Greetings from your friends at First UMC Elon and our CAT. CAT is our Creation Advocacy Team. See our new logo above.
We wanted to share with others in our district what we do at our church to be advocates for creation.
During Epiphany this year, our pastor led us in a worship series, New Year, New Creation where we contemplated our relationship to water, animals, plants, land/earth, air, and energy. Each week someone from CAT led the children’s time during worship and taught them ways they could be better stewards of creation. We also provided a weekly prayer in the bulletin for folks to pray at home about the theme of the week and we listed with the prayer practical ways each of us could be better stewards of the element of creation we learned about that week.
Our CAT meets once a month and we focus on three things, Education, Legislation, and Advocacy.
- Education: The more we know, the better we can advocate for creation care. We watch webinars, TED talks and videos together to learn more about creation care so we can share what we learn with others. We also did the Climate Justice: A Call to Hope and Action study this past fall. We invited a student from Elon University who majored in Environmental Studies to come and share with us about her work in the area of sustainable agricultural practices. We have a bulletin board in the main hallway to show good recycling practices. We read books to our First School Pre-School students that teach them about caring for creation and at their open house this past fall, we handed out information to their parents about recycling in Alamance County. We wrote newsletter articles about Earth Day and World Water Day and we often share monthly CAT tips in the newsletter (use dryer balls to help your dryer dry clothes faster and use less electricity or hang clothes to dry; use detergent sheets packaged in cardboard containers instead of liquid detergent in large, plastic containers that take up more room in landfills, etc.)
- Legislation: We work to change public policy that is harmful to the environment. We have written letters to legislators about issues related to creation and the environment, most recently about passing the Farm Bill, and we provide templates and information for the congregation to write letters as well.
- Advocacy: We advocate for more sustainable, creation-friendly practices in our church and in the lives of our church members. We have encouraged our church to move away from disposable dinnerware when we have meals together and to use washable dinnerware instead. CAT often rounds up the dishwashing team for church meals. We have sponsored two plant-based lunches for the congregation. We provide bins for recycling batteries, ink cartridges, eyeglasses, and soda tabs and we have a a trailer for recycling Styrofoam in our parking lot. The Styrofoam recycle trailer is used by church members and local residents and is usually filled once a week! We just added coffee pod recycling to our church this past fall and have already filled a huge box with coffee pods that would have otherwise gone into the landfill.
If you would like to talk to someone from our CAT about our work at FUMC Elon, please reach out to us. We would love to share more information about what we do, why, and how we do it so more churches can engage in creation care ministries.
–Pastor Kellie Gallagher
First UMC Elon
pastor@elonfumc.org