By Rev. Anna Blinn Cole
On the latest Green Team Zoom call, I shared a project we have piloted in Upper New York. Funded by a grant from Peace With Justice, we put together 100 Green Team Starter Kits to hand out for free at our 2025 annual conference. As we gave the kit, people left their emails from which we grew a conference-wide Creation Justice enews list.
The kits contained helpful items for churches that want to begin engaging with creation justice. I’m including here the items we listed, a picture of the kit laid out on our table at AC (above,) and a PDF of the guides we put into the kits. The guides are an assemblage of various pieces of information gleaned from wider creation justice networks, made handy for the local church.
If you have an interest in customizing any of this for your setting, send me an email and I’ll share more (pastor.anna.cole@gmail.com).
Green Team Starter Kits
- Organic cotton tote bag
- Iron-on transfer of our Upper New York Creation Justice Team logo
- Covenant
- Intro to the Kit
- Cloth Napkin + “how-to make cloth napkins as a community” guide
- How to form a Green Team
- Swedish dishcloth and green kitchen guide
- Native plant guide and seed packet
- Laminated compost placard and instructions
- NexTrex information sheet, testimonial (+ sample bag that can be recycled)
- LED light bulb plus Green Audit Guide
- Compostable 33-gallon trash bag
- Button-making materials
Anna Blinn Cole is an ordained elder serving Cobleskill UMC in Upper New York Conference. She is also a member of the conference Creation Justice Team. In July she will join the cabinet as superintendent of the Albany and Adirondack Districts.