The 2024 Book of Discipline and Book of Resolutions include new faithful actions required for local churches and conferences for creation care and environmental stewardship. As a people called Methodist we understand that righteous action leads to just outcomes. This is our hope with the new reports for charge conferences that, in attending to and measuring what needs to be done, we plot a path for sustainable community and an inheritable Earth.
These reports are mission forward. They help us chart a path. This article offers help for those seeking to implement these new reports and audits in their conferences.
As always with new things there are those on the path ahead of us. A few United Methodist conferences have taken steps to create audit forms to support energy and net-zero reporting.. They share their efforts here. We can also look to the Anglican church in the UK for inspiration. They are on the road ahead of us and are an example for what can be done. (Be sure to watch the videos at these links! We can do this, too!)
Why do these reports matter to the environment?
Reducing building emissions has a significant impact. According to the IEA, “The operations of buildings account for 30% of global final energy consumption and 26% of global energy-related emissions (8% being direct emissions in buildings and 18% indirect emissions from the production of electricity and heat used in buildings).”
Why do these reports matter to people of faith?
“Tend and Keep.” For Christian people, caring for the environment is a basic requirement stemming from God’s commandment in Genesis that we “tend and keep” the garden. With carbon emissions still rising, we must participate in an all-out effort to decarbonize our lives, communities and churches and meet (and exceed) the net-zero commitments of our Church.
Below are the sections of the Discipline and Book of Resolutions most in question. Following that, learn what Conference Care Teams are doing:
- “The board of trustees shall annually make a written report to the charge conference, in which shall be included the following…(BOD ¶2550.11) An evaluation of all church buildings, grounds, and facilities in relation to their impact on the church’s ability to be carbon neutral and/or have net zero greenhouse gas emissions; and, when applicable, a plan and timeline for the renovation and development of church buildings, grounds, and facilities to bring the church closer to being at least carbon neutral and/or having at least net zero greenhouse gas emissions.”
- BOD ¶ 2533 urges that an annual carbon footprint and/or greenhouse gas audit be done every year. This audit can be used in the filling out of annual church and/or charge conference reports.
- BOD ¶ 2550 mandates that the trustees report to the charge conference, annually, an evaluation of how the church’s physical plant impacts the church’s ability to be carbon neutral. That evaluation must be part of the Trustees’ report to the charge conference.
- BOD ¶ 255 “In order to fulfill the mission of the local church…” the local church during charge conference can elect an “earth advocacy/green team” coordinator and/or ministry leader to fulfill what is found in BOR ¶ 5112 that “every local church, charge, cluster, or district is urged to create a “green team” or strengthen an existing one for action…”
What Conference Creation Care and Justice Teams are Doing
A number of Creation Care Conference leaders, including newly appointed Conference Creation Justice Coordinators, have taken steps to support local churches with this new reporting.
Importantly, The United Methodist Church is woefully behind in the effort to mobilize and reduce emissions, despite this mobilization being cost-effective, on mission, and urgent. While as a whole The United Methodist Church must step up to necessary action, many churches within the denomination are raising the light high with solar and heat pump conversions, restorative land practices, energy efficient upgrades, and providing essential spaces for community resilience and relief.
(See Movement Cafés from April 2025 and September 2025 for inspiration and action in United Methodist churches.)
Efforts for Reporting in the North Carolina Conference
The effort to establish carbon emissions baselines for North Carolina Conference churches through simple reports began about three years ago. The NCC Creation Care team, led at the time by Rev. Jarrod Davis, wanted to implement a conference-wide project to collect data for calculating carbon emissions in order to track progress toward the net-zero commitment made by the Council of Bishops (COB) of The United Methodist Church.
Rev. Jane Almon, current co-chair of the team along with Rev. Jacob Dye, says, “The task of calculating the full scope of carbon emissions for every local church was way too big for the churches to calculate and for us to administer, so we settled on asking for very basic on-site energy consumption data—electricity, natural gas, heating oil, gas for vehicles.”
The conference team reasoned that a charge conference report would be the efficient way to obtain data from all local churches. Conducting this energy audit in the context of the annual review of the local church’s ministries would also serve to raise awareness of the general church’s net-zero commitments. The team developed a simple energy audit form and requested that it be included with the Board of Trustees annual charge conference reports.
The request, sadly, was not approved for use that year. Yet, learning is part of the process, and the team kept at it. Says Rev. Almon, “We are blessed to have some very bright scientific minds on our committee, including one who has many years of experience assessing large-scale environmental problems for the state. She proposed a simple plan for sampling a range of churches and then extrapolating the data to all churches.”
