All That Is Within Us
For two years, we’ve been researching the unique role churches can play in a climate-changed world.
Now we’re ready to share our findings with you.
The BTS Center invited you to the public release of All That Is Within Us, a landmark research report documenting what 12 congregations across Northern New England learned when they spent five months rigorously discerning their communities’ unique role in a climate-changed world.
Drawing on rigorous social science research, the report offers a bracing and hopeful account of what happened when beautifully ordinary faith communities stopped waiting for a playbook from outside experts and started paying attention to what was already alive in them.
Program Research Report
The Question
The evening featured opening remarks from Ben Yosua-Davis, Director of Applied Research at The BTS Center, followed by reflections from program participants, scholars, and climate practitioners who helped shape the research. Together they addressed the question at the heart of All That Is Within Us: not whether congregations should engage the climate crisis, but whether faith communities have something irreplaceable to offer that no solar company, policymakers, or tech startup can replicate.
The answer that emerged from the research, surprising even to its authors, was a resounding yes.
Why the Answer Matters
All That Is Within Us arrives at a moment when both the church and the climate movement are searching for new sources of motivation, meaning, and staying power.
This report is not a five-step greening guide. It is an invitation to reframe what success looks like in the face of existential threats — to move from solution-seeking toward vocation-claiming and from institutional anxiety toward grounded faithfulness.
Whether you lead a congregation or denominational governing body, or you simply find yourself asking what work is meaningfully yours in a climate-changed world: this report is for you.
About the Principal Researcher
Ben Yosua-Davis serves on The BTS Center staff team as Director of Applied Research, where he shapes the organization’s posture of “rigorous and reverent curiosity,” focused on research that supports and shares the wisdom of on-the-ground practitioners working in a climate-changed world. He is a graduate of Drew Theological Seminary and Colby College.
Previously, he lived in Haverhill, MA, where he co-planted a new church called The Vine, one of the earliest mainline missional church expressions in the country, and hosted a podcast entitled, “Reports From the Spiritual Frontier,” which chronicled the day-to-day lives of leaders innovating new forms of spiritual community.
Ben is a Maine native and now lives on Chebeague Island, Maine with his wife, Melissa, his son Michael, and his daughters, Genevieve and Emeline; where he directs the community chorus and delivers tins of cookies to unsuspecting neighbors.
Meet the Respondents
Susanne C. Moser (she/her/hers) is a geographer (Ph.D. 1997, Clark University) who works nationally and internationally as an independent scholar and consultant from a base in western Massachusetts. Her work with government agencies, non-profits, foundations, and other researchers and consultants focuses on adaptation to climate change, science-policy interactions, effective climate change communication, and psycho-social resilience in the face of the traumatic and transformative challenges associated with climate change.
Susi is the editor of two award-winning edited volumes, one on successful adaptation to climate change; the other on how to communicate climate change. She is a prolific writer, an inspiring speaker and has served on scientific advisory boards for Future Earth, the International Science Council, the US National Research Council and has contributed to the IPCC and US national climate assessments. In all of her work, she seeks to embody and enact her deepest calling and thus to serve the world and Earth community from a spiritual, soul-anchored center.
Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Leadership and Formation and Director of the Office of Professional Formation at Iliff School of Theology. In addition, she is coordinator of the Certificate in Latinx Studies for the Iliff/University of Denver Joint PhD in the Study of Religion. Kristina’s current research interests lie at the intersection of congregational leadership, community formation, and decolonial praxis, exploring questions about why and how liberative change unfolds.
She is the author of Unraveling Religious Leadership: Power, Authority, and Decoloniality (Fortress, 2024) and co-editor of Explore: Vocational Discovery in Ministry (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), as well as a regional advisor for the Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations (EPIC) National Research Project. Kristina is an Ordained Minister in the United Church of Christ. Her most important work in the world, however, is being a tati (aunt) to two beautiful nephews and a partner to Ali. Kristina resides in Aurora, Colorado, on the unceded tribal lands of the Cheyenne and Ute peoples.
Rev. Dr. Allen Ewing-Merrill serves as Executive Director of The BTS Center, a Maine-based nonprofit, growing from the deep roots of the former Bangor Theological Seminary. Ordained in the Methodist tradition, Allen served local churches for 20 years, and as founding Executive Director of Hope Acts, a Portland, Maine nonprofit focusing on housing asylum seekers and helping immigrants succeed. In addition to nonprofit and congregational leadership, he has extensive experience in advocacy, direct action, and faith-based organizing around issues of justice and equity. He is deeply engaged in conversations about faith-rooted action, about spiritual responses to the climate crisis, and about the role of spiritual leaders and faith communities in a time of religious, social, and political turmoil. Allen lives in Portland, Maine with his spouse, Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill, and they are the parents of three daughters.
Meet the Storytellers
Peggy Drew currently lives in Virginia Beach. She was previously a Lay Speaker at the Main Street United Methodist Church in Nashua, NH and a leader in the creation care work of her church and of the NEAC conference. She helped organize a small experiment in Nashua in which her church and three other community organizations collaborated to plant urban pollinator garden beds. Peggy is a Global Ministries Earthkeeper. She is passionate about restorative nature-based solutions for the environment, in particular native planting for habitat restoration and pollinator support. She is currently filling her Virginia Beach yard with native pollinator plants while she discerns her next collaboration.
Maddie Ruth grew up in Harleysville, Pennsylvania, and is a graduate of Christopher Dock Mennonite High School. She earned her BA in Psychology and Music from Goshen College and her MA in School Psychology from Tufts University.
In 2014-2015, Maddie volunteered as an English Teacher and Peace Club organizer in Moundou, Chad, through Mennonite Central Committee’s SALT program. For the last decade, she has lived and worked out of Boston, Massachusetts – first as a College Affordability Advisor at a nonprofit college-access organization, and since 2018 as a Managing Search Coordinator at Isaacson, Miller, an executive recruiting firm that works to strengthen leadership across the civic sector, particularly in institutions of higher education.
Maddie attends the Mennonite Congregation of Boston, where she is a volunteer song leader, a member of the Social Ministries Committee, and the congregation’s Watershed Liaison. Maddie has enjoyed learning about and engaging with the work of the Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA) since 2024.
Heather Wolfe is a member of Taftsville Chapel Mennonite Fellowship in Vermont where she serves as the eco-minister. In 2020 she started a monthly Wild Church gathering on the land her family stewards. Wolfe feels a spiritual calling to the work of nurturing healthy relationships between people and creation as a way of living out love of God and love of neighbor. One way she does this is through her passion for everything from plot to plate. Complementary to her profession as a dietitian and health coach, Wolfe is a food enthusiast, homesteader and Vermont Master Composter who enjoys permaculture gardening, scratch cooking, and raising backyard chickens alongside her husband and three daughters. She writes for Anabaptist World’s online “Faithful Eating & Living” and co-authored MennoMedia’s first vegetarian cookbook- Sustainable Kitchen (Herald Press 2020).
Meet the Musicians
Fendrick & Peck (Madeline Fendrick and Brian Peck) have put together what can only be described as a variety show of songs, poems, and stories. Their music is all harmony…exquisitely crafted lyrics and composition with unbridled delight peppered throughout. Frequent instrument swapping, quirky tales of their exploits, and sudden dives into deep heart stuff will leave you bubbling at the end of a concert!