By Crys Zinkiewicz
It’s one thing to have a positive vote for forming Green Teams, it’s another to form those teams. Recognizing the need for encouraging and resourcing those beginnings, the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Creation Care Ministry Team has developed a 10-minute video walkthrough of the resolution.
After defining the role of a resolution as starting a conversation and moving to action, the video connects creation care and justice to Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience, pointing to the “why” Green Teams are important.
The video includes a pause after the theological grounding opening for participants to share their own stories and concerns.
The second portion of the video examines what is resolved: forming a team and carrying out at least one action annually in four areas: Worship, Education, Practice, and Advocacy. Examples of actions are a part of the presentation.
The final segment points to the witness these actions make to the community and the community of faith. It also identifies the support from the conference, especially from the Conference Creation Care Ministry Team to help with the “how.”
The video is designed to give church leaders a tool to educate and energize volunteers to pick up the mantle of creation care and justice in their own setting. The call to action is to love God, the Creator, and therefore to love Creation and to love neighbor, especially the vulnerable, which given the pervasiveness of the ecological crises we face, is all of us—human and non-human.
Although the video is specific to the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Conference, the explanation of the theological grounding and the action called for are universal. Other conferences are free to use as much or as little of the video as they find helpful. Alternatively, they can use it as a model.
The video is available here.
Crys Zinkiewicz is UM EarthKeeper and a member of the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Conference Creation Care Ministry Team and of the Creation Justice Movement’s Communications Team.