Creation Care

The Daily Climate Website

• We seek to be insturments of God’s renewal of creation — the restoring of humanity and all things to God’s intended harmony.
• We give thanks for the complex richness of creation and affirm the divinely-crated interconnectedness of earth, air, water and all living things.
• We acknowledge that the Creator has made humankind in such a way that our well-being is tied to that of the whole created order.
• Thus we embrace the inseparable link between love of neighbor and the protection of all creation.
• As United Methodists, we affirm the mission of our denomination “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world” and undertake this work as a crucial piece of that mission.    

• The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein.  (Psalm 24:1)                                 

• God has given Humankind “dominion” over the works of God’s hands, meaning that God has chosen to share with us his creating power and sovereign caretaking.   (Genesis 1: 26-31 and Psalm 8: 3-6) 

• Stemming from our love of God, we are to treat our neighbors like ourselves, doing no harm, sustaining this good created order, living as interconnected and interdependent people.   (Luke 10: 27)

•  The Social Principles of The United Methodist Book of Disicpline (2012) speak to this gift and this responsibility:

   We believe in God, Creator of the world; and in Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of creation. We believe in the Holy Spirit, through whom we acknowledge God’s gifts, and we repent of our sin in misusing these gifts to idolatrous ends.We affirm the natural world as God’s handiwork and dedicate ourselves to its preservation, enhancement, and faithful use by humankind…..(Read more)

•  The Council of Bishops implores us to recognize that environmental degradation has fundamental connections to pandemic poverty and disease, human desperation and conflict:  

  God’s Renewed Creation: Call to Hope and Action    

           A Pastoral Letter from the Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church

• Carbon Foot Print: the amount of greenhouse gases and specifically carbon dioxide emitted by something (as a person’s activities or a product’s manufacture and transport during a given period
• Climate Change: any significant change in measures of climate (such as temperature, precipitation or wind) lasting for an extended period (decades or longer). It may result from natural factors such as changes in the sun’s intensity, natural processes within the climate system such as changes in ocean circulation or human activities.
• Ecological Economics: a policy-oriented perspective that addresses the interdependence and coevolution between human economies and their natural ecosystems
• Ecosystem: the complex of a community of organisms and its environment functioning as an ecological unit
• Environmental Justice: the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. aka: Eco-Justice
• Fracking: a technique in which a mixture of water and sand is forced down an oil well (or similar) in order to create fractures in the oil-bearing rock and thus release more oil
• Glaciers/Ice Packs: a large body of ice moving slowly down a slope or valley or spreading outward on a land surface
• Greenhouse Gases: gases which allow direct sunlight (relative shortwave energy) to reach the Earth’s surface unimpeded; as the shortwave energy heats the surface, longer-wave energy (heat) is radiated into the atmosphere; greenhouse gases absorb this energy, thereby allowing less heat to escape back to space and “trapping” it in the lower atmosphere. Many greenhouse gases occur naturally in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and nitrous oxide, while others are synthetic. Those that are man-made include the chloroflourocarbons (CFCs), hydroflourocarbons (HFCs) and Perflourocarbons (PFCs) as well as sulfur hexafluoride (SF6).
• Mountaintop Coal Mining: a surface mining practice involving the removal of mountaintops to expose coal seams and disposing of the associated mining overburden in adjacent valleys –“valley fills”
• Permaculture: an agricultural system or method that seeks to integrate human activity with natural surroundings so as to create highly efficient self-sustaining ecosystems
• Renewable energy: energy that can be replenished at the same rate as it is used
• Sustainable: of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged
• Urban planning: the branch of architecture dealing with the design and organization of urban space and activities; determining and drawing up plans for the future physical arrangement and condition of a community
• Wetlands: land or areas (as marshes or swamps) that are covered often intermittently with shallow water or have soil saturated with moisture – usually used in plural

• Hymns:   (From The United Methodist Hymnal):
  • All Creatures of Our God and King (#62);  All Things Bright and Beautiful (#147);  
  • Morning Has Broken (#145);  How Great Thou Art (#77);  
  • For the Beauty of the Earth (#92);  God Created Heaven and Earth (#151); 
  • Great is Thy Faithfulness (#140);   Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (#139);
  • This Is My Father’s World (#144);  I Sing the Almighty Power of God (#152);  
  • God, Whose Love is Reiging O’er Us (#100);   Creating God, Your Fingers Trace (#109)
• Scripture Texts: Genesis 1-2 (the creation stories)  
  • Luke 10: 25-28 (Love God with all your heart … and your neighbor as yourself) 
  • Matthew 6: 25-30 (consider the lillies of the field) 
  • Psalm 8 (How majectid is your name in all the earth);  Psalm 24 (The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof);  
  • Psalm 33 (By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made);  
  • Psalm 90 (Before you formed the mountains, You are God)
  • Psalm 93 (The Lord reigns, clothed with majesty);  Psalm 96 (O, sing to the Lord a new song!);  
  • Psalm 104  (You send forth your Spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the earth);
  • Psalm 148 (Praise Him, sun and moon);  
  • Psalm 150 (Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!) 
• Prayers (from The United Methodist Book of Worship):    
  • Prayers of Confession — # 472, #473, #494, #552, #554
  •  Congregational Prayers —  #507, #508, #509, #518, #519, #521, #557, #558 

• Caretakers of God’s Creation
• Earthkeepers / UMC Global Missions
• InterFaith Power and Light
• Nashville Chapter Tennessee Interfaith Power and Light
• Blessed Earth Tennessee