Mennonite Church Canada's
Climate Action has resources and learning opportunities for our church ministry leaders.
It’s an amazing time to be the Church – opportunities to be the hands and feet of Christ are all around us. This fall, we are offering a number of resources and learning opportunities relating to Creation Care/Climate Action. We hope that these initiatives will serve to encourage and strengthen ministerial leadership to guide individual and collective use of our gifts – land, wealth, resources and our human abilities.
Free Worship Outlines for the Season of Creation September 1- October 6.
This fall, join Christians around the world in observing the Season of Creation. These six worship outlines - collected by and for the community of Mennonite Church Canada and USA - focus on the theme, "To Hope and Act With Creation." Get the outlines from CommonWord.
Three learning opportunities! After reviewing what's on offer below, click the "respond" button at the bottom of the page to complete a form on which you can request more information on the learning opportunities for which you are interested. Sandy Plett (MC Canada Climate Action Coordinator) will send you the relevant information.
1. "Introduction to Green Burial" (Zoom webinar) with Dr. Trish Penner Sept 25, 2024, 7-8pm CDT
Dr. Trish Penner is a hospital chaplain turned family doctor. She champions death positivity and environmental death practices. She advocates for green or natural burial which returns the bodies of our loved ones back to the earth with the least environmental disturbance: unembalmed, in an biodegradable container or shroud, more shallowly to allow for our elements to be returned to the life cycle. This carbon negative way to address our dead brings us back to our roots and gives us opportunity to participate in the deathcare of our beloved.
2. "Preaching Exilic Hope in the Climate Crisis" (Zoom webinar) with Dr. Jerusha Neal Oct 25, 2024 11am – 1pm CDT
The climate crisis raises questions of breadth and depth that touch our deepest theological convictions. They are questions of human purpose, Christian hope, and the character of God. The biblical text is not afraid of such questions. Engaging the scriptural witness of God's exiled people, this workshop will model what it means to preach honest, grounded hope in the face of ecological loss - underscoring the vital role that preaching has to play in this season of crisis.
Dr. Jerusha Matsen Neal, Assistant Professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School, is an ordained ABC (USA) pastor who has served as a Global Ministries mission partner in the Fiji Islands through the United Methodist Church. She has spent her ministry preaching in cross-cultural spaces and bridging denominational communities. Her most recent book, Holy Ground: Preaching, Climate Change, and the Apocalypse of Place (Baylor University Press, 2024), engages the climate crisis through the sermons of South Pacific communities displaced by rising tides.
3. Coming in 2025! Plans are in the works for a 6-month pastoral care cohort on "Pastoral Care for Climate: From Anxiety to Action" (Feb – Jul 2025)
How do we respond to the looming climate disaster? Many people try to live as if it isn’t happening, while some live in anxiety of a hopeless future. Pastors and church leaders have a unique role in bringing together spiritual, emotional, and social roles. Explore how churches and communities can become places where people learn to engage climate action with active hope.
The plan is for two in-person gatherings (tentatively Feb. 7-9 and July 2-5).
Brought to you by Anabaptist Climate Collaborative and Mennonite Church Canada.
Please click on the "respond" button to provide your contact information and indicate which events you are interested in so we can send you the information and Zoom links you need: