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STEWARDSHIP OF CREATION

 

Orders for Palm Sunday 2012 are now open! Click the logo above to order your Eco-Palms for Palm Sunday, April 1, 2012 or order by phone: (612) 624-7418.

Find resources and materials about Eco-Palms.
 
INVITATION TO CONTRIBUTE TO PEC ~
As Fall moves toward Winter, our minds and hearts are once again captured by the ways of God at work in the natural world. With the psalmist we can say “Oh Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Presbyterians for Earth Care cares for God’s creation by connecting, equipping and inspiring Presbyterians to make creation care a central concern of the church and to focus our members’ energies for advocacy in church and society.

The past year has been filled with productive activity. During this year we:
* Brought twelve young adult environmentalists together on a Native American Reservation in Montana to reflect on their faith and advocacy efforts in our fourth Eco-Stewards program and then connected several of them with exciting internships around the country.
* Sponsored our biennial national conference with the theme “God’s Earth: Too Big to Fail? A Conversation between Faith, Science and Culture,” at Highlands Presbyterian Camp and Retreat Center near Estes Park, Colorado.
* Said farewell to Jenny Holmes, our Moderator for the past six years, and elected a new Moderator and several new Steering Committee members.
* Deepened our relationship with the National Council of Churches by continuing a staff sharing agreement, and Shantha Alonso became our PEC coordinator.
* Began planning for a presence at the 2012 General Assembly in Pittsburgh in July and our next conference at the Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center in Arkansas in Oct. 2013.
* Continued to produce the PEC Update newsletter each quarter providing up-to-date news and information about earth care topics from around the denomination.
* Coordinated advocacy efforts among our members for a multitude of earth care concerns.

Building on these accomplishments, we continue to need your personal and financial support in order to reach out to all Presbyterians across the country. So much needs to be done now to protect the future of creation!

We are therefore establishing five giving levels beyond the basic membership fee among which to choose for indicating your support for spreading the message of earth care in the PC(USA). These are: Roots, Branches, Leaves, Fruit, Seeds. (See below for specifics.) We also ask for sharing of your God-given gifts and talents. Click here to fill out a volunteer form so we can know how you can share your gifts with us.

Please make a donation through our website by going to:
www.presbyearthcare.org.

You can also mail a check to:
Presbyterians for Earth Care
28 Pape Drive
Atlantic Highlands, NJ 07716

Yours in Earth Care, Diane Waddell, PEC Moderator

P.S. Mark your calendar now to stop by our booth during General Assembly in Pittsburgh in July of 2012.

PEC Giving Levels
Roots: $10-$99 Every gift of $75 or over will entitle you to make a gift of a one-year membership in PEC to a friend

Branches: $100-$249 Every donation of $100 or more will entitle you to make a gift of a one-year membership in PEC to a friend, as well as receive a free 100% organic cotton PEC t-shirt with the new PEC logo ($15 value).

Leaves: $250-$499 For every gift of $250 or more you will receive a free t-shirt. You may also give a one-year membership to four individuals.

Fruit: $500+ Every Fruit level giver will receive a free PEC t-shirt and may make a gift of a one-year group membership to your church, camp and conference center or other group or five individual memberships.

Seeds: A seed gift is a planned gift from your estate that will be placed in our reserve operations fund or endowment funds for future needs, depending on your wishes. (If you have included PEC in your estate plan, let us know for our records.)

All givers’ names will be published in PEC Update by giving category.

Give now at
www.presbyearthcare.org.

 

Dear Presbytery Colleagues in Ministry,
 
Five years ago, I spent the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in traveling in Guatemala as part of an ecumenical mission team and visiting rural communities that supply Eco-Palms for use by congregations on Palm Sunday.  As a conservationist by training and a former PC(USA) agricultural mission coworker in Pakistan, I was thrilled to see first hand how these communities are learning to sustainably harvest palm branches in protected tropical forests.  The purchase of Eco-Palms by congregations provides fair wages, environmental protection and development assistance for impoverished harvesting communities in Guatemala and Mexico.  Last year, over $40,000 generated by Eco-Palm sales helped to raise the level of education and health care in the Eco-Palm harvesting communities.
 
Eco-Palm branches are higher quality than most plantation-grown and/or conventionally-harvested palm branches because of the extra care taken during the process of harvesting, processing and distributing these palms.
 
While more than 800 PC(USA) congregations purchased Eco-Palms for Palm Sunday in 2011--a ten percent increase over 2010--the number of congregations in our Presbytery using Eco-Palms on Palm Sunday has remained relatively static in recent years.  So, I'm stepping up efforts to spread the word early this year.  Orders may be placed until March 8 if paying by check and March 14 if paying by credit card.  Pricing and ordering information is available at the 
   PC(USA) Enough for Everyone website
 
Please let me know if you have any questions about Eco-Palms; I would be glad to share my experiences in mission with Eco-Palms.
 
If your congregation does not have a tradition of using palm branches to celebrate Palm Sunday, I encourage you to consider this opportunity to enhance your worship experience on Palm Sunday morning!
 
Peace and blessing,
 
Dennis Testerman
Stewardship of Creation Enabler
Presbytery of Charlotte
preach84@hotmail.com
980-521-4871

 

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