Nov52023
NewsMotion for the November 12 congregational meeting: that today Community UCC read and vote to adopt the Creation Justice Covenant, and, if our application is approved by the UCC, become a Creation Justice Church.

At the congregational meeting on November 12, CUCC will vote on whether to become a UCC Creation Justice Church.

The UCC website tells us that “The Creation Justice Churches program is not a prescribed list of things to do but a process of discernment on how to best care for God’s creation. In its own way, each church will determine how to fulfill this primary calling.”

Two key parts of the discernment are to open the Creation Justice discussion within the congregation and to write a congregational Creation Justice Covenant.

We commenced the broad open discussion during Lent with several members reading personal covenants and with a 3-week Creation Justice 101 education/discussion series.

This then all culminated in Greg Eades taking the input of the discussions and drafting a Community UCC Creation Justice Covenant.

We then kept the conversation open during July through October with monthly readings of the proposed covenant along with examples of what being a Creation Justice Church might lead us to do or discuss.

Now we will vote as a congregation on November 12 on whether, with this understanding, we do want to become a Creation Justice Church.

The text of the motion follows.

To become a UCC Creation Justice Church, the UCC asked that …

  1. We Create or Designate a Leadership Group or Green Team
  2. The Justice in a Changing Climate task force has served this role since 2007, and our Lenten Study group has extended it.
  3. We Reflect on Where we’ve Been and Discern Where we Can Go
  4. We did this in our open Lenten Creation Justice study.
  5. We Draft a Creation Justice Covenant
  6. As part of the Lenten Study, many of us wrote personal Creation Justice Covenants,
  7. And Greg Eades wrote the CUCC Creation Justice Covenant for us at the end of the Lenten Study group sessions, and we have discussed this covenant multiple times in Worship since then.
  8. We Vote to Adopt the Creation Justice Covenant and Become a Creation Justice Church
  9. We will vote on this today and then if it passes today,
  10. We Submit an application.
  11. When it is accepted, we will celebrate our new designation, and ask God’s guidance.

With this path in mind, I [Phil Kaveler on behalf of the creation justice church team] move that today Community UCC read and vote to adopt the Creation Justice Covenant, and, if our application is approved by the UCC, become a Creation Justice Church.

 

Community UCC Creation Justice Covenant

Rooted in our faith tradition of environmental stewardship, Community United Church of Christ affirms our commitment to creation justice. Our planet is in crisis, and we seek to support creation justice in both our personal and collective actions.

We pledge to:

  • Cherish the earth with humility.
  • Reduce our environmental footprint.
  • Serve as creation Justice advocates while educating ourselves and our neighbors of the need and ways to do this.
  • Ensure that we pay particular attention to the needs of the most vulnerable in our community.
  • Adapt our actions to confront new challenges as we grow in our understanding of creation justice and be ready to pass our knowledge on to future generations.

God’s blessings.

Gary Smith

For the Justice in a Changing Climate and Creation Justice teams

smithgk@mindspring.com

Thanks.

Category: News