Climate and energy

Kansas Interfaith Power and Light congregations across the state are working to conserve energy, save money, and be better stewards of creation.  In this Guest Blog Series,  Kansas Interfaith Power and Light members are invited to share their ideas about energy stewardship.

Today’s guest blogger is Shane Moore, a seminarian at St. Paul’s School of Theology in Kansas City, MO.  He is also youth pastor at Indian Hills United Methodist Church in Overland Park. We invited Shane to speak about energy stewardship from his perspective and faith tradition.

My tradition has been UMC for all of my life. Thus my theological, Biblical, and historical grounding when discussing environmental issues comes from a very Wesleyan (Methodist) view point.

As such, when thinking about environmental issues I first go to the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church. There are two statements from this document that I would like to highlight.

“All creation is the Lord’s, and we are responsible for the ways we use and abuse it. Water, air, soil, minerals, energy resources, plants, animal life, and space are to be valued and conserved because they are God’s creation and not solely because they are useful to human beings.”

All of creation is God’s. God created and found joy in creation. God found joy in creation and gave us dominion over creation so that we may also find such joy. I must say that most of the time we have not found joy in creation the same way God does. We have found joy in creation because we have been able to abuse creation and use it to better ourselves. We have not cared for creation as God cares for us. We must not abuse creation because we can, but we must care for creation because it is God’s and God has called us to care for creation.

“Therefore, let us recognize the responsibility of the church and its members to place a high priority on changes in economic, political, social, and technological lifestyles to support a more ecologically equitable and sustainable world leading to a higher quality of life for all of God’s creation.”

When we care for creation we increase the quality of our lives and also of the lives of others. We increase the quality of the world we live in. It is our responsibility as those called by God to care for the environment and all of creation. It is our responsibility and we must live up to it. The question is in what ways can we live up to our responsibility to care for the world. I am a big believer in understanding that even the little things count for something.

One morning in Sunday school we were discussing stewardship and our role in being good stewards over creation. I asked the youth for ideas of how they could be good stewards and they talked about driving environmentally friendly cars, as well as other ideas that were larger then what they could implement. I then asked them for concrete ideas for what they could do and how they would implement these ideas.

The first idea the youth had was to have the church recycle bulletins and other paper. The youth bought a box, decorated it, and have for over a year been recycling paper in the church.

What concrete things are you doing to take responsibility for what God has given us?

Now I know that these small ideas will not save the world and that we do need large goals, but it is important to remember that the small things do matter. Even by doing the small things we are taking responsibility for all that God has given us. Because, God saw all that God had made and it was good.

Shane’s congregation, Indian Hills United Methodist Church in Overland Park, recently joined Kansas Interfaith Power and Light and completed an energy audit of their facilities.  Through the audit, they learned that they can save $2500 per year through energy efficiency upgrades to their building!  Interested in putting your faith into action to address climate change? Click here to learn more about Kansas Interfaith Power and Light!

-IPL Guest Blog Series coordinated by Eileen Horn