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Creation Care - Banner Background

OUR MISSION

We seek to guide our congregation in preserving and restoring God’s creation by regularly celebrating God’s grace and glory in creation, joining in God’s plan to restore creation through the ways we worship, integrating creation care into our discipleship program, updating our facilities to be energy-efficient and creation-conscious, and encouraging our congregation to love our neighbors through creation care and deal justly with the earth.

"A wrong attitude toward nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude toward God."

- T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), The Idea of Christian Society 

"A wrong attitude toward nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude toward God."

- T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), The Idea of Christian Society 

Image by Wil Stewart

HOW CAN YOU PARTICIPATE?

  1. Select “Join our Team” and register to inquire more about joining the team! 

  2. Implement ideas below, and start practicing creation care in your own home or business. Consider taking on a new challenge for yourself or your family. 

  3. Join BPC's Mission Ranch Bike Path Clean Up Response Team.

REFLECT

"All that I have ever seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all that I have not seen." - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)

  1. Meditate on the Biblical witness for Creation Care: Genesis 1:1-31, Genesis 2:1-15, Genesis 9:8-17, Job 38-39, Psalm 8, Psalm 104,  Psalm 147, Isaiah 11:1-9, Isaiah 65:17-25, Joel 2:18-27, Romans 8:18-25, Revelation 21:1-8, Revelation 22:1-5
     

  2. Read holy scripture from The Green Bible
     

  3. Take a walk to appreciate the Earth’s natural beauty. Consider why preserving the Earth is crucial for the health of future generations and tell others.
     

  4. Consider who is most impacted by pollution and climate change - Find out more
     

  5. Understand the connection between caring for the creation (environmental impacts) and caring for the marginalized (social impacts). Scientists and the Church
     

  6. Learn how many planets we need if everyone lived like you. Go here for a quick calculation
     

  7. Pray: 

God of Enough, remind us of those who still have not been able to realize your abundance because we have taken more than what we need. And let that remembering drive us to change. Amen.
 
God, show us your grace through your gift of Creation. Teach us to be as gracious with each other as you have been with us. Amen
 
In the rising and setting of the sun and the cycles of the seasons, in the patterns of the shining stars, may we remember the goodness of God. Amen
Wild Nature
Light Bulbs

REDUCE ENERGY CONSUMPTION

"We cannot be all that God wants us to be without caring about the earth" - Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life

  1. Give up a degree or two, health permitting: Thermostats should be set at or below 68 in winter and at or above 78 in summer. It is possible to save as much as 10% on your heating bills by turning your thermostat back for eight hours during the day - typically when you are at work and not at home, or when you are sleeping at night.

    NOTE: With the help of a ceiling fan, you can raise the thermostat setting by 4°F and stay just as comfortable in the summer. See Thermostat Savings This Winter | Department of Energy.
     

  2. Participate in Earth Hour by switching off all electricity at 8:30 p.m. local time in solidarity with global efforts to secure nature and our home: https://www.earthhour.org/
     

  3. Do without Fast Food and Highly Processed Food: Food processing consumes far more energy than preparing and cooking at home, and most packaging ends up in landfills. Hint: Shop the perimeter of the store.
     

  4. Slow down: Aggressive driving (speeding, rapid acceleration, and braking) wastes gas. It can lower your gas mileage by roughly 15% to 30% at highway speeds and 10% to 40% in stop-and-go traffic. See Gas Mileage Tips - Driving More Efficiently
     

  5. Walk somewhere you would have driven today. U.S. drivers’ consumption of 500 gallons of gasoline every year per driver creates as much as 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. 
     

  6. Shop locally and choose businesses that focus on sustainable practices (for example):

    1. Second-hand stores (many focus on high quality brands)

    2. Chico Farmers’ Market

    3. Chico Refill (Zero waste refill store)

    4. Appliance Resale House in Chico

REDUCE FOOD WASTE (OTHER)

"The growing possibility of our destroying ourselves and the world with our own neglect and excess is tragic and very real." - Billy Graham, Approaching Hoofbeats

  1. Cook through the contents of your refrigerator, freezer, and/or pantry: Americans discard more food than any other country, nearly 40 million tons — or 30-40 percent of the entire US food supply. Wasting food has irreversible environmental consequences: it wastes the water and energy it took to produce it, and generates greenhouse gases — 11 percent of the world’s emissions— like methane, carbon dioxide, and chlorofluorocarbons, which contribute to global warming. Food that sits decaying in landfills also produces nitrogen pollution. See Food Waste in America in 2023
     

  2. Do without Fast Food and Highly Processed Food: Food processing consumes far more energy than preparing and cooking at home, and most packaging ends up in landfills. Hint: Shop the perimeter of the store.
     

