March 2026 Movement Café:
Church Gardens as Land Stewardship
March 18, 2026
9am AK / 10am PT / 11am MT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET
Sponsored by the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement, the informal, virtual space of the Café facilitates conversation, connection, and community focused on creation care and justice issues.
Land Stewardship
Join us in March for a Movement Café focusing on church gardens as land stewardship. Presenters in the Kentucky Conference, Western North Carolina Conference, and Northern Illinois will talk about about their garden ministries, which include gardens for growing and sharing produce, as well as prayer gardens and native gardens. All are offered to create healthy communities and celebrate a healthy planet.
Also, the Café will introduce Noah Curtis from the Kentucky Conference. Noah Curtis is the new convener for the brand new land stewardship and garden working group for the Movement.
Speakers
Noah Curtis
Noah Curtis is a young entrepreneur with a love of community and gardening. He grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and is a graduate of Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. He started his business at age 24, offering professional support to gardeners in his local area. Since then, his business, Pineal Gardens, has expanded with neighborhood farm stations in 15 states, building community to share produce, address food waste, and reduce hunger. His passion is building sustainable gardens and nurturing the soil, a gift he lends also to his local United Methodist church.
Emily Bryant
Emily Bryant is a strategic communicator currently serving at the Central Appalachian Missionary Conference. Hailing from London, Kentucky, she is a 2025 graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. At the Central Appalachian Missionary Conference, Emily works to assist in the development of conference relations and communications, often planning and sharing content that revolves around CAMC’s central missions of disaster relief, rural hunger relief, and community empowerment.
Karen Clausing
Karen Clausing grew up on a farm near Highland, IL in a family of “green thumbs.” Her love of the land and inspiration from the state organization Faith in Place led her to form a church Green Team in 2019, break ground on a church garden in 2020, and become a Global Ministries EarthKeeper in 2022. The Green Team dedicated their garden in 2024, and plan a section specifically for pollinators. Karen is a retired pharmacist and member of Wesley UMC in Charleston, IL.
Kim Richmond
Kim Richmond is a commissioned Global Ministries EarthKeeper and the current lay chairperson of the Western NC Conference’s Creation Care Ministry team. She also is a Climate Reality Leader and a self-professed “bird nerd” who is active in her local Audubon chapter’s advocacy efforts. In 2016 Kim wrote legislation passed by General Conference for good stewardship of church lands, and contributed to other legislation that prioritized creation care across the United Methodist denomination. Kim is pleased to be a part of the organizing team for the upcoming conference-wide Bishop’s Climate Summit being held on April 18th at her home church, where she started and continues to engage in its increasingly active Creation Care Ministry. She’s also the proud mom of three young adults and her fur baby, Bentley (also pictured).