Key Points:
- About 40 people attended the first EarthKeepers training in 2016, resulting a decade later in about 450 graduates unleashed with ideas to overcome the hazards of climate change.
- Two programs that are up and running are a large composting operation at Mount Eagle Retreat Center and the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement website.
- Despite the significant challenges ahead, United Methodists should faithfully do their part to make the world a better place, said the Rev. Jenny Phillips, director of environmental sustainability at the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.
The first EarthKeepers retreat in 2016, at Hampton Conference and Retreat Center near Atlanta, “was a powerful event,” one attendee remembers.
“It was fall and in a woods setting,” recalled Cathy Velasquez Eberhart. “We would go on trails and hear the leaves crunching under our feet. We had long conversations during walks with the other participants.”
Lifelong friendships were forged, she added.
EarthKeepers is a training program to help United Methodists prepare to be environmental activists. Each class discusses theology, United Methodist resources and community organizing, so participants can develop an environmental project for their churches and communities.
As the EarthKeepers program marks its 10th anniversary this year, it has graduated more than 450 people who went home with a plan to help the environment, said the Rev. Jenny Phillips, who, as director of environmental sustainability at the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, oversees the EarthKeepers program.
“We wouldn’t be going this long if there weren’t people recommending other people to participate in this program,” she said in an interview with UM News. “We get very consistent feedback that … they’ve had real support on how to take an idea from a passion that they have and not only how to execute it, but how to make it stronger than it was when they first envisioned it.”
The EarthKeeper retreats teach about building partnerships within a congregation, the wider community and the denomination while providing a deeper understanding of environmental justice and the importance of making anti-racism part of every project, Phillips said.
“(EarthKeepers) have much deeper knowledge of The United Methodist Church and how it works, the resources of the church and the many statements the church has made on environmentalism and the ways that those statements support this work,” she added.
At the first retreat, the requirement to arrive with a project in mind hadn’t been implemented yet.
“We found that the people who brought a clear idea were really able to use the concentrated time of the training to flesh that idea out,” Phillips said. “But for people who didn’t have a project, they spent the training trying to think of a project, and then had to go home and figure it out.
“In terms of outcomes, the people who had brought a project idea to the training and built it were actually able to take action once they left,” she said. “That's why it became a requirement of the program.”
Back in 2016, Eberhart knew she wanted to take action around climate change. As the daughter of two United Methodist pastors, she wanted to do it within the denomination.
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Because of her familiarity with Methodism, Eberhart felt she could be effective in calling fellow United Methodists to the cause.
“The vision was somewhat unformed, but it really was about building those connections and then imagining what we could be doing together,” she said.
Eberhart’s EarthKeepers training led her to create the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement website. Today, the site is a key conduit for groups within The United Methodist Church to connect and work together toward creation care, justice and regeneration.
“(The website) has been a critical part of new recruiting and training and connecting new people,” she said. “People can find teams to work on specific things like worship materials or solar (power) or how to organize in your annual conference.”
Communication tools like a monthly newsletter keep people informed on developments in United Methodist circles regarding climate action, she said.
“After that first EarthKeeper training, we met in 2017 in the Washington, D.C., area, and then in 2018 in Minnesota and in 2019 in Nashville,” Eberhart said. “Those summits helped spur the movement.
“They were looking at a key question: ‘How do we take the words of the church, all the commitments and the statements of what the church has said that it believes in around this work, and bring them into reality?’” she said. “I’ve heard it called the affirmation gap, the aspiration gap, between the words of the church and the actions of the church.”
That work to better align the church’s actions to its words continues, she said.
Dan Hiatt, an EarthKeeper student in 2024, is making strides in composting, which is a process to break down organic materials like food, yard waste and even paper so they don’t produce methane gas that is bad for the environment. The process also conserves water and fertilizes soil.
Hiatt, executive director of the Mount Eagle Retreat Center in the Ozark Mountains, is studying at Methodist Theological School in Ohio for a doctorate in ecology and justice ministries. He said creation care has always been a component of the center, which dates back to 1970.
Grants from United Methodist entities including EarthKeepers, United Women in Faith and the Methodist Foundation for Arkansas helped fund the acquisition of a composting machine that cost about $35,000, Hiatt said. The system has been up and running for a couple of months.
“(The composting machine) will do 10 tons a year,” he said. “We’re about 50 to 55 pounds every 24 hours, so it adds up.”
The machine is better than the typical backyard composting setup, he said.
“It can (compost) things like meat and dairy that you wouldn't put in your backyard compost machine,” he said. “It can even do compostable plates and cups that are technically compostable, but take forever in a backyard composting system.
“So it processes things a lot quicker, and you're able to move a lot of volume through.”
Phillips said that Hiatt’s composting operation is notable.
“What is most remarkable to me about it is the scale of (Hiatt’s) vision,” she said. “That’s something I’ve seen more and more over the years, is that there are more people coming in ready to work at a scale to have significant impact.”
Many scientists would say the efforts of the EarthKeepers are doomed if the world doesn’t stop burning fossil fuels, which does not appear is going to happen in the near future.
“That's such a fatalistic way to see the world,” Phillips said. “As a Christian, I just can't abide that. … I believe that I am called to the particular ministry in which I am serving. I believe that the participants of the EarthKeepers program are called to the ministry that they are trying to grow.”
The key is faith, she said.
“I don't know what God is going to do with all of this,” she said, “but I know that we are all serving faithfully in ways that are consistent with our theological understanding as our role as stewards of God’s creation.
“It’s true that the burning of fossil fuels needs to end, but we really can't wait to be doing the work we're doing until that happens,” she said. “Some of this work is doing our part to increase acceptance of alternative ways to generate power that don't involve burning fossil fuels.
“Similarly with practices for how we care for the land, how we grow food, all of the many ways in which we engage in day-to-day life, we need leaders who are stepping out and trying to lead and grow and stretch people toward these new ways of being that are consistent with a world that can flourish.”
Patterson is a UM News reporter in Nashville, Tennessee. Contact him at 615-742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
