Waterville 

On April 10, 2018, the Mission Committee unanimously voted to establish a Creation Care Ministry Team at Waterville UCC. Members of the team are Bill Lee, Denise Baker, Dave Hedrick, Marie Palluotto, Steve Meyerhans, Frank Russell, and Sally Melcher-McKeagney.

 

“Ministries focused on caring for God’s creation--our common home--could not have a higher purpose or calling than they do now.” From ”Are You a Creation Justice Advocate?”--UCC brochure on Environmental Justice.

 

Our activities will include, but will not be limited to, the following:

1. Evaluating how we can make our church building as energy efficient as practicable and making our carbon footprint as small as possible. This  will mean evaluating everything we do as a church, from coffee hour to how we heat our space.

2. Raising awareness through education, including field trips and films.

3. Supporting Marie Palluotto and the Sunday School’s garden, which will sustainably raise vegetables and give the produce away.

4. Advocacy and Action, locally and nationally.

5. Becoming a Creation Justice Church, a UCC designation.

 

In our statement  to the Mission Committee,  Dave Hedrick discussed the problem of climate change and increasingly toxic environments in answer to the question, “How does the practice of Creation Care serve those on the margins?”  He wrote, “By becoming aware of the damage modern, industrial society and our demand for more and more “stuff” as George Carlin named it, we who can afford to consume the most can raise our awareness of the damage we are doing to the entire planet that is the only place we or those on the margins have to live. How many homeless have nowhere to go to escape severe weather or a flood, as in Bangladesh? How many on the margin can afford heating oil in an extreme winter? How many on the margin will be able to afford fruits and vegetables after insecticides and GMO crops kill off pollinating bees? If you are a fisherman, the warming and acidifying ocean is affecting your income already.”

 

Finally, we recognize that as a church, we need to be spiritually and theologically grounded. We must know that all of Creation is of God. We humans are intertwined with every other being here on our beloved Planet Earth.

 

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you;

The birds of the air, and they will tell you;

Ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you,

Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?

In his hand is the life of every living thing

And the breath of every human being”.--Job 12:7-12

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The Creation Care Team contact is Sally Melcher-McKeagney.  

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For a link to the UCC's Environmental Justice Ministries, click here