Creator’s Call in a Climate Emergency

A Mennonite Church Canada community learning series

We know we are in a Climate Emergency. But what do we do to address it?

Climate scientists warn that we have just 8 years to halve our greenhouse gas emissions if we are to prevent catastrophic warming. Indigenous peoples are calling us to a radically new relationship with the Earth as they defend land and waters at great cost. What is the Spirit saying to today’s church?

Join Ian Funk (from Mennonite Church Canada’s Sustainability Leadership Group) and Steve Heinrichs (director of Indigenous-Settler Relations) for a spirited eight-week series exploring the two paths of decarbonization and decolonization. We will read Seth Klein’s A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency (2020), listen to Indigenous activists and engage a number of climate action leaders in real-time conversation. Together, we will contemplate Creator’s call to the church. Together, we will link arms and courageously imagine real possibilities of a hope-filled and just future.

While this challenge is centred in a Canadian context, we invite participants from the global community and welcome the wisdom of the perspectives you may have to share: young and older, Indigenous and Settler, church person and non-religious, folks new to the conversation and veterans too. Our only ask is that you commit to the full eight-week journey and the required homework (every week an average of 40-60 pages of reading and a one-hour video/podcast).

Details:

• The series begins Thursday, January 20, 2022 and ends Thursday, March 17, with a one break-week half-way through.
• We’re gathering by Zoom at 7 p.m. CDT (8 ET / 6 MT / 5 PST). Each meeting will be 90 minutes. The meeting link will be sent upon registration.
• Half the sessions will be breakout-room conversations, and the other half engagement with Indigenous and Settler thinkers/activists who can help us process and ‘activate’ our learnings.
• A copy of Seth Klein’s book is available to order through CommonWord. For ebook and audio versions, please order from the publisher.