South Church Green Team - Meeting Notes 2014-04-10

South Church Green Team Meeting  2014-04-10              regular meetings 2^nd Thursday of the month

Attendees: Mark Bohrer, Candy Dann, Bill Schroeder, Steve Fink, Fran Fink, Iric Rex, Terry Ebner

1) Green Children’s Service - theme of sustaining God’s creation –  Sunday May 11th

-       Terry Ebner & Iric Rex to lead

-       This is the next regularly planned children’s service

-       To be held in Fellowship Hall or possibly outside

-       Lots of good ideas gathered re: songs, asking each kid to think of places to love & protect

-       Iric & Terry have notes

-       Other Green Team members ready to help

2) Sustainable House of Worship (SHOW) Saturday, May 17

SHOW stands for Sustainable House of Worship, and it's a program put on by Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light.  It's a workshop with presentations and Q&A focused on helping faith groups reduce their energy consumption, hence living out their faith, saving money and operating more sustainably.

The cost of the program from MIP&L is $700. Seeds of Faith at South Church agreed to underwrite. Our goal is to recoup as much of this cost as possible from other supporting organizations. We already have commitment from American Baptist for $100; a few other churches may also commit. We're trying to line up a couple of appropriate corporate sponsors. There will be an admission fee of $10 per attendee.

Fellowship hall – signup & coffee at 8:30, program from 9AM to 12:30 PM, optional lunch to follow

See Latest Flyer attached

ACTION: all – see list below - the main effort is to contact local houses of worship to signup attendees

ACTION: Fran – Lunch - investigate inexpensive good options for food

Church Contact List	Who – and who to call
Temple Emmanuel	Steve
contact Brian Major & Greg Sebasky to find out their church connections	Steve F
Grace Chapel	Steve - Andover Baptist – Steve – will call minister
Greek Orthodox	Steve
Grace Chapel	Steve – call Steve and Jan Hathaway
West Parish Andover	Bill – contact Art, Fran to contact Suetta
St. Michaels  North Andover	– Candy
Trinitarian Church North Andover	Candy – call Vickie Keane
Hindu Temple	Candy – call Karuthiga
Faith Lutheran	Fran
St. Augustine	Fran – contact Suzy
Ballardvale UCC	Fran
Free Christian Church	Fran – Dave Dargy
Methuen Mosque	Fran – Imam
Rolling Ridge  Conf Center Rev. Larry Peacock	Iric will contact
UU – North Andover	Mark – contact Charles Leinbach, ask Debbie
UU – Andover	Mark – start with Heather Bond
Church?	Bill – Christopher Jenkins
New England Bible Church Andover
Korean Church Andover
Christian Science Church Andover
St. Patrick’s Lawrence

3) Watch Party for Years of Living Dangerously

Series starts on Showtime & YouTube 4/13 – tabled until next time

            ACTION: Mark to notify SC Green Team mailing list

Watch party - Tabled - talk at next meeting for possibly next month

           

4) "Green opportunities" on the horizon for both the parsonage and the church - Candy

Energy audit at the parsonage and a lead inspection.  There are items under discussion that would warm our hearts as well as warm the parsonage such as:

-       replacement windows, attic insulation, blocking off the ceiling fan, installing more efficient heating for a room over the garage, renovating a bathroom which will allow for full wall insulation for that room at least, and some minor cosmetic improvements. 

The Trustees will be asking the congregation as a whole to raise the money to do this work but there are some groups (Trustees, Financial Summit participants) in the church being asked to take a leadership role and get the ball rolling with early commitments.  I would like to ask our Green Team to be one of those groups. 

5) Ongoing Topics

Monthly themes – “Green Thing of the Month” at Fellowship hour << tabled – no event planned for April

-       Monthly Green themes

·   August – re-usable lunchboxes

·   September – local and garden harvests, composting, local farms, CSA’s

·   October – weatherizing / energy sealing, energy programmable thermostats

·   November – Green Xmas decorations, living trees

·   Jan – lighting, LED’s CFLs, timers, alternatives to salt & ice control

·   Feb – appliances, Energy Star

·   Mar – spring cleaning products

·   Apr – Green lawn care & gardening

·   May – plant trees to takeup C, shade house, invasive species

·   Jun – water conservation, farmers markets, water bottles, rain barrels

·   Jul – vacation offsets

Divestiture discussion < last discussed in October 2013

-       Candy invited Janet to talk about UCC Divestiture

o   Will invite Trustees of Trust Funds

-       Can this lead to a church-wide discussion on divestiture for each household?

