The realities of climate change are being felt intensely in communities across the country, and the 2020 elections are poised to determine our fate. Advocacy is increasing, but opposition remains formidable. How can we make climate a winning issue in 2020, and make certain our leaders implement policies that ensure a healthy, just and prosperous future?
ecoAmerica is hosting the 9th annual American Climate Leadership Summit (ACLS 2020) on March 25-26 in Washington DC. It will be bigger and bolder than ever, designed to build political will for climate solutions and a broader, more inclusive movement. Join over 500 attendees, 50%+ CEOs, from all sectors of America’s society.
Registration has now opened for the 2020 EcoFaith Summit, Now the Green Blade Rises: The Easter Gospel for the Whole Creation, taking place on Saturday, March 28, in Brainerd, Minnesota! Sponsored by the EcoFaith Network of the Northeastern Minnesota Synod ELCA, this EcoFaith Summit will be a gathering for the people of God not only in northeastern Minnesota but throughout the upper Midwest.
The theme for year’s EcoFaith Summit comes from the hymn, Now the Green Blade Rises, (ELW #379), which portrays the Resurrection in the earthy language of buried grain rising as the first green glances of growth pointing up through the soil. As we’ve been planning the Summit, we sense that the haunting melody of this Easter hymn could be the church’s song of Resurrection in and for a wounded creation today.
Green blades of a grassroots movement for the care and healing of creation are rising all around us! Last spring, 110 people from five of the six Minnesota Synods as well as from other church bodies participated in the 2019 EcoFaith Summit, Creation, Church, and You: Earthkeeping Practically Speaking. In the Fall of 2019, 120 people from 45 congregations participated in conference gatherings on creation caring throughout the Northeastern Minnesota Synod. Congregation creation care ministries are springing up all over. People are asking, what can our congregation be doing?
At the same time, another grassroots movement is taking place. Young leaders are raising their voices to address the accelerating climate change which they believe is posing a threat to their own future and the earth’s delicate balance. What is motivating these young people in our churches and our communities to address climate change? They have a story to tell, and we want to hear it!
Here is what you can look forward to on Saturday, March 28:
+ Worship celebrating Easter for the whole creation, with a Summit Choir performing an original hymn and leading an expanded version of Now the Green Blade Rises!
+ Young activists sharing what personally motivates them to address climate change, and how the rest of us might support them!
+ Breakout sessions for worship and grassroots action in your congregation and community + How to start or strengthen your creation care team + How to have conversations about important yet sensitive environmental issues + the human face of climate change + and much more!
+ Networking time for congregation creation care teams + church gardeners + faith formation leaders + green energy initiators + musicians + preachers + public policy advocates + young leaders + and more!
+ Opportunity to share your story of ‘green blades rising’ in your congregation or community!
We invite you to share this invitation widely. You are, we are, among the green blades rising!
Pastor Kristin Foster and Pastor David Carlson
Co-Chairpersons, EcoFaith Network Leadership Team, NE MN Synod ELCA
email revkristinfoster@gmail.com or pastor@gloriadeiduluth.org
Lutherans Restoring Creation is teaming up with Interfaith Power & Light’s annual Faith Climate Action Week. This year we act “For the Love of Trees.”
Deforestation is the second leading cause of climate change and produces about 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists say that deforestation in tropical rainforests adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the sum total of all the cars and trucks on the world’s roads.
Plant trees on congregational property, at members’ homes, or in public spaces. Bless the trees with the ceremony in the “For Love of Trees” materials in the Faith Climate Action Week kit. Kit can be ordered at https://www.faithclimateactionweek.org/. Report the total number of trees planted by your congregation and congregants at the same website for a grand total of all trees planted by Faith Climate Action Week partners!
If you don’t have a place to plant trees locally consider planting trees in the Global South through IPL’s Carbon Covenant program. http://www.co2covenant.org
“For Love of Trees” campaign is the service project of Interfaith Power & Light’s annual program of climate-themed worship services and other activities from April 17th – 26th, 2020 in celebration of Earth Month.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America signed on as an official faith partner for this monumental Earth Day. It’s been 50 years since the first Earth Day. Keep checking the site for events specifically centered around the faith communities response to how we care for the Earth entrusted to us: https://www.earthday.org/global-religious-conversations-on-climate-change/
2020 National Gathering & Lobby Day
Join us in Washington, D.C., April 24-27, 2020 for this important gathering of Christian advocates and activists. We will worship, delve deeply into the pressing issues of the day, and lift our voices by speaking truth to power on Capitol Hill.
The 2020 theme is ““Imagine! God’s Earth and People Restored.” At this crucial time in history, we will lift up the global crisis of environmental injustice, with special attention to the intersection of climate change and economic injustice.
Preaching a New Earth: Climate and Creation
Be inspired by God’s Word proclaimed by some of the nation’s finest ministers and teachers. Experience the fellowship of hundreds of preachers. Learn and worship in an atmosphere that is dynamic, friendly, nurturing, and prophetic. Come renew, refresh, and recharge your spirit.
Scripture’s first description of God is as creator. God brought the world into existence and all that makes up the world as we know it. But God realized that caring for creation could never be a sole endeavor. We are charged with that co-tending, and preachers are challenged with imagining and preaching about an ecological God. Our God is committed to, dependent on, and immersed in all the Earth provides, sustains, and yet, needs our help to bring the fullness of God’s creative work to bear. Our God needs our help to speak the truth about where and how God’s Earth groans for renewal, even resurrection, how our very climate changes are God’s cries for help. The 2020 Festival of Homiletics theme invites preachers to imagine their own role in God’s creative work, to be courageous in preaching about God’s creative activity, and to claim boldly our role in caring for God’s creation, when God’s very creation is at stake.