This past Sunday Terra Nova Church launched its newest initiative, The Eden Project. The Eden Project is a joint effort between EXTERNAL:Community Extension and INTERNAL:Stewardship here at Terra Nova. The underlying vision for the Eden Project is to seek after how mankind should demonstrate proper dominion over God’s creation as commissioned by God in Genesis Chapter 1.
To this end, we launched Eden Project [version 1.0], which consisted of a recycling and a ride sharing initiative. Discussions are ongoing as to where the Eden Project is headed and what [version 2.0] will look like. Some early thoughts include the following:
- transition the power supply for Terra Nova’s office space to a sustainable energy provider.
- lobbying efforts to aid the City of Troy in developing a commercial recycling program city wide.
- targeting, and partnering with local non-profits engaged already in various local environmental initiatives
We are looking to you, the Terra Nova community to share your ideas for [version 2.0] of the Eden Project as well. Please feel free to post comments with your thoughts about various initiatives that you can envision. If you know of good work being done by local groups that we could partner with as well, please feel to share that as well in a post below or contact Paul Gordon.
Thanks to all of you – lets engage in our part to allow God’s creation to continue to reveal his wonders to all.
I enjoyed hearing your comments last week on this project.
I agree that some of the initial steps that you guys are taking are in the right direction. It is very important to take the necessary steps to be a good steward of God’s creation.
My suggestion for this project is to broaden the scope of where we should practice good stewardship. If we look into our lives, the greatest opportunities to be good stewards of God’s creation come in the work place. This is where the majority of resources are used.
Each of us has been blessed by God with a way to support ourselves and our families through our jobs. No matter what we do in the workplace, we are all able to affect the resources we individually consume (power, materials, etc) as well as the resources that our employers consume. For some people the opportunities may as simple as minimizing the amount of paper we use, shutting our computers off at the end of the work day, and working hard to maximize our personal efficiency in the hours that we are given to work by our employers. For others, the scope can be much larger.
As an example, during my time in Albany we were able to improve the efficiency of the quarry operation by 20%. This resulted in a net savings of more than 100,000 gallons of diesel fuel per year while still mining the same amount of rock.
We can all make a mark on our work lives when it comes to the stewardship of creation.
It would be great for you guys to develop an educational program (even possibly some brainstorming groups) that would focus on how we as Christians can be good stewards in our workplace.
It’s too bad that I am moving. I would have loved to help with this one!
Dave-
I told you you shouldn’t leave! Thanks for the comments and those are the ideas we are looking for. We will likely be establishing a “think tank” for this and are welcoming ideas and people to help out.
Keep the posts and ideas coming everyone.