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Your Congregation | Greening Resources | Mission Statement
Greening Your
Congregation’s
Mission Statement
Greening
Ideas
Getting Started
Other Resources
Greening Ideas
Some congregations have written mission statements (or strategic plans, statements of purpose, etc.). For these congregations, the inclusion of a creation-awareness/care element can help the congregation to consider the whole of God’s creation as central to their identity and actions. Most likely, crafting and/or amending a mission statement will bring you into conversation with your congregation’s leadership. Although such an effort can be time consuming, it will help to make a creation-honoring vision a formally recognized, legitimated part of your congregation’s life. Inclusion of creation awareness/care in a mission statement potentially impacts many other dimensions of your congregation’s life (e.g., worship, education, institutional life). Here is testimony to this impact from Ruth Mulligan, an Earth Ministry congregational organizer (“Colleague”) from St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle:
One congregation’s experience …
“St. Mark’s Strategic Plan”
“When I began my efforts, our church was in the unique situation of developing a strategic plan with the arrival of our new Dean. This process was made highly visible and accessible to input from the congregation. I knew we needed to get a creation awareness and care focus into the strategic plan because the plan would set the direction for the Cathedral for the next ten to fifteen years. The Strategic Planning Committee was very responsive to my suggestions (offered during meetings and via emails) for alternative wordings that would be more inclusive of creation. For example, I suggested a revision to one of the vision statements to read: ‘[We strive to be] a Cathedral where reconciliation between peoples and with all Creation is sought and celebrated.’ In the Worship section, a whole new statement was added: ‘[We will] offer liturgies and music which celebrate the incarnational presence of God in all Creation.’ In the Church in the World section, ‘…opportunities for St. Mark’s to make a significant impact and difference on social and environmental issues, from the local to the international.’ With all of these inclusions, a creation focus eventually so permeated the completed plan that ‘Creation and the Environment’ has been identified as one of the church’s ‘Overarching Values’ and ‘Strategies’!”
In addition to Ruth’s sample statements, here are a
few other creation-honoring visions expressed in other
congregational/denominational mission statements. We hope that they might inspire helpful thinking around your
own mission statement:
“As
stewards, we are called to be a caring people, living in harmony with the
environment, respecting and honoring the gifts of God’s creation.”
(Suquamish Community Congregational, United Church of Christ,
Suquamish, WA)
“…We
believe that meaning for human life comes from the stewardship,
appreciation, and enjoyment of creation.
God is with us in this world. A
basic expression of our stewardship is to take up the advocacy of economic
justice so that all our sisters and brothers may have the opportunity to
share in and contribute to an abundant common life.
Economic justice necessarily includes the protection, restoration,
and enhancement of the ecosystem within which people and other creatures
live and from which people and other creatures draw their sustenance. …”
(From “The Wellspring Covenant,” United
Churches of Olympia,
Presbyterian/United Church of Christ, Olympia, WA)
“Centered
in that of God within us, we are moved to cherish and live in harmony with
the earth, including all its inhabitants, and to conserve and rightly share
its resources.”
(Pacific
Northwest Yearly Meeting, Quaker)
“We
pledge to take actions to increase our understanding, celebration, and
stewardship of God’s good earth in home, congregation, community, and
state.”
(Maine Council of Churches)
“Peace
and justice is God’s plan for all creation.
The earth and all creation are God’s.
God calls us to be careful, humble stewards of this earth, and to
protect and restore it for its own sake, and for the future use and
enjoyment of the human family. As
God offers all people the special gift of peace through Jesus Christ, and
through Christ reconciles all to God, we are called to deal justly with one
another and the earth.”
(Presbyterian
Church, U.S.A.)
Getting Started
· Explore what your denomination has already said about caring for creation (most denominations have some sort of statement). Go to our Denominational Statements on Creation Care page to read excerpts.
· If you have a creation-awareness/care group, consider composing a mission statement with and for the group. Composing a statement may help guide your group to better understand its shared visions and goals. Going through this process may also be helpful if you draft a similar statement for your entire congregation – you’ll be better able to predict some of the “walls” and opportunities that you may encounter with the larger congregation.
· Check to see if your congregation has a written mission statement that includes a creation-awareness/care dimension. If the statement does not, discover who has the responsibility for amending it. You could then meet with this person(s) to discover if a creation dimension might be added. You may want to bring examples of what other congregations have done (see the examples above), your group’s own mission statement, or a denominational statement.
If you’re able to help make changes, be sure that you also get a sense of how your congregation works to embody its mission statement. Does the mission statement “birth” committees to help implement elements of the mission statement? How does the mission statement affect standing committees and congregational programs? By asking such questions, you’ll help the entire document (including the creation dimension) become more of a living, working document.
·
If your congregation does not have a written mission
statement, look for other ways in which it verbally expresses its identity
and purpose (e.g., in bulletins, on signs, in ads, etc.). If appropriate, explore with congregational leaders ways that
these messages can include creation awareness and care.
Other Resources
· See our Recommended Curricular Aids and Congregational Resources page or our Annotated Bibliography. Both contain materials that may provide additional theological/ethical language for writing a mission statement.