The Episcopal Church has approved 44 Stewardship of Creation grants for local projects, including many great ideas that your parish or diocese could do too. Every Thursday, to help highlight the exciting work happening across God’s church, we feature one here!
This week’s grant recipient highlights the crossroads of climate change and agriculture. Church of the Nativity in Raleigh, NC, received $10,000 “to support and promote carbon farming.” The grant will be used for composting, with the goal of increasing plant growth on church lands to sequester (or store) more carbon in plants and soils rather than in the air. Nativity is also working to build a statewide organization to support more carbon farming across North Carolina, as well as hosting a conference and publishing a report on the rationale and strategy for going forward.
This carbon-farming work is part of Nativity’s larger, aspirational Zero Waste Church ministry, which features lots of great information your own congregation can use: www.zerowastechurch.org
Nativity’s parish website has a special section dedicated to the Care of Creation, which features blog posts on diverse theological and scientific topics like climate change, composting, food insecurity, water, and soil. The website proclaims, “At Church of the Nativity we believe that our faith in Jesus, our reverence for the earth, and our service to others are deeply woven together in our life of faith. We seek a connection to God through our connections with one another, through caring for the natural world, and through an examination of our interior life. All these things are a form of prayer.”
Thank you for this ministry, Nativity — and thanks for sharing ECN posts on your Facebook pages, too! Read more here, and gather ideas for your own parish website: http://nativityonline.org/faith/caring-for-creation/
Background image via http://nativityonline.org/gallery-items/kids-outreach-gleaning-for-the-inter-faith-food-shuttle-helping-to-fight-hunger-in-our-community/ Nativity donates some of the food from its garden to the local Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, showing how Christians can fight climate change, poverty, and food insecurity all at the same time.
Episcopal Climate News 
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