We bring you the latest happenings from the Faith for Cities initiative, launched by WEA Sustainability Center’s co-director, Dr. Chris Elisara. Here is an invitation to join their convenings—specialised gatherings for collaboration and innovation.

• Data Convening │ March 5th, 2024
  We are inviting leaders and organizations working in the overlapping areas of data, cities, and religion to a new initiative promoting intentional collaboration. With practitioners who are willing, we are building a collaborative community that supports a global commons at the intersection of faith, cities, and data that will benefit all the stakeholders working in this space.

• Urban Design Convening │ March 26th, 2024
  We are inviting leaders and organizations working in the overlapping areas of religion and urban design, planning, architecture, landscape architecture, placemaking, public engagement, etc. to a new initiative promoting intentional collaboration. With practitioners who are willing, we are building a collaborative community that supports a global commons at the intersection of faith and urban design that will benefit all the stakeholders working in this space.

• Finance/Developers Convening │ April 9th, 2024
  We are inviting leaders and organizations working in the overlapping areas of religion and faith-consistent finance, project developers that develop and/or finance urban projects to a new initiative promoting intentional collaboration. With practitioners who are willing, we are building a collaborative community that supports a global commons at the intersection of faith and finance/project developers that will benefit all the stakeholders working in this space.

To find out more, click here.

This groundbreaking initiative, funded by the Templeton Religion Trust (TRT), is poised to harness the transformative potential of diverse faith traditions, collaborating with secular partners to champion urban development that fosters thriving communities for all. With urban populations projected to reach 68% of the global populace by 2050, the challenges and opportunities of urbanization are more crucial than ever. Faith for Cities aims to be a strategic initiative that provides a significant platform for the global Christian community to organize itself and impact the development of cities to ensure that they are environmentally sustainable, socially just, and conducive to human flourishing.

Elisara is leading a workshop on Faith for Cities on 5^th December at COP28. If interested and attending COP28 sign up to attend the workshop at the link on the Faith for Cities homepage, or click here.

Here is a unique and important idea: Join your prayer concerns with those of others around the world byusing WEA Sustainability Center’s digital world map.

Here’s how it works:

What creation care concern near you draws you into prayer? What need of creation leads you to supplication? What nature-based blessing leads you to pray in thanksgiving?

Over the course of the next seven weeks, the World Evangelical Alliance Sustainability Center (WEASC) collects prayers for creation from around the globe on a digital world map. The “World Map of Prayers for Creation” is an impressive visible sign of the transformative power of prayer to preserve and care for the creation entrusted to us. It is also a testimony of the many blessings we have received through creation.

During the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi/Kenya in early March 2022, the digital map will be turned into a physical world map. It will be used during a creation care focused church service in Nairobi and will be presented to environment ministers from around the world who will gather in Nairobi to discuss pressing issues of environmental protection and global sustainability. The country-specific prayers submitted by believers from around the world will be – as much as possible – handed over to the respective environment ministers from these countries.

Please send your prayer for creation by 22 February 2022 at the latest by email to prayer@wea-sc.org with the subject “World Map of Prayers for Creation”. Please make sure that your prayer text has a maximum of 300 characters (including spaces) and that you mention your place and country. You can also send a photo of your specific prayer request or the object of your thanksgiving if you wish.

We want to make sure that environment ministers at UNEA are aware that Christians around the world are working for the integrity of creation, and in doing so, are advocating for very concrete environmental issues in their place of life, in prayer and in action.

Find out more: https://wea-sc.org/en/get-involved/world-map-of-prayers-for-creation