The goal of the LRC program is to incorporate creation care into the full identity and mission of your congregation and to foster an ethos in which everyone considers creation care to be part of your life together and your witness to their community. Therefore, choose actions and programs that contribute to this goal.
As you work your creation care congregational program, you may want to expand the choices for the action plan to make bolder plans, to draw upon particular assets, and to address local needs and opportunities.
LRC Self-Organizing Kit. This manual, available here on this site, or as a download, has many ideas for eliciting the full participation of the congregation as well as some principles for pursuing creation-care. There is also an excellent manual for congregations developed by students at Luther College, with many ideas and resources.
An Expanded Action Plan. The congregational self-organizing kit includes a much fuller action plan following the same categories as in your action plan: worship, education, building and grounds, personal discipleship, and public witness/policy advocacy. You will find there more choices and links to more resources. Explore the site for additional ideas.
Renewing your program and taking advanced steps. The manual includes many ideas for maintaining a vital creation care program and for taking it to the next level. If you find that the actions in the action plan have been exhausted by your efforts or you want more choices, consult the ideas in these sections, which come at the end of the manual.
Stories. For ideas and inspiration from others, spend some time on this site to see what programs and projects have been carried out by other Lutheran congregations. Check out the ever-growing list of contacts on the Creation Care Ministries Map and look for local inspiration.
Theological foundations. There are reflections for each of the five areas (advocacy, building/grounds, education, personal discipleship worship), identifying the biblical, theological, and ethical foundations for choosing programs and taking actions in each area of the action plan. These are helpful for study sessions or adult forums.
Professional coaching support. As the ELCA has offered coaching support for years as members work on stewardship programs, a Caring for Creation specialty program is in development. If your green team is at a point that they have some goals, but don’t know how to put it anything into action, you are likely in need of some coaching sessions to set some mile-markers along the way.
Be creative. We encourage you to develop your own resources for this program. And we hope you will share them with us! so that we can energize and inspire other congregations to join this effort to restore creation.