Earth care as a faith priority Posted on June 11, 2025
Members of Peoples Church in East Lansing participate in the Michigan Conference’s Earth Day of Action by planting trees at Lansing’s Attwood Park. ~ photo courtesy Peoples Church
Michigan United Methodists offered leadership on the pressing local and global needs for responsible care of God’s good creation on the Earth Day of Action.
GLENN M. WAGNER
Michigan Conference Communications
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, encouraged fellow Christians to live with “a single eye.” Wesley sought to live with method, so that every aspect of his life would focus on giving glory to God as an expression of his faith in Jesus. Weekly meetings of early Methodists included prayer, Bible study, mutual encouragement, and accountability in living out their faith.
In his sermon, “The Good Steward,” Wesley lays out his beliefs on caring for creation: “We are now God’s stewards. We are indebted to him for all we have . . . . A steward is not at liberty to use what is lodged in his hands as he pleases, but as his master pleases . . . . [God] entrusts us with [this world’s goods] on this express condition, that we use them only as our Master’s goods, and according to the particular directions which he has given us in his Word.”
An important way followers of Jesus can live faithfully is through the daily decisions they make to care for God’s world.
Faithful creation care is an urgent global need with local and personal consequences. Here are just a handful of data points to keep in mind.
According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, there were 27 confirmed climate disaster events in the United States in 2024, each with losses exceeding 1 billion dollars. Four hundred and three of these billion-dollar weather disasters since 1980 have cost the U.S. economy 2.915 trillion dollars!
On April 23, 2025, the headline for a story released online by National Public Radio noted, “Air pollution still plagues nearly half of Americans. That does a number on our health.”
In 2021, the United Nations reported that “of the more than 75,000 bodies of water surveyed across 89 countries, more than 40% were severely polluted and 1 in 3 people in our world do not have access to safe drinking water.”
It is estimated that between 1.15 to 2.41 million tons of plastic enter the ocean each year from rivers. More than half of this plastic is less dense than water, meaning that it will not sink once it encounters the sea.
An article published in 2020 noted that “The disappearance of 160 species has been declared by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) over the last decade and their demise can be traced in large part to human impact.”
Did you know that approximately 78 million Americans, roughly 23% of the U.S. population, live within three miles of a designated Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund disaster site? Significant portions of the population affected by environmental exposure to hazardous wastes are minority groups and children. As of the end of 2024, there were 1,341 uncontrolled hazardous waste locations on the EPA’s active and proposed sites. Sixty-five sites are in Michigan. Twenty sites in Michigan have been removed from the list after cleanup, and two sites have been proposed for addition.
In recognition of Earth Day, observed nationally on April 22, 2025, groups of Michigan United Methodists engaged this year by either hosting or partnering with coordinated creation care activities around the state, from Marquette to Brighton and from Detroit to Muskegon. The Michigan Conference dubbed this effort the Earth Day of Action, and events were scheduled throughout the state. Click to learn more and to watch the on-demand worship service created for this event.
Here are three examples from the Earth Day of Action, where faith communities took John Wesley’s sermon about being a good steward to heart and took faithful action in their communities.
Mount Pleasant
In Mount Pleasant, a dozen volunteers, led by the Wesley Foundation at Central Michigan University, worked with the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy to remove invasive Eurasian buckthorn, allowing more environmentally friendly native plants to thrive again. ~ Facebook photo from Wesley at CMU
Audra Hudson Stone and Jacob Stone have found time in their lives as young parents and leaders for the Wesley Foundation at Central Michigan University to use their passion for creation care in helping to launch the Michigan Conference’s Environmental Justice Task Force. This task force organized United Methodist contributions for this year’s Earth Day of Action.
Both Audra and Jacob attended the same United Methodist summer church camp growing up. They attribute their choice of academic majors to church camp and family influences. Jacob focused on environmental science while attending Adrian College, and Audra majored in environmental care issues at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.
