Congregations Care for Creation

Monitoring the health of a local stream by counting its tiny creatures and cutting back on energy use are ways in which two Christian Reformed congregations are seeking to care for God’s creation.

In Grandville, Mich., Trinity Christian Reformed Church has been testing the water quality of the stream that runs along its property for nine years, and the congregation is expanding its work with the help of a grant from the state of Michigan.

In Oak Forest, Ill., Hope CRC is working toward becoming the first church in the denomination to earn an Energy Star rating for its efforts to save electricity, gas, and water.

“We see caring for creation as a moral, faith-based issue and have been doing this in a tangible way by saving energy costs in our church,” said Corenna Roozeboom, chair of the creation care committee at Hope CRC. She works for a non-profit that helps teachers and students in Chicago Public Schools learn how to garden.

Letters in God’s Alphabet

Members of Trinity CRC consider searching for macroinvertebrates in the Rush Creek Watershed as part of God’s calling to tend the world he made, said Rev. Gerry Koning, the church’s pastor.

Reflecting on Article 2 of the Belgic Confession, which describes nature as “a beautiful book,” Koning said, “I think of . . . every creature, however small, as a letter in God’s alphabet,” said Koning.

“We would hate to see some of God’s letters lost so that his creation couldn’t show the fullness of God’s goodness and glory.”

Members of Trinity CRC have been part of a Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) project that tracks the health of rivers, streams, and lakes by catching and counting the insects, crustaceans, snails, worms, and other creatures without backbones that live in the water.

“These are the creatures that make up the life of a river or a stream,” said Paul Steen, an aquatic ecologist for the Huron River Watershed Council. “The more of these macroinvertebrates you find, the healthier the water is.”

Steen’s group administers a MICorps Grant from the State of Michigan DEQ that Trinity received recently.

Speaking about the grant to Trinity, Steen said it is unusual for a church to get funding to do this kind of work. But at the same time, he said, “this is a good example of a group that has a different motivation in wanting to be stewards of creation. It is neat to see a group that is religiously motivated to get involved.”

Koning said the grant will help the church expand its work in the Rush Creek Watershed, allowing them to move from a smaller area near the church to start testing the stream elsewhere. Local township officials are also helping to oversee the grant, he said.

Every spring, said Koning, church members and a few neighbors take part in the count. Some wade into the stream, seeking to catch macroinvertebrates, the tiny creatures they can see with the naked eye, with tweezers and eyedroppers.

Others then carry the creatures, placed in containers, to an area where they are examined and catalogued by a trained biologist before being returned to the water.

A couple of years ago, heavy rains filled the stream with silt, drastically reducing the numbers of macroinvertebrates they found that year, said Koning. But the numbers were back up this year, signaling that the stream is getting healthier again.

“Looking ahead, it is our hope with the new grant to expand what we do to get other churches involved,” said Kathy Jelsma, volunteer coordinator of the project.

“As a church, we believe it is important to be in the forefront of caring for God’s creation,” said Koning, “It is important for us to jump in the stream and see the beautiful creatures.”

Making Changes

Hope CRC in Oak Forest, Ill. is one of the churches involved in an effort sponsored by the Climate Witness Project of the CRC’s Office of Social Justice to address the ongoing impacts of climate change.

As part of this project, Hope CRC and these other churches are working to cut their energy use, educating their congregations about issues related to climate change, and advocating with their legislators in Congress and Parliament to enact measures that cut back greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. and Canada, said Rev. Richard Killmer, a co-coordinator of the Climate Witness Project.

These churches “are engaging in the important task of protecting God’s creation and especially dealing with the matter of climate change,” he said.

Efforts to address climate change, Killmer added, come out of a study approved by Synod 2012 that describes the impact of greenhouse gases on the environment and calls for churches to join the effort, out of faithful conviction, to do what they can to preserve God’s creation and cut back climate change.

“We want congregations to do what they can to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions, and Hope CRC has taken it on itself to take pretty strong steps in this direction,” said Killmer.

Currently, Hope is the only CRC congregation that is so close to earning an Energy Star certification, although the CRC denominational building in Grand Rapids, Mich., has also been awarded this rating.

Corenna Roozeboom said Hope has done the legwork necessary to get certified. They are waiting for a professional energy auditor to come out and verify that they have made the necessary changes.

Roozeboom said changes they have instituted include swapping out their old light bulbs for LED bulbs, purchasing and installing a more efficient heating system, installing motion-sensitive lighting, using insurance money from a hailstorm to help insulate part of the roof, and making necessary adjustments to cut down on water use.

“We are blessed to be working with other CRCs who feel the same call to care for creation,” she said. “We’re also proud to be part of a denomination that is called to do this.”