New Environmental Policy Strengthens PSUMC Earth Stewardship
On November 8, 2007, the PSUMC Church Council passed an “Environmental Policy Statement." The policy is the fruit of the church’s newly formed Environmental Stewardship Committee, which drafted it and advocated for it. It is grounded in the recognition that as a faith community, we have a responsibility care for and defend all of God’s creation. We are called to action both in our personal practices and in our engagement with the world beyond our doors. One the most immediate effects of the new policy is a collaboration between the Environmental Stewardship Committee, the trustees and the Capital Campaign Committee on planning ways to make the church’s new kitchen as “green” as possible.
“Ministries of environmental stewardship and environmental justice are significant in the mission of our church,” the policy states. It calls on the church community to integrate environmental awareness and sustainable practices into every facet of the church’s life: celebrating God’s creation in worship; incorporating ecological education into both Sunday School and adult education; and changing our habits.
Among the concrete changes the church is considering as a result of the new environmental policy are the use of compact fluorescent lights, serving only shade-grown organic fair trade coffee and buying post-consumer waste, recycled, process chlorine-free office paper.
At its most recent meeting on December 11, the Environmental Stewardship Committee focused on the church’s new kitchen project and ways to make its design as environmentally friendly as possible. The kitchen project is one of the main items in the current capital campaign and a representative from the trustees and Capital Campaign Committee was at the December 11 meeting. That collaboration is a model for what the Environmental Stewardship Committee hopes will happen throughout the church: each committee and program being conscious of its environmental impact and pursuing ways to reduce its environmental footprint.
The “Environmental Policy Statement” also calls on PSUMC to become an active part of environmental justice work through such groups as Eco-Justice Ministries, the National Council of Churches U.S.A.’s Eco-Justice Programs - Adamah Covenant Congregations, Greenfaith, and Interfaith Power and Light.
The Environmental Stewardship Committee invites anyone with an interest in environmental ministry or anyone with an idea on steps we can take as a church to live more sustainably to join them. Their next committee meeting will be sometime in January.