At our Spring Congregational Meeting, we announced the formation of a new task force that will guide our congregation through a process to consider whether the United Church of Gainesville should become a Climate Justice Congregation.

A “Climate Justice Congregation” is a designation through our national denomination, the United Church of Christ. It is similar to our Open and Affirming designation. To become a Climate Justice Congregation, we are asked to follow a process that will lead us to creating and adopting a Climate Justice Covenant, which will help guide all of the work and worship that we do, ensuring that we keep our call to be caretakers of God’s creation and activists for environmental equity at the heart of all we do. We are excited about this process, and we look forward to leading you through it.

Our task force is led by Jim Harper, and includes Sherrie Raymond, Wayne Raymond, Jeff Shapiro, Jackie Davis, Connie Caldwell, Sally Kimberly and Malcolm Sanford. If you are inspired to join us and help guide our process, we would love to add you. We would also love to have (at least) two youth representatives as we undertake this important work. If you are interested, please email me at andyb@ucgainesville.org

Our process will begin in September, and every month we will have guiding questions to consider through our boards, committees, worship experiences, small groups, seminars and outreach and justice projects. We will keep our guiding questions in front of you, and will solicit your thoughts and input through community discussions, chalk-talk opportunities, and through your board and committee work. Our guiding questions will help us craft a realistic, measurable and achievable covenant that will inform all of our lives, as individuals, as a congregation and as participants and caretakers of the wider world. Our hope is to have a draft covenant for you to consider in April 2023, with a possible congregational vote in May 2023. 

We hope you will engage with us in this process, because every voice matters and every idea is worth considering, and we look forward to working with all of you as we consider this important issue and stance.