Green Teams Gathering

Schedule:

1:45 • Welcome & Gathering
2:10 • Opening Session
2:45 • Break
2:55 • Breakout Sessions
4:10 • Break
4:20 • Community building
4:50 • Closing

Opening Session
Digging Deeper with your Green Team
Speaker: Rev. Dr. Allen Ewing-Merrill

Over the past six months, the realities of global climate devastation have been on full display here in Northern New England, as we’ve experienced the warmest winter on record, intense rainstorms, devastating flooding, the loss of beloved landmarks, and frequent reminders of the realities of sea level rise.

Maybe you’ve joined your faith community’s Green Team, Earth Care Team, or Climate Action Team because you feel a sense of urgency around all of this, and you sense that your faith demands action. But after all the efforts to promote recycling, encourage composting, and embrace sustainable practices within your congregation, and after supporting public policy solutions by writing letters and making phone calls to elected leaders, what’s next?

In this opening session, Allen Ewing-Merrill, Executive Director of The BTS Center, will share some thoughts about the unique roles that faith communities can play, offering a vision for a holistic Green Team — one that digs deeper and scatters seeds in new directions. Together, we’ll answer the call of this moment: to cultivate and nurture spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world.

Breakout Sessions

As you arrive, we will invite you to indicate your preferences, and you will have an opportunity to participate in one of the following:

Option 1:

Wonder & Wander Nature Walk: Mindful Connection
Leader: Linda Littlefield Grenfell

Let's wander outdoors and wonder about life as it abounds around us. We will spend time learning slow walking, attentive listening, and practicing sacred silence. We will expand our senses through play and sit spot and share our experiences with one another.   

Come prepared to sit on the ground, and maybe even roll around. Or not — this is for you, and you can choose your level of participation. Each of these experiences are designed for you to learn and use at home, and share with others. 

Option 2:

Advocacy and the Art of Storytelling
Leader: Sue Inches

Ordinary people have more power to change the world than they think they do. The secret is to touch the hearts of decision makers through authentic human storytelling. Stories have the power to break through politics and move decision makers to do what is best for local communities and the environment.

This workshop will explore the “earth connection stories” that lie within each of us. Participants will learn how stories are used in advocacy work, and why citizen voices are critically important now, if we want to have a healthy future. Whether or not you plan to take action, you’ll find this workshop thought provoking, inspiring, and fun!

Option 3:

Creation Collage Workshop 
Leaders: Priscilla Dreyman and Lynne Mentzer

Collage is a fascinating way to gain insight around a specific issue, to find answers to meaningful questions, or to simply reveal in words and pictures a bit of truth about our lives and our environment. Using images and text found in magazines and working together in a relaxing, meditative space, each participant will create a unique circular collage and a corresponding written reflection. Come and be amazed by the creativity of your heart and soul!

Option 4:

Climate + Faith: Introducing a spiritual resource for use in Christian congregations
Leader: Matthew Myer Boulton of SALT

During this session, Matt Myer Boulton, Creative Director of SALT — an award winning, not-for-profit production company dedicated to the craft of visual storytelling — will provide an orientation to a new resource, Climate + Faith, rooted in Christian spirituality and practice, designed for use within Christian congregations. This seven-week, 40-day devotional takes a “love-and-act” approach (rather than “doom-and-gloom”), building on our love for our neighbors, near and far, and our love for God, Maker of heaven and earth.

In this 32-page printable devotional, biblical texts, accessible science, and practical wisdom combine to help each of us create a custom-made, solution-oriented action plan for advancing the movement for a healthy climate. Participants in this breakout session will receive free access to this downloadable PDF resource, along with printing instructions, an e-reader version, and a companion “Link Sheet” with hyperlinks to excellent video and written resources. Any or all of these can be distributed electronically to members of your congregation.

Linda Littlefield Grenfell (she/her) has spent her whole life fascinated by ancient ways of living with the land. She had a long career as a minister in the United Methodist Church, a grief counselor, and a college Ethics professor. After retiring she promptly began working at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve at Laudholm Farms, where she leads nature walks and sea kayaking tours. Linda has her Maine Guide License in Sea Kayaking and is a Maine Master Naturalist. She loves to read, write, walk in the woods (with and without dogs), bake bread, and have exciting new experiences like sleeping outside in sub-zero temperatures in natural shelters!

Since childhood, Susan Inches has envisioned a world that is compassionate, inclusive, and environmentally aware. This vision guided her through a 25-year career in public policy. As Deputy Director of the Maine State Planning Office she represented the Governor, as an organizer and lobbyist on environmental issues. Sue has worked on many issues including fisheries, land use planning, smart growth, building and energy codes, energy policy, working waterfront access, community finance, and rural broadband. Sue now works as a speaker, educator, and author with a focus on the environment and climate change. She is actively engaged in advocating for environmental rights and energy democracy. She holds a BA in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic, and an MBA from the University of New Hampshire. She has taught advocacy courses at Colby, Bates and Colorado Colleges. Her recent book is Advocating for the Environment: How to Gather Your Power and Take Action.

Lynne Mentzer is a recently retired United Methodist pastor, having served churches in Maine and New Hampshire for 20 years. A life-long journal writer and advocate of writing and art-making to access personal insight and healing, she is certified to teach Journal to the Self workshops as well as Intentional Collage. While serving her last congregation in Merrimack, NH, she received a grant to launch an ecumenical Community Arts Ministry offering classes in a variety of modalities. Currently, she facilitates writing groups and collage workshops at Gorham House and Gorham Adult Ed. Lynne and her husband Jim have six children and eight grandchildren between them who live all around the world, which means they also love to travel!

Priscilla Dreyman, a retired United Methodist minister and visual artist, has called Maine home since 1981. After serving as a hospital chaplain in MA, she pastored rural, urban, island, and suburban churches in Maine.  Following a personal call to art, Priscilla attended the Portland School of Art (now MeCA&D). In 1992, she founded an interfaith community arts ministry called SPIRAL Arts, which offered arts programming for people of all ages from all walks of life in Portland and beyond. Community building through artmaking within a safe, supportive community was SPIRAL Arts’ mission for 22 years. A few years into retirement, Priscilla experienced an unexpected vision of creating a new ministry at Cape Elizabeth United Methodist Church focused on ecology and the environment. That vision came to fruition in 2019 when it was embraced by CEUMC, leading to the creation of a committed Eco Team and congregation who continue to expand and carry the vision forward. 

Matthew Myer Boulton is Creative Director and Producer of SALT, an award winning, not-for-profit production company dedicated to the craft of visual storytelling. Matt is an author, teacher, filmmaker, and proud papa of Jonah and Margaret. A graduate of Northwestern University, Harvard Divinity School, and the University of Chicago Divinity School, he has served on the faculty of Harvard Divinity School and as president of Christian Theological Seminary. His books include Life in God: John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant Theology (Eerdmans, 2011) and God Against Religion: Rethinking Christian Theology through Worship (Eerdmans, 2008).

Allen Ewing-Merrill serves as Executive Director of The BTS Center, a private operating foundation in Portland, Maine, building on the legacy of Bangor Theological Seminary. Ordained in the Methodist tradition, Allen served as pastor of churches in Massachusetts and Maine for 20 years, including 12 years as co-pastor (with his wife, Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill) of HopeGateWay in Portland. Allen is a graduate of the University of Maine, Boston University School of Theology, and Wesley Theological Seminary. He has extensive experience in advocacy, direct action, and faith-based organizing around issues of justice and equity, and he frequently preaches and teaches about faithful responses to the climate crisis. Allen lives in Portland with his spouse, Sara, and they are the parents of three daughters.