March 2022
Caretakers of God's Creation

Editor's Letter March 2022

Dear Friends,

As we start the season of Lent, we enter a period of reflection about our relationship with God and his creation. As so much of Jesus’ ministry focused on healing, we shift our focus to Creation Care for this issue of Vestry Papers. In ECF’s newly adopted Innovation 2022: A Road Map for ECF, we see our responsibility as caretakers of God’s creation. During this Lenten season, how are you called to care for creation individually and in community? We welcome your stories and offer the following innovative ideas to make a difference.

There are many places and ways of meeting God on our Christian journey other than our church buildings. In Holy Hikes and Thin Spaces, Haley Bankey shares how she encountered God in a lush evergreen forest – a thin space, where heaven and earth converged. She inspires us to get out into the world and experience God through Holy Hikes and the Wild Church Network.

The Rev. Audrey Abt, vicar of Church of the Holy Spirit in Greensboro, North Carolina, views caring for God’s creation as a ministry, not a program or activity. In Creation Care and Community Engagement, she shares ways her parishioners nurtured their relationships with their land and their neighbors. They started by asking the community how their church might be a place where creation care is experienced and taught, and from that beginning, innovative, community-based partnerships were formed.

In Climate Change, Biodiversity and Indigenous Peoples, the Rt. Rev. Francisco José Duque Gómez, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese in Colombia, shares the science that describes the profound threat these interrelated issues bring to God’s creation. Raising public awareness of the effects of global warming, the loss of biodiversity and the failure to recognize the rights of indigenous peoples over their environment are critical to influencing governmental policies that can sustain our life on this planet. This article is available in English and Spanish.

To help you get started on reducing the impact of climate change, the ECFVP Team offers five practical tools and resources from around the church in Make a Start on Creation Care. They offer a variety of ways that individuals, households, congregations, institutions and dioceses can take active first steps toward living more gently on the earth.

The Episcopal Church Foundation has just released a new publication - the Spanish Finance Resource Guide, la Guía de Recursos para Finanzas (GRF), now available through Forward Movement. The GRF serves as a handbook for congregations, vestries and parish boards, providing in-depth financial management practices and principles, and promoting year-round theological stewardship. The Spanish Finance Resource Guide will be available in both print and e-book formats. The GRF is distributed by Forward Movement and will be available on their website or by calling 800-543-1813. For bulk orders, please contact Forward Movement.

Faithfully,

Kate Adams
Senior Advisor
Episcopal Church Foundation

This article is part of the March 2022 Vestry Papers issue on Caretakers of God's Creation