10 Ways Churches Can Mobilize

Kairos Call to Action

10 Ways Churches Can Mobilize to address climate justice

Before us is a ten-year window of opportunity to demonstrate how we will respond to God’s call. To make the most of this moment, the UCC’s Council for Climate Justice has issued a call for all of the churches and institutions that comprise the UCC to adopt 10-year mobilization plans in the year 2020. The development of such a plan provides a focused framework for discernment and the setting of goals. Each church and institution will discern how it can best address climate and inequality with the means and opportunities before them.

In recognition of the urgent need to address the intertwined crisis of climate and inequality, the UCC Council for Climate Justice has defined the next ten years as a kairos window of divine opportunity in which people of faith are called to an all-out mobilization of their gifts and resources. Here are ten ways churches can mobilize:

1. Enter a period of study and immersion.

Through visits, immersive experiences, readings, educational forums and reflection, allow these learning experiences to form the foundation of your work moving forward.

2. Plan inspired worship that continually focuses attention on this kairos moment.

Ideas for Earth Day service or creating a Kairos moment each week.

3. Know Your Environmental Justice History and Become a Zero Waste Church

Learn about the connection between toxic waste and racism, and check out resources for reducing your congregation’s waste.

4. Cultivate gardens, landscapes, and appetites in the struggle for justice.

Ideas for community gardens, creating food opportunities, utilizing church landscape to pull carbon, and more.

5) Become a carbon neutral or a carbon negative/climate positive church.

Learn about your congregation’s current source of energy, and explore alternative possibilities.

6) Divest from fossil fuels and move church money out of “dirty” banks

Learn about divesting, and consider investing in renewables.

7) Make every election a time to call for values-based voting that expresses care for creation and justice for all.

Sign on to the Creation Care Voter Pledge and tune in to a training webinar.

8) Through townhalls, delegations, candidate forums, emails, and petitions, call upon elected officials and candidates for office to support the Green New Deal.

Read up on the Green New Deal and the UCC’s support of it.

9) Become a kairos mobilization hub.

Ideas for fostering this kairos mobilization in your own community and encouraging others to join the moment!

10) Throughout the process of mobilizing, tell your story! 

Be it media, church newsletter, or with the wider UCC, share your story!