Climate Action – The Pollinator: Creation Care Network News

Sustaining Climate Action Questionnaire

Lausanne Editor — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 11:42:00 +0000

Ruth Valerio from Tearfund is doing a survey about how we sustain and keep going in climate action. Please take part! Ruth says …

There are 8 short questions that should take less than 5 minutes to answer. This survey is anonymous and you’re free to leave at any point (your responses will only be recorded if you click ‘submit’ at the bottom of the page).

The survey can be found here

Another way to pray over COP26: Climate Vigils around the world

Ed — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 21:09:46 +0000

Our friends at CCOP (Christian Climate Observers Program) recently told us about this effort to get people praying before and during the upcoming COP26 meetings in Glasgow, Scotland:

Recently, several creation care organizations launched a campaign called #ClimateVigil. Together, they are calling millions of Christians around the world to pray and light a candle for the climate, and then to take action in their communities in order to become, with the help of the Holy Spirit, the answer to their prayers.

The campaign will make its first public splash on November 6, during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. They will be broadcasting a prerecorded prayer service and concert to dozens of satellite locations around the world, with the flagship viewing in Glasgow. The broadcast will include messages from global leaders like Katharine Hayhoe, as well as the world-premiere of several songs written specifically for the campaign by professional artists like Liz Vice and Jon Guerra, in collaboration with The Porter’s Gate Worship Collaborative.

Here’s where you come in.

We want to see communities across the country joining in prayer, holding up their own candles, and coming together to take action in the face of the climate crisis. We are working to organize dozens of satellite vigil events around the world to tune in to the broadcast, and then to hold their own candlelit vigils.

To do this, we need leaders. Leaders like you.

Don’t worry, we’ll do all of the planning work for you. If you sign up to be a leader, here’s what you can expect:

A toolkit with everything you need to host your event.
A webinar training on October 12 where you will gather with other leaders around the world.
A stipend to cover the costs of supplies, food, and other necessities for your vigil.
A dedicated #ClimateVigil rep in your corner every step of the way.
A life-changing experience that will fill you with hope in the face of the climate crisis!

See below for a flyer with more details. To indicate interest, you can fill out this simple sign-up form. If you have any questions you’d like answered before you commit, fill out the form and indicate that you would like someone to follow up with you.

Thanks for considering this request, and for all you continue to do for God’s creation and our neighbors’ good.

ClimateVigil Leader Flyer – General Download

Young Evangelicals telling their stories

Ed — Tue, 04 May 2021 23:00:00 +0000

Evangelical climate activist William Morris in California in February.
[Rozette Rago for Rolling Stone]

Rolling Stone has a great story profiling several Young Evangelicals for Climate Action fellows. Here’s a taste:

That conversation eventually led [William] Morris to spend a month doing volunteer work with a Christian conservation organization in Kenya, cataloging rare bird species, mapping mangrove forests, and collecting data on coral reefs. His meals and his free time were shared with other Christian environmentalists and scientists, most of whom were Kenyan and notably did not share his evangelical American hang-ups. He marveled at how their faith was not only integrated into their environmental pursuits but was in fact integral to them.
“That’s where I really felt a sense of purpose for the first time,” he says. “That dichotomy finally went away of science versus faith. It was just a huge sigh of relief feeling almost, like, vindicated. I was like, ‘See, I knew it. I’m not crazy. I’m not the only one who cares about all of these things.’ It was this very holistic view that I never had gotten anywhere else. And I had to go all the way to Kenya to get it.”
Morris also began to see this holistic view all over scripture: in Genesis, where the mandate to have dominion over creation did not seem to imply callous exploitation but rather a call to wise stewardship, and throughout the Gospels, where Jesus didn’t assuage people’s suffering with promises of the afterlife but actually tended to their physical needs in the here and now. So, Morris pondered, wouldn’t loving one’s neighbor mean protecting their habitat? Making sure they could grow food, have clean air and water, not be subjected to forced migration or the “threat multiplier” that he knew climate change to be?
In integrating his faith with his environmentalism, Morris came to have a new understanding of what that faith entailed, one that he actually felt was deeper and more authentic. Before the world could be healed by the church, he reasoned, maybe the church needed healing through its engagement with the world. He would go home and preach the message of environmentalism.

40 Days of Climate Action for Lent

Ed — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 13:44:43 +0000

Christian Climate Action, a Christian group mostly based in the UK and Europe, has launched a “40 Days of Climate Action” campaign for Lent this year:

The campaign gets underway on Ash Wednesday on 26 February with a vigil outside Westminster Cathedral at midday that will then process to Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square…
The 40 days of action will continue through Lent with a focus on “lament for the climate change and ecological crisis”, and prayers for leaders to take urgent action.
The CCA said that some of its members may engage in civil disobedience to pressure government to commit to net zero carbon emissions by 2025.
Nick Cooper, Christian Climate Action member, said: “This is about system change triggered by personal growth. We invite everyone to journey with us into the wilderness of Lent and encounter the ‘quiet voice’ so often hidden from us in daily life.
“We need desperately to hear that sacred voice calling us together as a global community, to share what we have left, learning to live simpler more connected lives, and find the courage to take up civil disobedience in the face of an ever more desperate climate and ecological crisis.
“We need to take courage and stop denying the power that we hold as one sacred and interconnected body.”
https://www.christiantoday.com/article/christian-climate-protesters-launch-40-days-of-action-during-lent/134256.htm

The 40 days of action also have the support of other Christian environmental groups including Operation Noah as well as our own Dr Ruth Valerio, global advocacy and influencing director of Tearfund, who is also the author of Saying Yes to Life, the companion book for the Church of England’s first ever green Lent campaign.

[Go to http://news.lwccn.com for more Lent action suggestions, including a study program based on Saying Yes to Live, Carbon Fasts and more.]