CREATION CARE TEAM
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Mark 12:31
As Christians we are called to care for all of God's creation. As United Methodists, we believe that we are not called to merely be observers. Rather, we are called to actively love and tend to all of God's creation. We are called to seek justice and liberty for all of God's creation. The Social Principals of the United Methodist Church speak to the issues in the contemporary world from a sound biblical and theological foundation. One of the United Methodist Church's Social Principals is to care for The Natural World. God has charged us to be stewards of God's creation. "Water, air, soil, minerals, energy resources, plants, animal life, and space are to be valued and conserved because they are useful to human beings".
The Aldersgate Creation Care Team works towards living into the United Methodist Social Principal: The Natural World and our Aldersgate UMC Strategic Priorities of Missional Outreach and Social Justice. To help educate, disciple, and model ways to transform for the better those people and causes we seek to serve locally, nationally, and internationally.
The Creation Care Team comes together every 6-8 weeks to share what we are working on and plan for other ways to engage in our church and community.
United Methodist Creation Justice Monthly Tips
The United Methodist Creation Justice Movement provides tips each month to help us respond to God's call to care for creation and do justice with our neighbors. Share these tips with your family, friends, and neighbors. CLICK HERE to see more tips and to subscribe to receive the monthly tips in your email directly from the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement.
For more about the UMC Creation Justice Movement, visit to umcreationjustice.org.
April 2024 Tips: Me Power & We Power
Stand Up, Speak Up, Step UP
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” What Margaret Mead, the famous anthropologist, said played out in the story of Earth Day. One man, distressed over the environmental degradation he saw, initiated the first Earth Day, 53 years ago.
He claimed his “Me Power.”
Another man, employing his organizing skills, joined him and made possible the expansion of Earth Day so that it now reaches billions of people in 192 countries.
Together they turned the effort into “We Power.”
We too can change the world -- with our individual and corporate actions.
Let’s celebrate the possibilities, claim our power, and get to work!
For a few days keep a tally of all the single-use plastic you encounter. Become hyper-aware of plastic bags, excess packaging, water bottles, disposable cutlery, straws, cups that litter your life before they stay in landfills or oceans for eons. Share your count with at least one other person. Awareness is the first step to positive change.
Treat your family to alternatives to the usual single-use plastic items in your home. Consider bamboo toothbrushes, shampoo bars, aluminum water bottles, reusable silicone baggies, for example. Or visit a refill store. Move away from “throw-away.”
Tell your friends what you are doing to greatly reduce the plastic waste in your life. Talk about why that change is important to you. Recount your changes as steps in a journey and invite them to join you in tackling the problem. Encourage them; avoid creating any embarrassment.
At work, check out the coffee station. Styrofoam cups and plastic stirrers get thrown away but never go away. Look for non-plastic alternatives for coffee cups. Buy a package of linguine pasta, break the strands in half and use them to stir the coffee or tea. The pasta-stirrers can be composted or thrown away without the same harm that plastic generates.
Donate to organizations that are addressing the plastic problem on a larger scale. Your financial support enables them to reach far and wide. Check out these: EarthDay.org, Plastic-Free July, The Story of Stuff Project, specifically The Story of Bottled Water.
Push your state or city to ban specific single-use plastics. Already, more than 500 cities have ordinances against plastic bags. Twelve states have bans in place. Two more are working in that direction. The number is growing, and the bans are working. Get your local policymakers on the “ban-wagon.”
Currently wending its way through Congress is the bill H.R. 6053: “To amend the Solid Waste Disposal Act to reduce the production and use of certain single-use plastic products and packaging, to improve the responsibility of producers in the design, collection, reuse, recycling, and disposal of consumer products and packaging, to prevent pollution from consumer products and packaging from entering into animal and human food chains and waterways, and for other purposes.” Contact your Representative to advocate for its passage.
Approach this Earth Day—and every day—with gratitude. Our Creator God has gifted us with an amazing planet—not wrapped in plastic. Our faithful response is to cherish and care for this treasure.