  3. Eat Fish - Select seafood that is good for you and the oceans: More than a third of global fisheries have been fished beyond sustainable limits and world demand for seafood continues to grow. Sustainable fishing can reverse this decline and ensure that there are enough fish left in the sea so that fishing can take place indefinitely into the future. By choosing seafood products with the MSC blue fish label, you are supporting fishermen who take care of our oceans and sending a signal to other fisheries to do the same.
     

  4. Organize your fridge once a week: Food is the single largest category of material placed in municipal landfills and represents wasted nourishment that could have helped feed families in need. See Food Loss and Waste | FDA
     

  5. Compost - Purchase and set up a composting bin at home: During composting, aerobic bacteria produce CO2. The same organic material buried in a landfill will be broken down by anaerobic bacteria, producing methane. Methane is 84 times more potent as a GHG than CO2. See Farmer's Almanac Guide to Composting at Home

Domestic Waste Bin
Dump Site

REDUCE "AWAY"

"Whether we throw things away or give things away, there is no “away.” - Anon.

  1. Write down everything you throw away today. Challenge yourself to reduce the trash you produce.
     

  2. Understand the environmental and social impacts of what you are buying. Do research on products you commonly use and find information on more Creation-friendly products
     

  3. Resist the urge to shop as entertainment: When we consume products, we place a higher demand on manufacturing and logistics. Reduce the amount of things you purchase, and your household will automatically have a lower carbon footprint. Replace recreational shopping with Sabbath time.
     

  4. Purchase products in containers other than plastic: Worldwide plastic production is approaching 400 million metric tons a year. More than 30 million tons are dumped yearly in water or on land...Unlike natural organic matter, most plastics do not break down into relatively benign substances; they simply divide and re-divide into smaller and smaller particles of the same chemical composition.  See Newsweek Article
     

  5. Give up bottled water: Less than 25% are recycled and it takes over 700 years for plastic to decompose...On average, a liter (of bottled water) contained some 240,000 detectable plastic fragments—See Bottled Water Can Contain Hundreds of Thousands of nanoplastics
     

  6. Shave (time) in the shower - set a timer to reduce shower time by 2-5 minutes ("Hey Alexa, set a timer"): Reducing average shower time by 1 minute can result in a 13% decrease in shower water use, which reduces the money you spend on water heating.

REUSE

"If I am going to be in right relationship with God, I should treat the things he has made in the same way he treats them." - Francis Shaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man

  1. Use a refillable mug. Bring your mug with you to your coffee shop…and to church!: One daily coffee in a disposable cup generates about 22 pounds of waste per year. Klean Kanteen is a Chico company.

    2. Choose not to buy a new item: Reuse or repair one that you already have or that you get secondhand. You may be able to rent the item.

Refillable Water Bottle
Recycling Bin

RECYCLE

"There is nothing that has been created without some reason, even if human nature is incapable of knowing precisely the reason for them all." - John Chrysostom (ca.354-407), Homilies on Genesis 7

  1. Follow the Waste Management Recycling guidelines consistently:
     

• Recycle bottles, cans, paper, and cardboard, as long as they're clean.

• Keep food and liquid out of your recycling.

• No loose plastic bags and do not bag recyclables.

Post the list on or near your household garbage and recycling bins. See Chico Sorting Guide (No Food Waste)

PARTICIPATE

"By the greatness and the beauty of creatures, proportionately the Maker is seen in them." - Athanasius (297-373), Against the Heathen

  1. Clean up: Join the BPC Bike Path clean-up team OR pick up as many pieces of litter as you can and challenge others to do the same.
     

  2. Join the Creation Care Ideation team to make an impact in our church and community (register after you select the link)
     

  3. Follow the activities sponsored by and endorsed by the Butte Environmental Council
     

  4. Investigate some of the Christian organizations that participate in creation care:

a. Evangelical Environmental Network 

b. Creation Justice Ministries

c. Science for the Church 

Trash Pick-Up
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