FRC Schenectady Greening Team Mission Statement

God loves the world. We believe this love is revealed within Scripture and most fully in the peace and justice of Jesus Christ, our sure foundation. In shared loyalty to Jesus and in step with his Spirit we desire to be a church family where this peace and justice between God, people, and all of creation is sought and celebrated.

Blessed with the peace of Christ, we are inspired to awareness and enjoyment of the wonders of God's cosmos, especially this beloved planet. Required to do justice, we are charged to protect, restore, and enhance the ecosystem, within which human and other kind live, and upon which all life depends.

Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we commit ourselves as individuals and as a community of faith, to actions both personal and congregational, local and global, which celebrate, heal, and sustain the earth and all its creatures to God's glory.

drafted and revised Summer, 2009

affirmed by the consistory Fall, 2009

Greening Team Brainstorm List of Ideas to Grow Into Our Desire to Care for Creation

Green Team Brainstorming, February 2010
(a step in our annual plan process to “green” various dimensions of our church)


EDUCATION

· Offer a retreat on an environmental theme
· Request a Greening section in church library
· Request on earth day the Greening section of library to be put on display
· Build and maintain Greening Team Blog
· Update weekly Green space bulletin board
· Provide quarterly speaker at First Forum on greening themes such as: Earth-friendly pet care; nontoxic cleaning; greener lawn care; local residential use of solar energy; composting; home energy audits; fuel efficiency; transportation options
· Provide quarterly church school on environment themes
· Incorporate tips on earth-friendly plants, housekeeping, and gardening on web-site into First Things
· Sponsor an Environmental Fair after worship
· Plan and promote and plan lower emission living
· Start composting our church’s vegetable matter
· Promote/supporting the Green Market


WORSHIP

· Create banner with a earth friendly symbol and/or slogan
· Provide quarterly earth friendly sermons
· Continue annual blessing of animals
· Continue celebrating Earth Day on Sunday morning near April 22
· Begin celebrating Earth Day at Sunday Vespers
· Ask Youth Group to do an annual skit on creation care.
· Incorporate earth-honoring music in worship such as: hymns, anthems, introits, offertories
· Provide one creation care themed fact or idea in bulletin each week
· Teach children/congregation “Garbage isn’t Garbage” song
· Continue to incorporate creeds including faithful stewardship of creation as one theme of Christian Faith



COMMUNITY OUTREACH

· Maintain the garden/green space reclamation accomplished last summer by by Art, et al
· Continue the donations of garden produce to Bethesda & City Mission begun by Art, et al
· Promote Ethos of Creation Care on each frolic by implementing consistent practice of picking up trash practice
· Connect with other greening congregations in area, e.g. Unitarians, First Reformed Scotia,
· Connect with County Environmental Task Force
· Connect with City Environmental Task Force
· Tour LEED facilities, e.g., Price Chopper’s new building on Nott St; or/and Curtis Lumber; Union College new building on Nott Terrence, Hudson Valley’s building progress in Malta, GE’s new wind monitoring LEED facility,
· Visit County Composting facility; organic farm/sustainable agriculture
· Identify an environmental issue on the Mohawk that we can be involved in restoring
· Identify a creation-care issue in the City of Schenectady that we can be involved in participating in
· Continue annual trash-pick footed frolic to Value Cemetery; publicize this in Gazette
· Sponsor a trash pickup frolic to Stockade section of Mohawk; publicize in Stockade Spy and Gazette
· Promote Green Market within congregation
· Identify Earth-friendly issue in County of Schenectady we might be involved with
· Apply for a CDTA for offered bike rake


INSTITUTIONAL LIFE

· Establish a church wide earth-friendly buying & use policy, e.g., no styrofoam or plastics
· Limit the waste we produce
· Establish preferential use to products/materials that can be reused
· Explore, in coordination with property committee, the purchase of electricity from renewable sources
· Explore on our property the generation of solar power
· Check into the need for an energy audit update on our property
· Become a Green-faith certified congregation
· Purchase and install bike rack in coordination with property committee
· Increase church-wide recycling , e.g., more containers; more accessible; clearly labeled;
· Promote purchasing use of lower-emission lawn mowers
· Explore purchasing and use of less harmful soaps; greener toilet, sink paper products
· Promote water conservation, e.g., repair of leaky faucets; tips; practices for greater conservation
· Increase office purchase and use of greater recycled content paper
· Encourage more meatless meals/pot-lucks
· Establish and promote and ethos of “enough” rather than “over stuffed” i.e., decrease our waste and ort report
· Continue in our church-wide meals practices of use of reusable materials, e.g., plates, glasses, table clothes
· Extend ethos of church groups washing-up after themselves


DENOMINATIONAL, INTERFAITH OUTREACH

· Obtain Green-faith certification
· Publicize and promote synod-wide “Green pastures” event at Fowler May 23-25
· Connect with other churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. involved in greening efforts
· Publicize CRTC creation awareness themed outings, e.g., backpacking through creation
· Establish connections with other RCA creation-care congregations
· Explore obtaining a creation-care grant