ELCA NEWS SERVICE

June 27, 2008  

ELCA Northern Illinois Synod Workshops Encourage 'Green Living'
08-102-LT*

     CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
(ELCA) Northern Illinois Synod (NIS) is offering workshops as
part of its efforts with Lutheran Outdoor Ministries Center
(LOMC), Oregon, Ill., to support the synod's Green Team and raise
environmental awareness in its congregations.
     The mission of the Green Team is to "encourage the
congregations, agencies and institutions of the NIS to become
'greener' communities by providing educational opportunities and
resources for showing how faith and ecology are interrelated and
teaching pragmatic means of becoming 'greener.'"
     "Sometimes we get fooled into thinking that we own stuff,"
said the Rev. Gary M. Wollersheim, bishop, ELCA Northern Illinois
Synod, Rockford.  "The Lutheran church teaches us that God is the
owner of all things; we are simply caretakers. In Psalm 24:1 we
read, 'The Earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world
and all who live in it.'  So let us care for all creation as if
it belonged to God, because it does."
     According to Russ Senti, LOMC executive director, earlier
this year at LOMC, 138 NIS pastors and lay leaders attended
"Green Congregation Training" led by David M. Rhoads, professor
of New Testament, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.
     A follow-up presentation was given at the synod's
Congregational Resourcing Event, Kishwaukee College, Malta, Ill.,
prompting subsequent workshops throughout the synod.  The
presentation covered topics from oil use and methane gas
production to recycling and geothermal energy.
     The synod's eight mission gatherings this fall will all
carry a "green" theme, and members of the Green Team are
organizing workshops to present to each conference, Senti said.
"The big push of education will be done later this year in the
mission gatherings that (Wollersheim) has invited us to lead," he
said.  "The content of these workshops is still being created."
     The Green Team will meet Nov. 1 to discuss outcomes from the
LOMC "Green Congregation Training."
-- -- --
     Information about the NIS Green Team is at
http://www.nisynod.org/green/ on the Web.

*Luke Tatge is a senior journalism major at Augustana College,
Sioux Falls, S.D.  This summer he is an intern with the ELCA News
Service.

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