The C3 Board of Directors has selected All Saints Episcopal Church in Concord, NC to be its C3 Church of the year for 2024. All Saints has been a model congregation for creation care ministries in multiple ways in relation to its facilities, grounds, and community engagement. The Rev. Nancy Cox, who came to All Saints 14 years ago has been a steady and consistent leader, calling the church to consider their environmental footprint in all that they do.
All Saints has taken advantage of private/public grant offerings to enhance their facilities and build a more sustainable space for worship and witness. They applied for and received various grants to build water cisterns to capture rainwater, convert incandescent bulbs to fluorescent ones, and refurbish their windows with energy efficient panels. Additionally, they have changed out most, if not all, their appliances and furnaces, replacing them with energy efficient models, improving their overall efficiency by more than 30 percent.
A major project they initiated five years ago in partnership with several private and public organizations was a tree give-away program. As of last year, a volunteer team of more than 20 people had given away 1283 trees which are expected to have the following positive impact over the next 20 years:
- 9208 pounds of air pollutants absorbed
- 2.78 million kW hours energy saved
- 4.8 million pounds of carbon sequestered
- 21.5 million gallons of stormwater filtered
Retired physician and church member, Mark Robinson, has led the church in planting multiple indigenous plant species on the church property. He has provided leadership in tending a sprawling community garden on their property, and maintaining an irrigation system using water from a well dug on site funded by the bequest of another church member. This past summer he gave me a tour of the garden that included herbs, beans, corn, potatoes, blueberries and 6 variations of garlic. The garden was not planted to lure community neighbors on to church grounds, but rather as a teaching tool for the church preschool, and other children and youth who attend the church. They also recruited volunteers this past year to deliver more than 17,000 pounds of freshly culled vegetables from a local farm to a local Christian community food bank.
Rev. Cox believes if you can get a group of individuals to make small changes, you can make a big difference. The sustainable changes they have made at All Saints have spurred others to make those changes at home. For example, they made the difficult transition from styrofoam cups to regular coffee mugs for their fellowship gatherings at church. They also switched from paper and plastic products to china, glass and silverware for their church meals. This required a team of volunteers to stay a little longer after meals to wash dishes, but the greater vision of being good stewards of God’s creation prevailed over the modern idol of Convenience winning the day. These changes didn’t come quickly or easily, but were eventually embraced by the members who began to see their actions as a witness to their call to be stewards of the earth.
All Saints is a wonderful model of what a local congregation can do when it takes its call to be caretakers of the earth seriously. Their unique blend of making their facilities more energy efficient, using their grounds to teach their young people about gardening, and partnering with outside organizations to distribute trees, thereby reducing their community’s carbon footprint, is an inspiration for churches around the country.
Thank you All Saints for utilizing holy imagination and persistent effort to bear witness to the goodness of God and the goodness of God’s creation.
