Taftsville, VT
Taftsville Chapel Mennonite Fellowship, a tiny church with only 55 members, has reduced the emissions from their worship facility by 40% or above, saving 15.5 tons of carbon emissions and nearly $2,000 per year in energy costs.
In the words of Taftsville Chapel’s Pastor Steve McCloskey,
“As a pastor who began at this church about five years ago, the people of this congregation have inspired me with a number of decisions to care for our planet and our global neighbors. Shortly before I visited the church for the first time, the congregation made the decision to install solar panels on the roof of the building; these panels generate more than enough electricity for our building’s use and we donate the excess as credits to help the nearby ministry of Bethany Birches Camp.
Our Mennonite Creation Care Network Liaison, Heather Wolfe, spearheaded our decision to go solar and presented the pitch to the Church Council. Council affirmed this decision. In the spirit of making more progress, we later made the decision to insulate and weatherize the building. The credit goes to Heather for her leadership of our Creation Care and sustainability work as a church. Heather leads our church’s newly established Green Team.
Our church building is a repurposed old schoolhouse (over 100 years old). We like that it’s a repurposed, historic building but we wanted to reduce our carbon footprint and make our building more energy efficient, sustainable, and airtight. So, we made the decision to put an array of solar panels on the roof of the church in the Spring of 2017, then we realized our building’s siding was in need of repair, so we not only put new siding on the building, but we received a grant to add insulation and other weatherization work.
We have received help from Vermont IPL in this process, including a grant from the Katy Gerke memorial program of Vermont IPL. We also received a $10K grant for our solar project from Mennonite Creation Care Network (https://www.mennocreationcare.org/) which helped significantly. We also received reimbursements and incentives from Efficiency Vermont for our weatherization/insulation work. Efficiency Vermont is an organization that helps residents of Vermont (usually through financial assistance) to receive support in transitioning towards cleaner/sustainable energy and building improvements. Efficiency Vermont assists with homes, businesses, and nonprofit organizations in these efforts (https://www.efficiencyvermont.com/about). Through this assistance and the church’s savings from not having a salaried pastor for a while, they bought the panels outright and had them installed by Catamount Solar.
We hope that the progress we made can be made visible and that it can inspire other congregations and individuals to do the same.
We are fortunate to live amidst the beauty of the Green Mountain State; we cherish the land that our Creator has provided, and we hope to preserve this for future generations. Underlying this commitment is a willingness to keep asking the question: “How can we live simply that others may simply live?” This, to us, is implicit in faithfully loving our neighbors, and, ultimately, our Creator. – Pastor McCloskey
Our solar, insulation, weatherization, and sustainability work has reduced our carbon footprint and utility costs. We trust that these results will continue to have a ripple effect for years into the future. It has also given us a greater vision towards the future for our sense of mission.
In the process of weatherizing and improving our historic building, we have nurtured a passion for sustainability and creation care work as part of our church’s mission and identity. During the pandemic, we have limited our transportation and practiced outdoor services in coordination with the “Wild Church Network”. Our role has brought us recognition and awards–locally and nationally–we have received Sustainable Woodstock’s “Energy Award” (in 2018) and Mennonite Creation Care Network’s “Art and Jocele Meyer Award”. We have adopted practices that we find regenerative and sustainable (like homemade cleaning supplies for our building) and carpooling to church.”
For more information contact Steve McCloskey, steve.mccloskey at gmail.com
