Our Cool Congregations Calculator can help you figure out your congregation’s carbon emissions in such areas as energy use, transportation, goods and services, and waste. Knowing this carbon footprint can help you find areas for improvement and may even save your congregation money on its utility bills.
A version of this calculator for individual households is available here.
ShopIPL.org is an online energy efficiency store for faith communities and their members sponsored by Interfaith Power & Light.
Greening Congregations Handbook: Stories, Ideas, and Resources for Cultivating Creation Awareness and Care in Your Congregations is a 225 page handbook from Earth Ministry that is a “tool box” for all who want to foster creation awareness and care in their congregations. It helps readers actively respond to the question, “Why should people of faith care for creation?” and also helps congregations develop an enduring, creation-honoring focus within all dimensions of congregational life, including worship and education, facilities and institutional life, community outreach, and denominational, ecumenical and interfaith partnerships.
Cherish the Gift: A Congregational Guide to Earth Stewardship by Cindy Ubben Causey is a 150 page, comprehensive guide to planning earth stewardship within a congregation. Its chapters canvass most areas of a congregation and offer practical ideas for change. Education, property, worship, nursery, retreats, publicity, and outreach are just a few of the chapters.
Footprint Files: Ideas to Help Congregations Care for Creation and Reduce their Footprint is a superb compendium of ideas, reflections, activities, and tips to help congregations care for creation rather than destroy it. Provided by the Diocesan Environmental Commission of British Columbia, this resource is beautifully presented with illustrations and is very useful for various groups, including clergy, youth leaders, Sunday school teachers, social action committees, councils, and parishoners. Each copy includes electronic resources for distribution.
What on Earth Can You Do? Making Your Church a Creation Awareness Center by Donna Lehman is a 200 page book that combines personal stories of stewardship with denominational insights and ideas from brainstorming sessions for ways that congregations can minister to creation.
Climate and Church: How Global Climate Change will Impact Core Church Ministries by the National Council of Churches‘ Eco-Justice Program effectively explains how climate change will impact church ministries through disaster relief, Refugee Resettlement, and Fodd Security issues. An excellent resource for clergy and church leaders.
God’s Creation and Global Warming: What song are we singing in this warming world? This is a 28-slide powr point presentation that can be used or modified for a congreagtion’s needs. It is comprised almost entirely of quotes from either scripture, theologians, authors, politicians and scientists to paint a thorough view of climate change and the need for a religious response.
The Cry of Creation: Global Warming and Global Justice by the Interfaith Climate Change Network is an eight page document that explains how and why global warming disproportionately affects the poor, ending with solutions.
101 Ways to Help Save the Earth: with fifty-two Weeks of Congregational Activities to Save the Earth offers 101 ways individuals can change their daily habits for environmental stewardship, and includes 52 weeks of congregational activities. Published jointly by the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation and the Eco-Justice Working Group of the National Council of Churches.
Global Warming Actions Kits Vol 1 & Vol 2 from the Unitarian Univeralist Ministry for the Earth are full of creative ideas and ready-to-use resources. Plays, songs, sermons, community projects, lightbulb sales, carpooling, caluculating carbon footprints, and more. Dozens of actions, easily adaptable to different congregations.
Earth and Faith: A Book of Reflection for Action, ed. Libby Bassett, et al.is an eighty-page book published by the Interfaith Partnership for the Environment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) publishedon the world’s religions and ecology for congregational discussions and services. This books provides a brief overview of contemporary environmental issues and examines the efforts of the United Nations (UN) in addressing these important situations. theough the use of primary religious texts, it provides a unified religious theme of human responsibility for protecting the natural world.
