Creation justice project helps churches find efforts that are right for them

[Episcopal News Service] A congregation that wants to be engaged in creation care has many things it can do – pollinator gardens, solar panels, energy audits, legislative advocacy, recycling, composting – but the Rev. Rachel Field says that having so many options can make it hard, if not impossible, for a church to find the approach that is best for it.

That is part of the rationale for the creation of An Episcopal Path to Creation Justice, which completed a pilot project earlier this year and now has expanded this fall, Field told Episcopal News Service.

The initial six-month pilot was made possible by a $20,000 grant in 2023 from The Episcopal Church’s Task Force on Creation Care and Environmental Racism.

Rather than provide the 12 participating churches with a list of environmentally friendly activities, they each were assigned a trained companion – someone other than their parish priest – who helped church members discern what they felt called to do.

The path grew out of the grassroots Creation Care Justice Network in the Dioceses of Massachusetts and Western Massachusetts, and 10 of the pilot churches were in those two dioceses, with others from Connecticut and Maine.

Four pillars necessary for change and action were identified by that network: pray, learn, act and advocate. Those pillars are foundational to the path, Field said, with each one including four steps within it – prepare, plant, grow and harvest – that go steadily deeper.

But the key piece was finding companions who could walk with these pilot churches as they decided how and where they wanted to engage with creation care. Field said she wasn’t looking for experts – in fact, some of her first eight companions weren’t very active in climate issues – but for people with group facilitation skills and the ability to help people connect with others in their community.

“Our core assumptions are that there are already people doing the work who are our neighbors, who might not be in the church, who have the information we need,” she said.

St. John’s, Northampton, Massachusetts, in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts, was one of those pilot churches. It has been engaged in creation care for a long time, Per Lofving, a longtime green advocate and member of the vestry, told ENS, but the church gained something new by participating in the project.

“This took us to another level, where we learned to think more deeply about climate justice and how it fits into a spiritual community’s actions and engagement,” he said.

St. John’s two companions functioned like peer mentors; they helped church members stay on track as they explored the four pillars in ways that were helpful to them as a congregation, Lofving said. “It was great to have them.”

Those efforts led about a dozen members to participate in The Episcopal Church’s creation care program, Love God, Love God’s World, which includes a film-based curriculum along with readings, faith-based reflections and discussion questions.

The goal of the program is to help people become comfortable speaking about their faith, care of creation and climate change; to be personally transformed; and to find the level of personal and collective engagement on creation care and eco-justice that is right for them.

Lofving was quick to note that spirituality wasn’t lacking in the church’s previous creation care efforts, but it now is undertaken more intentionally and with a view toward changing people’s hearts. “There are a lot of people doing good things [about climate change] and we should be doing those too, but our role within our church community and the larger community is to change hearts, not just of Episcopalians but of all people.”

They also have started reaching out more to students at nearby Smith College and people from the greater Northampton community.

It also helped them identify the need to better center creation in their worship services, a feature they’re still working on, he said. Parish life was interrupted a bit when their rector, the Rev. Philip LaBelle, was elected bishop of Olympia in May and consecrated in October. St. Mark’s now has an interim rector, and she is very supportive of the expansion of creation care initiatives, he said.

Mark Weiler, senior warden of another pilot parish – St. Mark’s in Southborough, in the Diocese of Massachusetts – learned about the program through Alex Chatfield, one of the path’s founders who also served as their companion. Having the four pillars helped them see how the church’s involvement could go steadily deeper in each area. “It also helped us document the things we already had done within those frameworks,” he told ENS, including offering lots of all-parish outdoor walks.

The parish already had identified some “low-hanging fruit,” Weiler said. They bought a dishwasher and eliminated single-use plastic from coffee hour and church suppers.

In 2023 they started a Good News Garden, and taking part in the path prompted them to double the size of the existing 6-by-9-foot plot so they could help more people in their community. Next is learning more about how and what to plant to increase the garden’s yield, Weiler said.

Produce goes into Southborough’s Community Free Fridge, which the church helped found and hosts on its parking lot. Others in the community also supply vegetables as well as pantry staples for the fridge, where people can stop by and help themselves.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when confronted with the reality of climate change, Weiler said, and taking part in this pilot has helped his church decide what they can do and when they can reasonably do it. “Don’t get stressed,” he advised others.

This fall the Episcopal Path to Creation Justice was opened to additional churches in Province 1, with eight churches taking part. Field said they also have lengthened the program from six months to nine. “This [program] moves at the speed of relationship rather than just working through a document or assuming one size fits all,” she said, and that can take time.

While the path was created in New England and has been piloted only in Province 1, she’s received interest from Episcopalians in Michigan and New York, and she is providing them with materials.

Field said the importance of a program like An Episcopal Path to Creation Justice can’t be underestimated. She has been involved in creation care work for 20 years, and laundry lists of ways to help the planet have been around for at least 40 years, she said. And during all that time, she said, “we haven’t stopped or altered the increase of carbon in the atmosphere.” In fact, it has increased from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 426 ppm in June 2024.

“It’s not an information problem we have, which means information is not going to be the solution,” Field said. “We need a total transformation of the heart. That requires that we slow down and learn how to be in right relationship with each other, which is why the companions, and moving at the speed of relationships, is at the heart of this project.”

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.