They rolled out the plan initially by sampling pastors they knew they could count on to support the learning curve. “We started calling and emailing our pastor friends and asking them to please kindly fill out this short little form,” says Rev. Almon. “Once we had received a statistically-significant number of responses, another data scientist on the team went to work crunching the numbers. The outcome is a very rough estimate of basic carbon emissions for the conference as a whole.”
These initial conversations allowed the team to plot data they could study and share, such as this first sample of estimated emissions by square footage:
See the team Emissions Report for this and other data sets.
For Rev. Almon and the team, the process is and has been slower than they would like. Their frustrations were largely echoed by teams in other conferences. For example, there are challenges in doing new things within existing conference structures, and conference reporting systems are not set up to do this at all, let alone easily. Adding to that, local church leaders and conference staff often are already overwhelmed. This reality means that the task is one of determination and persistence.
Yet it was also a task that offered rewards. Says Rev. Almon, “I must say that I am continually surprised and delighted by random conversations and encounters that remind me that even though my committee is still working to document all the creation care ministries in the conference, folks are in fact listening and learning and quite busy doing great things in the local church to care for God’s good creation.”
Developing Forms in the Pacific Northwest Conference
The Pacific Northwest Conference Commission on Environmental Stewardship is not quite a year old. They got a jumpstart in their own efforts by borrowing the process and wisdom from North Carolina.
In the Pacific Northwest, the team worked to develop the forms they needed. They found traction to get the needed forms out to local churches for charge conferences by working with the district administrators in each district. This effort proved fruitful, with a bonus that the forms they developed for church reports are comprehensive enough to gather information that is very much needed for next steps.
Those report forms are now listed alongside other necessary reports on the conference website. They include a PNW Greenhouse Gas Emissions Audit form and a Check-list for Local Congregations Engaging in Environmental Justice Activities.
Efforts in Other Conferences
As every annual conference in the denomination is mandated and/or urged to complete all or some of the requirements from the BOD and BOR, named above, the effort has been a determined one. Some teams have borrowed the North Carolina process, making tweaks to support their own conference contexts. Other teams have begun refining the essential questions they hope will help them serve local churches in their areas.
Those include:
- In the Upper New York Conference the report effort added two questions to the Trustee Report at Charge Conference: “Has an annual evaluation been conducted in relation to the church buildings, grounds, and facilities showing the impact on their ability to be carbon neutral and/or have net zero greenhouse gas emissions? (¶2550.11)” and “If needed, have you developed a plan/timeline for the renovation and development to achieve this?”
- In the West Ohio Conference, team members are encouraging adoption of the EPA Portfolio Manager, which is a free, easy way to track utility use and show its impact on individual buildings or whole campuses. Some churches are already using this tool, which is recommended in general for churches as they plan for electrification.
- In the Western Jurisdiction, more variables have come into the survey, such as the size of the buildings for heating/cooling, as well as statistics for water use.
- In the New England Conference two questions so far have been added to the charge conference forms, in the Mission Report: “Does your church have a Green Team or Environmental Ministry effort?” And in the Trustees Report: “Does your church have solar panels or heat pumps.”
All of the Creation Care leaders sampled for this article recommended (and encouraged persistence for) working with the Conference Statistician for Charge Conference reports.
Persistence is Important.
Conference Creation Care Leaders are persisting in these efforts with hope that with a shared effort of other conference leaders, the new reporting requirements will soon be as simple and helpful for local churches as is possible. Meanwhile the mission of The United Methodist Church, its net-zero pledges, and the urgency of the moment, keeps them focused on faithful action, coaxing church leaders to take electrification seriously.
Resources.
Electrification is important to meet net-zero goals, from IEA. “The path to net zero emissions is narrow. Staying on it requires the massive deployment of all available clean energy technologies – such as renewables, EVs and energy efficient building retrofits – between now and 2030.”
EPA Energy Star Portfolio manager. “The first step to saving energy at your building is to benchmark — that is, to measure and compare your building’s energy to similar buildings, past consumption, or a reference performance level.” See especially the EPA Portfolio Manager designed for congregations.
Be inspired by the work in the Missouri Annual Conference! Not only have they installed solar on the conference center in Columbia, MO, New Year, New Power, but they are working alongside pastors and churches in Mozambique to support solar for churches there, as well. Mozambique Initiative Solar Panel Project.