CARE     -    GROW     -    SERVE     -    PROCLAIM

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.