First Lutheran Church A Social Statement for Vision
for Mission – 2025 “We desire to care for all of God’s creation.”
Adopted by the FLC Church Council on March 15, 2022
WE BELIEVE that God is the creator of all there
is, seen and unseen, and that He charged humankind with the responsibility to
care for His creation. Looking at our world today, we at First Lutheran Church
of Bothell recognize that we have failed.
Rather than
caring for God’s gifts by identifying, understanding and practicing the
principles that will sustain our environment, humankind continues to act as if
the abundance of God’s creation is ours to use, exploit, and deplete through
our apathy and greed. We believe that the devastation created by the continued
plundering of our world is an affront to our Creator.
First
Lutheran Church is committed to being faithful guardians of all that God has
given us. By effecting changes within our church building and church grounds,
we became a Greening Congregations partner in consultation with Earth Ministry*
in November, 2021. We pledge to preserve this status by developing an annual
plan and by performing yearly self-evaluations.
We will
proactively seek out other opportunities to reduce our collective and our
individual carbon footprints, such as designing new practices for our church’s
waste disposal, composting and recycling efforts. We will also develop
blueprints for ongoing actions that support our three foundational pillars of
Celebrate, Educate and Advocate for the care of God’s earth.
1.
Celebrate: We will recognize and celebrate,
through our worship, our liturgy and other events, days that are specifically
dedicated to the awareness, support and protection of our world. Examples of
such days include: Earth Day; Rogation Day; World Environment Day; Earth Hour
and ELCA’s Stewardship of Creation Sunday.
2.
Educate: We will provide continual education
for ourselves and our community through knowledge-based communications such as:
Christian education classes for all ages; Journey classes; articles in the
church’s monthly newsletters and dedicating a page about creation care on our
website.
3.
Advocate: We will, as a church, find ways to
advocate for creation care on a continuing basis for our community and our
expanded community, including other churches and local, county and state
governmental agencies.
As we move
forward in our resolve to be good custodians of God’s creation, we will monitor
and adjust our methods to meet our ever-changing world. We recognize that our
global neglect of God’s gift is at a crisis point. Although we are in a race,
there is no finish line. Awareness and thoughtful stewardship must be our
continuing way of life if we want to save and protect all that God has given
us.
*Earth
Ministry is a Seattle-based organization that engages with the faith community
in environmental stewardship and advocacy.