that bigger picture, they begin to sense more creative ways of living.

All of these activities do more than care for creation. They offer models of how churches can once again become centers of community in their neighborhoods, centers that help to show what it means for God’s will to be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.

Two themes seem to emerge from these examples. One is that it is vital to find ways of caring for creation that are authentic to a church, ways that are deeper and more meaningful than the environmental agendas of secular environmental organizations.  Many environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation do good work, but by seeing the environment in deeper perspective, churches give deeper meaning to creation care.

Another theme is that many of our churches are beginning to model a new kind of creation care, one that reflects their location in urban and suburban areas. People often see environmental issues as a rural concern that involves issues like cleaning the Chesapeake, reducing acid mine drainage in western Maryland, or protecting state forests. These are issues and may be central concerns for bayside or rural churches. But over sixty percent of our churches are suburban, and more than twenty percent are urban. For those churches, the key to authentic creation care is to find issues closer to home – issues like greening their neighborhoods, reducing their ecological footprint, or providing easy access to healthy food for their neighbors. 

Our churches also differ a lot in their commitment to creation care. Some are already far down that road, others are just beginning the journey, and a few would prefer not to start the journey at all. Because of these differences in location, demographics, and priorities, it is important that churches take on caring for creation in ways that fit their own identity, ways that their members see as important.

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(1)Conniff, Richard. "The Greening of the Urban Animal."

New York Times, June 11, 2007.