In 2017 our bishop, Bishop Hope Morgan-Ward, asked me to put together a creation care team for the conference. North Carolina had not previously had such a team and the bishop thought it was high time that her conference had one. Since I had recently retired and moved back to NC, I was the logical choice, I suppose.
So we put the word out and quickly had an email list of about 25 people. About half of those showed up for meetings that we began to hold quarterly. Our first year was spent assessing the skills, abilities, talents, experience, education, and passion of our team members in order to craft a vision and priorities of the team. The bishop added a bit of a mandate from the beginning. She told the team that she wanted us to “shift the theology of United Methodists in the NC Conference to include creation care in what it means to be disciples of Jesus Christ.” I loved that about our bishop; I haven’t heard any other bishop say such a thing. (By the way, it is not at all imperative that your bishop support your conference team, but it is nice when it happens and we have a very supportive bishop.)
Initially we formed small sub-groups of the team to work on theology, advocacy, and the Green Church Initiative, which is a covenant congregation program designed to help a local church take steps in becoming far more environmentally friendly. In time we added a fourth sub-group to focus on church gardens, food, and agriculture. We decided to take on some agriculture issues, not just gardening, since corporate pig and chicken farms are quite prevalent in eastern NC.
After we had somewhat established ourselves, our bishop scheduled a Bishop’s Forum on Creation Care, and invited me to address the annual conference in 2018. Those two events gave us a nice boost.
Once we were fairly well established, I decided to rotate off as chair but remain as part of the team. Jarrod Davis, a great young clergy person, took over as chair. By this time, the team had requested that we meet monthly rather than quarterly because “we have so much to do.”
To date we have partnered with NC Interfaith Power and Light on some state-based advocacy efforts, we’ve conducted several district training events to begin the theological shift our bishop requested, we’ve revised the Green Church Initiative and, in fact, have written a simpler version for those congregations that feel overwhelmed with the task of creation care, to help get them started. And we’ve produced a Regenerative Agriculture Toolkit for both farmers and congregations to educate and advocate for more sustainable agriculture practices. In this effort we partnered with the Rural Advancement Foundation International. We have two energy experts on our team that have developed an energy assessment tool for congregations and are working on reducing the carbon footprint of our conference-owned facilities by 50% by 2030 and 100% by 2050. In addition we are consulting with United Methodist Communications to assist them in reducing their carbon footprint.
Last year our bishop wanted to lift up a Season of Creation and encourage the clergy in the conference to observe this season in their own congregations, so our team put together a webinar series for the month of September 2020. The bishop preached a creation care sermon the first Sunday in September to kick off the month-long webinar series.
Most recently, in May 2021, we held a one-day webinar called “Redeeming Creation” that featured two scholars from Duke Divinity School, Dr. Jerusha Neal, a preaching professor, who spoke on preaching climate change, and Dr. Ellen Davis, a Hebrew scholar, who connected biblical faith with creation care.
Our chair, Jarrod Davis, has a vision that our team see as part of its mission to reach out beyond our annual conference if we can be helpful to other annual conferences and/or any of our general boards and agencies. And if we can be helpful to any of you please don’t hesitate to be in touch.
Pat Watkins
jpatdenise@mac.com