-       Postpone until February

Witnessing for Creation

- include MACUCC program "Witnessing for Creation" in services on a regular basis

See how kids can be involved

Plan to discuss with new minister

A Global Warming Primer in 15 Minutes

A Global Warming Primer in 15 Minutes
Presentation from the South Church Harvest Dinner

October 19, 2013

On October 19th, the SC Green Team hosted a vegetarian/low impact pot-luck dinner and cook-off in fellowship hall at the church. It was preceded by an Indian food cooking demonstration by guest participant Anil Navkal.

About 35-40 people of all ages turned out, and got to sample some tasty vegetarian dishes. A good time was had by all.

After dinner, I gave this short presentation to the group. My goal was to present some basics on global warming and how we can solve it - and do this in 15 minutes. Much of the content came from a presentation I got at the Climate Reality Training I took in Chicago this past summer. This training was put together by the Climate Reality Project, founded by Al Gore.  It was an inspiring and invigorating 3 days, where I met many wonderful people who were committed to protecting our common planet. There were more than 1200 people at the session, and they came from all 50 states in the US and more than 40 countries around the world. A lot of great ideas were shared.

In my presentation here (see Power Point or pdf links below), I wasn't quite able to stay to my time limit goal - it ran about 23 minutes (as timed by my son Nick). But I hope it's still a good, brief summary of the climate change problem facing us, and a view on what we need to do.

I wanted to share it with everyone. If you have any questions, please let me know.  For more information on climate change and global warming, look at the "Start Here - Climate Reader" link on the right of this page.

Peace,
Mark
Presentation (PowerPoint)
Presentation (PDF)

Green Team committee meeting 05-Sep-2013

South Church Green Team Meeting 05 Sep 2013

Attendees: Mark Bohrer, Iric Rex, Candy Dann, Steve Fink

Goals / Plans for the year

1)    Monthly themes – “Green Thing of the Month” at Fellowship hour

-       Start in September either on Homecoming (9/8) or next Sunday 9/15

-      ACTION: Candy will ask John if 9/8 would work.

-       September – local and garden harvests, composting, local farms

-       Candy will lead this – bring worm composting, make a list of local farmstands. Mark and Steve to help

-       ACTION: Fran – resend list of themes

2)    Harvest Dinner

-       Scheduled for Oct 19^th

-       Same dinner organization and favorites categories and contest as last year

-       Mark to do a short slide show and presentation with latest science + action we can take to solve it - based on Green Team and Climate Reality Project (Al Gore) slides.

-       ACTION: Mark – email previous year’s plan

3)    Divestiture discussion

-       First step will be at October Trustees meeting

-       Candy invited Janet to talk about UCC Divestiture

-       Trustees of Trust Funds are invited

-       Can this lead to a church-wide discussion on divestiture for each household?

4)    Attic Insulation – next action of Energy Efficiency at church

-       ACTION: Candy – ask one of Trustees to talk to Iric about how this could be done, if it would work for our church architecture, and if cost/benefit makes it a good choice

5)    Sunday School – develop a Green Theme program

-       First idea – develop Children’s service program - – possibly several times in year

-       This can help fill in weeks to relieve shortage of Sunday school teachers

-       ACTION: Iric will talk to Terry Ebner

-       Idea – develop program with high school/middle school Sunday school students

6)    Climate Reader

-       Mark launched it: http://southchurchgreenteam.blogspot.com

-       How can we get it into people’s attention?

-       Ideas on promotion - Kids to promote it with handouts at fellowship??

-       Plans to post and share material (climate action & going green topics) with link every week in church newsletter

7)    Host a “Solarize Andover” event to work with Anil Navkal on the new state program that simplifies and reduces cost of solar installations

8)    Christmas gift table – start planning ahead

-       LED lights