Audra and Jacob Stone also attended the World Council of Churches Eco-School on Water, Food, and Climate Justice for a week in November of 2023 at the Orthodox Academy of Greece on the island of Crete. They participated in this life-changing experience with teachers and other students from around the world. The Stones were the only United Methodists from the United States in attendance. Their learning helped them further focus their love for God’s creation on making a positive difference back home in Michigan.
The Stones know that creation care and ministry that pursues environmental justice are always contextual. Faithful actions will differ according to the setting and participants, but the need to live as responsible and caring stewards of God’s creation is an important part of Christian witness for all of us.
Simple actions to assist others can also help ourselves. Recycling waste keeps garbage out of landfills. Having an energy audit conducted on your home and church can help identify cost-effective ways to save on energy. Driving a more fuel-efficient vehicle can save the driver thousands of dollars in fuel costs and assist in the fight against global warming. Proper disposal of toxic chemicals can prevent groundwater pollution. A helpful one-minute video from United Methodist Communications linked here offers 10 ways to care for God’s creation.
Marquette
Rev. Kristi Hintz has served as pastor with her husband, Christopher, at the multi-site Hope United Methodist Church in Marquette, Michigan. When she learned about the plans for this year’s Earth Day of Action, Hintz immediately thought that a project demonstrating congregational care for the earth was an important witness, especially in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which is renowned for its natural beauty.
After gathering first at the church to be blessed by the on-demand worship service (click to watch) offered by the Environmental Justice Task Force that had been recorded from University UMC in East Lansing with its theme of environmental care and justice, an enthusiastic multi-generational team of twenty church members volunteered their services at the nearby Chocolay Bayou Nature Preserve.
Some of the volunteers from Marquette: Hope UMC pause from their trail cleanup efforts on the Earth Day of Action at the Chocolay Bayou Nature Preserve for a group photo. ~ photo courtesy Hope UMC
They spent several hours cleaning trail signs, clearing brush, and picking up accumulated litter along the popular trails of the Bayou. The Hope UMC team received affirmation from appreciative hikers and left with a positive feeling that comes from faithful service for the common good. Kristi Hintz believes that this kind of hands-on environmental witness is worth repeating.
East Lansing
Rev. Haley Hansen is a native of South Dakota who began her career as a journalist. She eventually was hired as a reporter for the Lansing State Journal. Hansen followed her calling to pastoral ministry to a seminary in Boston before a return to East Lansing, where she now serves as the associate pastor at Peoples Church.
Peoples Church is a vital congregation formed in 1907 through the efforts of four Michigan State University professors as the first Protestant church to serve the students and community growing around what was then known as the Michigan Agricultural College. The professors solicited the collaboration of four founding denominations, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church USA, the American Baptist Church, and the Methodist denomination now known as The United Methodist Church.
The Michigan Conference’s Earth Day of Action began with a worship service sponsored by the Environmental Justice Task Force and streamed from University UMC in East Lansing. Audra Hudson Stone and her husband, Jacob, from the task force and the Wesley Foundation at Central Michigan University, opened the online worship. Click to watch the full worship service. ~ screen capture of online video
Hansen shared that her congregation’s involvement in the Michigan Conference’s Earth Day of Action was assisted by the Earth Stewardship Committee at Peoples Church, which partnered with other area organizations and religious groups under the direction of the City of Lansing Parks Department. The church members participated in an annual tree-planting event, held this year in Lansing’s Attwood Park.
People’s Church reported on the tree planting event in their May newsletter: “Thanks to over 40 volunteers, of all ages, the residents surrounding Attwood Park in south Lansing will now be able to enjoy 20 new trees on their walks through the scenic setting.”
Hansen shared that Peoples Church has also engaged in other creation care activities during the year, including offering educational opportunities for people to learn, practicing recycling at the church, working to make the church building more energy efficient, and installing an electric car charging station at the church.
Last Updated on June 11, 2025