This Sermon Resources List has everything you need to plan a creation-honoring worship service.  Includes links to example sermons, hymns, and scripture resources.

OLATHE, Kan. (06/20/09) — Last month, St. Andrew Christian Church in Olathe, Kan., hosted a “Cool Congregations” workshop to equip people of faith to become more ecologically responsible.

The May 3 event attracted 32 participants from 14 congregations, according to Yvonne Huff, an organizer for the St. Andrew Group for Ecology (SAGE) and member of the congregation.

Cool Congregations is an initiative of Kansas Interfaith Power and Light — a statewide affiliate of Interfaith Power and Light, which operates in 28 states — that mobilizes people of faith to addresses problems of climate change.

During the workshop, participants learned how to calculate their carbon footprint — the amount of global warming pollution emitted by their household. They also made a pledge to implement energy efficiency measures at home.

The pledge centers on the notion of a “10 percent tithe,” which is a commitment from individuals, households and communities to reduce their carbon emissions by 10 percent, according to Kansas Interfaith Power and Light’s website.

“Stewardship is not just about giving material resources toward the mission of the church,” said Brandon Gilvin, associate minister at St. Andrew. “It’s also about providing care for the very earth that gives us life.

By presenting carbon reduction as a gift rather than a sacrifice of comfort, Interfaith Power and Light “does a great job in teaching religious leaders a thing or two about living out our faith,” Gilvin said.

Eileen Horn, statewide coordinator of Kansas Interfaith Power and Light, believes that people of faith have a unique responsibility to address issues of climate change.

“All the world’s faiths and texts call us to care for creation and to be good stewards of our environment. We are also called to love our neighbors, and to care for the poor among us,” Horn said.

“Climate change threatens the rich diversity of species on this planet, and its impact will be borne by those least able to adapt — namely the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society.”

During the workshop at St. Andrew, Sarah Webb, director of Cool Congregations in Iowa, talked about the initiative and the effect it can have on global warming.

Other topics included “How to Organize a Cool Congregation Program in Your Congregation,” and “the Other Side of the Meter,” which Horn presented.

Since organizing six months ago, congregations across Kansas have been joining the Interfaith Power and Light movement, Horn said. The initiative has helped 15 congregations complete audits of their facilities, in order to examine their monthly energy expenditures. Several other Kansas Interfaith Power and Light members have installed solar panels, geothermal heating and cooling systems, as well as compact fluorescent lighting.

Check out our interactive Google Map:

Kansas Interfaith Power and Light Member Congregations

If you’re not a member of Kansas IPL, be sure to sign the covenant and join us as we put our faith into action to address climate change!

Should caring for the environment be a major priority for people of faith? Only a few years ago, I would have blithely answered this question “no.”

What changed? I changed.

I realized I was violating the biblical commands “to serve and to protect” creation (Genesis 2:15). The Hebrew words to serve, “avad,” and to protect, “shamar,” mean we must be caretakers, not just takers.

What got my attention, and keeps it, is the impact of climate change, habitat destruction and species extinction on Earth. Sir John Houghton, the first chairman of the Scientific Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — and an evangelical Christian — made a presentation on the impacts of global warming to the Oxford Conference of 2002.

I was a skeptic. It was my reasoning that the science was disputable. “No dog in that fight,” referring to the debate over global warming, was my judgment at the time. It took the unequivocal evidence of climate change — significantly caused by humans and irreversible in its nature — to shake me out of my own lethargy.

Millions of my fellow evangelical believers need to examine themselves. Too often we’ve bought into the snake oil of climate skeptics or assumed that it’s up to others, not Christians, to act to save the creation.

E.O. Wilson, author of the recent book “The Creation,” says: “If current deterioration of the environment by human activity continues unabated, half of Earth’s surviving species, plants and animals will be extinguished or critically endangered by the end of the century. One quarter, it’s been estimated, could leave us in the next 50 years due to climate change alone.”

Human health and life are particularly endangered, with the poor and disadvantaged among us at the greatest risk. James Hansen, a top scientist at NASA, has said, “One quarter of carbon dioxide that we put in the air by burning fossil fuel will stay there forever — more than 500 years. If we burn all fossil fuels without capturing and sequestering the CO2, we will create a different planet.”

Can we hear the voice of the biblical prophet Ezekiel: “Is it not enough for you to drink the water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?” Today, Ezekiel would ask: Is it not enough for you to enjoy a pleasant climate? Must you destroy it? Is it not enough for you to enjoy the myriad of creatures? Must you extinguish them?

Major segments of the Earth are dying, and we are responsible. Will we change our destructive lifestyles? Can our planet become healthy? Ezekiel says that with God all things are possible, even the reconstitution of dry bones.

As people of faith, we have no option but to act. Why not take the lead in making our nation an example of biblical stewardship? To claim to love the Creator but to abuse the world in which we live is like claiming to be fans of Shakespeare while burning his plays.

And when we die, God won’t ask us how He made this Earth or how long it took, but instead this question about our stewardship duty: “What did you do with what I made?”

Richard Cizik, who spoke in Wichita this week, is president of the New Evangelicals, based in Washington, D.C.