Invitation to Pollinate: Another Way to Bee the Church

As I whisked my two-year old daughter to the restroom at our local nature center, my eyes landed upon a fantastic discovery: on a windowsill, there was a flier on actions I could take to help pollinators. As many of you know, these wonderful creatures of God, who make one out of every three bites of food possible, have suffered staggering declines in recent years. As a result of my restroom trip discovery, I can now share with each of you a web address, so that you can also learn of ways to make a difference as caretakers of God’s creation: www.pollinator.org.

As I whisked my two-year old daughter to the restroom at our local nature center, my eyes landed upon a fantastic discovery: on a windowsill, there was a flier on actions I could take to help pollinators. As many of you know, these wonderful creatures of God, who make one out of every three bites of food possible, have suffered staggering declines in recent years. As a result of my restroom trip discovery, I can now share with each of you a web address, so that you can also learn of ways to make a difference as caretakers of God’s creation: www.pollinator.org.

Less than two years ago, this blog and its accompanying newsletter began with pollinators as its inspiration. The purpose of this digital platform has been the sharing of ideas and inspiration in the building of a faith-filled and faith-rooted movement for creation justice. For me, the greatest joy of this endeavor has been to enable local churches and leaders to share best practices, meaningful actions, and illuminating ideas, so that such gifts of insight might spread far and wide. During this past year, a highlight was to attend a Catholic conference for social movement organizations and to have a Catholic environmental leader tell me that they not only knew of the newsletter but were fans of its contents.

With that said, there are still a lot of churches and church members who want to become more fruitful in their environmental ministries and would want to receive this newsletter if they only knew of it. For this reason, the next 30 days are hereby devoted to reaching those in need of pollination. To do this, I need your help! You can become a super-star pollinator in four ways.

1)   Pollinate via email: Email your friends, colleagues, and church members, and invite them to sign-up at www.ucc.org/pollinator_sign_up.

2)   Pollinate via social media by sharing the sign-up link on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

3)   Pollinate as a clipboard evangelist. Make this sign-up sheet available at coffee hour. Then, send me the results by scanning or taking a smartphone photo of the sheet to email me. Snail mail works as well (700 Prospect Avenue East, Cleveland, OH 44115).

4)   Pollinate via your church’s communication vehicles. Invite people to subscribe in church newsletters, bulletins, social media pages, etc. To make this easier, download this sample invitation that you can forward to web administrators and office managers.

Together, we can bee the church and bee the difference we want to see in the world!