<p>{mosimage}SWANNANOA, N.C. &ndash; Bill McKibben is &ldquo;the world&rsquo;s best green journalist,&rdquo; Time magazine said &ndash; and he&rsquo;s a United Methodist. McKibben spoke at Warren Wilson College just prior to his 350.org Day of Action Oct. 10. Foreign Policy magazine called last year&rsquo;s October 350 demonstrations &ldquo;the largest ever global coordinated rally of any kind,&rdquo; aimed at activating the world into reducing the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) from 390 to 350 parts per million.</p>

<p>{mosimage}LAKE JUNALUSKA, N.C. &ndash; The 2011 Caring for Creation will be held March 31-April 3. The four-day event is for clergy and laity to address how the faith community can promote justice for the Earth and its people.</p>

{mosimage}Six congregations in the North Trenholm Road area are collaborating on a project that encourages sustainable living and building practices. <p>Bethel United Methodist Church, along with Beth Shalom Synagogue, Forest Lake Presbyterian, North Trenholm Baptist, St. Michael and All Angels&rsquo; Episcopal and Tree of Life Congregation are planning the Forest Acres Green Festival. </p>

{mosimage}<p>
&lsquo;If there were no bees, the flowers would not bear ruit.</p> <p>If the flowers were stricken, what of the butterfly&rsquo;s fate?</p> <p>If all the butterflies died, beauty would suffer.</p> <p>If beauty were diminished, what of the songs of the soul?&rsquo;</p> <p>This was part of a two-part congregational prayer at Shandon United Methodist Church in April.</p>

<p>{mosimage}When we read the Bible, we often focus on the relationship between humans and God. Yet, the foundational stories of our faith reveal the importance of another set of relationships&mdash;the relationships between God and Creation and between humans and Creation. From the ancient Israelites to the early followers of Christ, caring for the Earth was an important means of offering thanks and praise to God.</p>

{mosimage}<p>Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu (right) and U.N. climate chief 
Yvo de Boer greet the crowd Dec. 13 at City Hall Square in Copenhagen. 
Tutu presented de Boer with 500,000 signatures calling for climate justice.&nbsp;
UMNS photos by Peter Williams, World Council of Churches.</p> <p>Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, right, and Bishop Sofie Petersen of Greenland, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark, led a procession during a Dec. 13 ecumenical celebration.
</p> <p>Meghan Roth called it &ldquo;a life-changing experience&rdquo; when Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu spoke Dec. 13 in Copenhagen to those concerned about the impact of climate change on the world.</p>

{mosimage}<p>A very old church in Charleston is taking a very new approach to evangelism and, simultaneously, caring for the Earth. </p> <p>Similarly, a United Methodist church in Hartsville is reaching out to its whole community through its recycling program.</p> <p>The Rev. Albert Keller Jr., pastor of Circular Congregational Church in Charleston,&nbsp; found a pocket of children living between the coastal city&rsquo;s two rivers who had never seen a river, much less the ocean. The church&rsquo;s Environmental Mission group, about 15 people, now mixes fun with ecology education, taking 15 to 25 children to participate in their beach sweeps (clean-ups), on trips to swampland and on boat-trips to barrier islands.</p>

<p>{mosimage}The choir was always sweating and those in the pews were freezing at College Place United Methodist Church.</p> <p>It took a professional energy audit to realize what was going on, something anyone could have seen, but who goes climbing around in the pipe room or attic spaces in the church?</p> <p>Joseph Gilmore, of Gilmore Consulting Services in Columbia, let his high-powered equipment lead him to the rooms above the chancel that house the organ pipes. On one side, a door to the attic had been set aside rather than putting it back to close up the attic.</p>

<h4>{mosimage}Building or adding on? You can&rsquo;t afford NOT to build green<br /><br /></h4><p>If you think cost is the reason you can&rsquo;t build a new church green, architect Deborah Snow has a quick response: &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t afford not to.&rdquo;</p> <p>Snow, a principal in McCreary/Snow in Columbia, and Allen Taylor, a principal in the Columbia office of LS3P, met with Green Theology in October to discuss how churches might approach green building. Both are certified LEED architects.</p> <p>(Green Theology is a group convened by the S.C. United Methodist Advocate earlier this year to cut though the maze of new technologies available today to help United Methodist churches in particular reduce their energy budgets. It has become an interfaith group and continues to meet periodically at the conference center. All United Methodist churches are invited to send a participant.)</p>

{mosimage}Pleasant Hill United Methodist Church in Indian Land has had a long-range master planning study completed by WGM Design, an architectural and land planning firm in Charlotte with an eye on energy-savings and the environment. <p>Pleasant Hill UMC has a long-term view in a rapidly growing church. With a membership of more than 500 and taking in as many as 16 on one recent Sunday, money for the new building may come sooner than expected. Finding enough pew space is already a problem for Pastor Michael Ritter at the church sitting less than two miles from the N.C. border.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a very loving church,&rdquo; Ritter said, and active in Family Promise, a program to help those in need. </p>

{mosimage}<p>Tracy Pender, lives in Sumter and is chairperson of the S.C. Conference Native American Committee. The Advocate asked questions related to Native Americans, particularly as their history relates to caring for the Earth.</p> <p>When it comes to saving the Earth, what do you think we can learn from the Indian culture?</p>

{mosimage}As both a Christian and an environmentalist, I have often been disturbed by what I see as a disconnect between people of faith and the environmental movement. As I once heard a five-year-old say, &ldquo;God gave us this Earth, and he&rsquo;s not going to give us another one, so we better take good care of it.&rdquo; In recent years, things seem to be changing, and this change is evident in Love God, Heal Earth: 21 Leading Religious Voices Speak Out on Our Sacred Duty to Protect the Environment.