By Rev. Kim Hornung-Marcy
In June of 2022 the New England Conference passed a very exciting resolution, asking at our the Conference to—
- Hire a part-time Climate Coordinator to organize efforts to educate New England UMC members on efforts to go green, to help them understand the justice issues involved in fighting climate change, and to work with state level advocacy for good climate policy.
- Established a Creation Care Taskforce with one representative from each of our six New England states to be under our Board of Church and Society and to work with the Climate Coordinator to accomplish the education and advocacy that God is calling us to do.
- Asked every church to celebrate at the annual conference what they are already doing to take care of the earth and hopefully to make new goals to expand what they are doing each year.
This year, as we approach the June 2023 Annual Conference—
- We are finalizing the hiring of the Climate Coordinator. We are very appreciative of the many leaders in our conference and the staff person provided by the General Board of Finance and Administration for their support and skills in moving this process forward.
- We have representatives from five of our six states for the Creation Care Taskforce and hope to add a sixth very soon.
- We have produced a checklist and sent this to all our District Superintendents to use with churches at their church conferences. The checklist is long, in part so even the smallest church is probably already doing something and can see many other options to pursue.
Beth DiCocco, our Conference Communications expert, and Rev. Kim Hornung-Marcy created Creation Care pages for our Conference website, listing a number of United Methodist sites that have information on Creation Care. It also has our “Go Green, Save Money, Save the Earth” blogposts. These have been produced once a month since Dec. 2021. There are pages for each of our six states with links to the state information and rebates for weatherization, heat pumps, solar, electric vehicles and many other green programs. All six of our states have free programming for low and moderate-income people. And since Community Action Programs (CAP) are nationwide, all US states have access to the service!
We are proud to have nine Earth Keepers who are very active. Their projects have included doing a climate-oriented, virtual Vacation Bible School, linking church trails to community trails, reaching out to the community with creation care nature walks, and establishing church Facebook pages. We hope to increase our numbers of EarthKeepers with the October 2023 in- person training in Hartford, Connecticut.
Our Camps and Adult Retreat Ministries are very climate oriented in the care of their buildings and land and in the programming they offer.
We will offer even more outreach, education, and advocacy through our Creation Care Taskforce and Climate Coordinator soon. We are very inspired by what other Conferences are already doing and appreciate the networking provided by UM Creation Justice ministries.
Rev. Kim Hornung-Marcy is the current chairperson of NEAC Board of Church and Society.