This page contains information about setting up a green team and some ideas as to what your green team might do.
Your church green team maybe a dedicated team at your church, but in smaller churches, it might form part of the work of another team. In every church, creation care and climate justice should live somewhere. However you choose to organize this work, the advice on this page should be useful.
Generl Conference Legislation
The 2024 General Conference passed some legislation about Green Teams with some suggested tasks (¶254 and resolution 5112.) You should then read all of the creation legislation and not just the Green Team information. There is legislation on church land use, reducing emissions and use of plastics that is of relevance to green teams. Studying the revised Social Principles section of The Community of All Creation would give a green team a theological grounding.
Notice that the green team legislation used the wording worship, education, advocacy, practice. This maps very well onto our four implementation words of connection, education, advocacy, action where worship is included in connection.
Where to Start
On this website, as explained on the start here page, you will find materials organized under the four implementation areas of connection, education, advocacy and action. We recommend that you look at those four pages and pick any one of the areas to begin working on with your green team. Do something, and let that guide your next move and pick one of the other areas, and so on. Keep going around the cycle in any order. Read our newsletters which offer new ideas every month under each of the four implementation areas. We also have an opportunities page with additional ideas for connection, education, advocacy and action.
There are resource pages for some of the other green team- relevant legislation that passed at General Conference 2024.
The Basics
We have six 90-minute videos on our YouTube Channel that our Task Force created in 2023 on “Climate Change, Climate Justice, Climate Action: The Basics for Churches.” Most of the speakers are from our Annual Conference. Watching and discussing these videos is a good entry point to climate justice work.
Help from the UM Creation Justice Movement
UM Creation Justice Movement is a United Methodist group that shares ideas from all around the United States. They have a 3rd Wednesday monthly café (on Zoom) at 10 am PT with a speaker and an opportunity for discussion on a wide variety of topics; they also do monthly tips and a monthly newsletter. They have a whole section of green team resources including a new resource with 10 steps for success. And, Rev. Richenda Fairhurst has produced a 6-chapter study guide to the 2024 General Conference legislation that can be freely downloaded and used by local churches and green teams.
Eco Framework
A Roche UK offers an Eco Church award to Churches in England and Wales that have met certain criteria. It provides a framework to support your church and its leadership to take practical action on caring for God’s earth, through the Eco Church survey. The survey covers five key areas of church life: worship and teaching; buildings and energy; land and nature; community and global engagement; lifestyle. While churches in our annual conference are not eligible for this award, the survey offers some questions that could help to guide your work. Some of our annual conferences, such as Western North Carolina offer a similar award and survey.
Carbon Audit
Another place that maybe a good place to begin is to carry out a carbon audit as individuals and as a church. There are lots of different tools available to help you analyze your own footprint. Some examples are listed below.
Once you understand more about your carbon footprint, you might have some clues as to where to start, and also a benchmark to measure progress. Interfaith Power & Light (IPL) offer a Cool Congregations program that helps congregations reduce the carbon footprint of their facilities and engages their members in reducing their carbon footprint at home.
Your Stories
We would love to hear about your green team and share your story in our monthly newsletter – contact us here. We may also be able to help to connect you with other churches around the conference doing similar work. Some of the work that you choose to do might be mitigation, adaptation or resiliency including the creation of resilience hubs. Below is a video of slides of some of the work being done around the conference in 2023 including a slide about the resiliency center developed at Hope UMC in South Sacramento.