Greetings, Friends!
I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend! With that holiday coming so late this year, I feel as though my head is spinning when I realize that we’re already in the second week of Advent. I hope you’re all doing better than I am!
This week’s blog comes from Resolution Review Committee member Luke Thompson:
Three priorities of the Episcopal Church are: creation care, evangelism, and racial reconciliation and justice. My generation needs to be aware of these priorities. We should participate with the church to make these resolutions successful. This blog focuses on Creation Care.
We are being asked to be good stewards of the earth, reduce our carbon footprint, reduce the use of fossil fuels and repurpose church owned land “for regenerative agriculture and biodiversity conservation.” Regenerative farming is a practice of farming that enriches the soil and improves our watersheds. Benefits of this type of farming reduces erosion because the soil is able to hold more water. Regenerative farming also protects the quality of the groundwater. This type of farming “captures” the carbon in the soil and reverses the trends we see with global warming.
Biodiversity conservation is a conservation method that encourages us to allow every living organism to remain in its natural state. There are three kinds of biodiversity: diversity within species, diversity between species and diversity between ecosystems.
With 75 churches in our diocese, youth and young adults from several churches should get together to practice Creation Care. We should share our successes and failures, keep track of what we are doing on a shared database and report what we are doing at Convention. This can be done and I plan to put this in action next spring. Let’s practice Creation Care.
Here’s the resolution:
D053 Stewardship of Creation with Church-Owned Land
Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, That the 79th General Convention recommends that all dioceses, faith communities and institutions create partnerships enabling the use of church-owned land for regenerative agriculture and biodiversity conservation projects in order to sequester carbon and to mitigate climate change: and be it further
Resolved, that the General Convention direct the Executive Council to appoint a body to gather information from the Church Pension Group, dioceses and other sources in order to create an inventory of all church-owned properties; and be it further
Resolved, that the General Convention requests that each Diocese consider the potential for utilization of church -owned property for new ministries integrating the care of Creation, particularly in situations where properties are no longer regularly utilized; and be it further
Resolved, that the body appointed by Executive Council develop model processes by which dioceses, faith communities and institutions may collaborate with partner agencies to care for creation and sequester carbon through regenerative agriculture, biodiversity conservation, green burial, and habitat restoration; and be it further
Resolved, that the appointed body report back to the 80th General Convention.
Let us pray –
Lord, make us people who recognize, nurture and act towards a more sustainable world for the benefit of all who draw life from this planet. Raise up campaigners who will speak out for wisdom, restraint and compassion. And teach us to partner you in protecting this precious world and the lives of our most vulnerable global neighbors. Amen
(Hope for Creation)
~ Luke Thompson, Resolution Review Committee, Diocesan Council
