Green Teams and Local Church Engagement

Join us for the Café on November 15th

The leaves are changing color, but in this month’s Movement Café, we are focusing on GREEN—specifically learning about Green Teams and their important role in caring for God’s Creation and justice. Local churches and their Green Teams can be true powerhouses in this important work.

Green Teams—sometimes called by different names, such as a Creation Care Committee—are a group of people in a congregation who are committed to raising awareness about the urgent need to protect God’s Creation. They help the church and the church community in a variety of ways to develop sustainable practices, such as energy efficiency, conservation, and the use of clean energy sources. Their efforts range from replacing styrofoam coffee cups to building community gardens to leading the effort to install a solar roof. They may also encourage advocacy and engagement in policy and environmental justice issues.

The November Café will be a great opportunity for learning how to start and engage your Green Team, as well as for providing ideas for building and bolstering this important work at the local church level.

Introducing This Month’s Speakers

Crys Zinkiewicz is grounded both theologically with a Masters in Christian education and practically with a background in communications. She is the writer of the Creation Justice Tips (her EarthKeepers project), the Green Team Formation resolution, and the tipsheet for starting green teams. She is past chair of her local church’s Creation Care Committee, a member of the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Conference Creation Care Ministry Team, and member of the Creation Justice Movement’s Communications Team. She lives in Nashville. where she has had a 30-year career of curriculum development at The United Methodist Publishing House.

Kim Richmond is a UM EarthKeeper. She started the Creation Care Ministry in her home church, Maple Springs UMC, in Winston Salem, and is active in the Western NC Conference Creation Care Ministry, serving currently as the convener (coordinator) for that team. She is also a Climate Reality Project Leader and the Advocacy Chairperson for her local Audubon chapter.

Bob Downs A retired engineer and biophysicist, Bob Downs is a General Board of Global Ministries’ EarthKeeper. He attends Christ United Methodist Church in Kettering, Ohio. He is also the chair of the Creation Care Task Force in the West Ohio Annual Conference.

Anita Dygert-Gearheart is a retired clinical social worker. She and her husband developed a curriculum for faith groups and community groups to learn about the climate crisis and how we can all become a part of the solution. Wake Up World, A Curriculum on the Climate Crisis for Faith and Community Groups, was their project as they became UM EarthKeepers in 2022. They have developed a series of short videos called A Minute for Mother Earth based on the curriculum and available to churches. All materials are available free of charge on their website www.wakeupworld.earth.

Marty Toepke-Floyd is the Senior Pastor at First United Methodist Church in Jamestown, ND, and an Elder in the Dakotas Annual Conference. He has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from the University of Redlands and a Masters of Divinity degree from Pacific School of Religion. He has led several Mission u studies on Poverty, Climate Justice, the Gospel of Mark, and Living the Kin-dom of God for the Dakotas United Women in Faith. In the past ten years, he has traveled to Haiti and the Dominican Republic with Solar Oven Partners on short term mission trips. He is married to Tammy, a UCC pastor, and the father to two grown & married children and grandfather to Micah—an absolutely adorable two year-old.

Dawn Lewis As a long time Creation care advocate, Dawn Lewis founded the Green Team at her church and has worked to support other green teams.

Last Month’s Café

October 2023 Movement Café: Congregational Solar

Read the summary here

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NOVEMBER TIPS