"Now the green blade rises from the buried grain" | |
An online publication of the EcoFaith Network NE-MN Synod with Saint Paul Area Synod Care of Creation | |
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Earth’s Cries, Earth’s Call
Becoming Midwives of Hope for the Healing of Creation
Saturday, April 5, 2025
First Lutheran, Duluth and Online
Registration Now Open!
Lead speaker: Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda
Presenter: Dr. Kelly Sherman-Conroy
The ever-increasing cries of creation in crisis could easily overwhelm us.
Instead let them serve as a clarion call to help bring life out of potential death, to help give renewed birth to all creation, to all creatures including ourselves.
Join in becoming midwives of hope and healing.
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EcoFaith Communication Coordinator Changes | |
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Dear Green Blades Rising Readers,
Nature's work is largely hidden from us. So is the work that creates these Green Blades Rising newsletters and other messages. For over two and half years, Rachel Wyffels has edited Green Blades Rising as the EcoFaith Network Communication Coordinator, a position created by the Northeastern Minnesota Synod's EcoFaith Network in collaboration with the Saint Paul Area Synod's Care for Creation. Even as a full time seminary student, Rachel has brought EcoFaith communication to a new level, producing Green Blades Rising, creating the website ecofaithnetwork.org, posting consistently on our Facebook page and generating publicity for the annual EcoFaith Summit. In addition, she has been an active participant in leadership teams in both synods, registrar and participant in EcoFaith Summits and EcoFaith leadership retreats. Her energy, vision, and creativity contributed to the early stages of the NE MN Synod's Pollinator Project. She also co-hosted the 2022 zoom workshop series on caring for creation in your congregation. She has also been a writer for the Green Blades Preaching Roundtable. Rachel has left the communication coordinator position in order to focus fully on her final semester at Luther Seminary as she completes her M. Div. and looks ahead to internship. For Rachel's many gifts shared with us, her commitment to EcoFaith and Word and Sacrament ministry, we give thanks! You will continue as one of our companions.
And now, we are excited to welcome Pastor Beth Pottratz as our new EcoFaith Network Communication Coordinator. The role is growing, and Pastor Beth is bringing her own set of remarkable gifts to this work. Having served two congregations, she approaches this role not just as a set of tasks, but as a ministry. She knows that EcoFaith communication takes place in order to nurture communities of faith in care for Creation, and to strengthen us is the knowledge that we are not alone in responding to this calling. She has jumped into attending the meetings of NE MN Synod EcoFaith, SPAS Care of Creation, and the EcoFaith Summit planning team. Beth is already putting her fluency with digital communication into action on behalf of the EcoFaith Network. She has set up registration for the EcoFaith Summit and begun publicity for it. while still learning the basics of the role. She is a font of new ideas for helping us be in better contact with congregations, camps, and campuses and their communities. Beth, we are delighted to have you in this growing role amid the challenges of this time!
In the Spirit of green blades rising,
Pastor Kristin Foster and Pastor Dave Carlson
Co-chairs of the NE MN Synod EcoFaith Network
Pastor Bob Lehner
Chair of the Saint Paul Area Synod Care of Creation Work Group
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A Note from Rachel Wyffels: | |
It’s been a great privilege to work with all of you for the last 2 1/2 years as Communication Coordinator. I am grateful for all the relationships we built being in community to serve the whole creation. I am so glad to hear that Beth is taking on this role as I concentrate on classes at seminary, and I know you have a strong future with her.
Thank you all!
Warmly,
Rachel
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A Note from Rev. Beth Pottratz: | |
Grace and peace be with you! My name is Rev. Beth Pottratz. I am so blessed to be serving you as the Communication Coordinator for the EcoFaith Network. Since being ordained in 2016, I have served in various capacities in the Northeastern MN Synod as a called pastor, contract pastor, pulpit supply, and as a hospice and hospital chaplain. I grew up in North St. Paul, MN, earned my undergrad degree in teaching from Winona State, and earned my Masters of Divinity degree from Luther Seminary. Before starting ministry, I worked as a Spanish teacher in a high school in the west Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis.
I live with my husband and our 4 daughters (ages 15, 12, 1.5, and 3mo), 3 dogs (two gordon setters), and 15 chickens in Motley, MN. In this season of life, my primary calling is to stay at home mom, to which I am grateful to also add EcoFaith ministry. When both babies nap at the same time and the house is in (relative) order, I enjoy handicraft hobbies like knitting, spinning, pine needle basket making, and hardanger and hand embroidery.
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Lenten Letter Challenge 2025
from Lutheran Advocacy - MN
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We need you – your congregation, campus, youth group, confirmation class, WELCA group, church committee, or whatever – to be in contact with your Minnesota state representative and senator! It is in relationship with their constituents that our legislators know what we care about, and why.
Letters can be written during a special time in worship, before or after a meal, as part of a forum or in small groups. It is effective to collect the letters as an offering to God, and to pray that legislators will be moved by them. Remember that we do this as part of our faith, acting as God’s advocacy ambassadors for love of neighbor and creation. Notecards, rather than big impersonal pieces of paper, help make the letters/notes feel more personal to the legislator, and assist in the relationship-building process. Download the PDF or Word document, and print each issue page back-to-back with the corresponding sample letter page. Or, send the pages out in advance and encourage people to bring their letters to your next meeting or gathering to dedicate and send them jointly.
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NE-MN Synod EcoFaith Partner Congregations 2025 | |
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Dear companions in care for the whole Creation,
We invite you to join with your sibling congregations as a 2025 EcoFaith Network Congregation Partner by praying for the Creation and those who work to repair it, sharing with us your creation care story and making a financial contribution of any amount.Your Partner contribution helps fund EcoFaith micro-grants, the EcoFaith Summit, the Green Blades Rising Newsletter, the ecofaithnetwork.org website, and the stipend for the EcoFaith Network Communication Coordinator.
Become a 2025 NE MN EcoFaith Network Partner Congregation!
· Pray for the Creation and those who work to protect it.
· Seek to include the care of Creation into all aspects of your ministry.
· Make a contribution to for the support and growth of the EcoFaith Network.
· Send members to the April 5 EcoFaith Summit
· Help us share your Creation care story
See how other Congregations are Caring for Creation in Northeastern MN
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View from the Pollinator Plot
by Kurt Hoffman, Our Savior's Lutheran Church, Outing MN
Pollinator Plot Steering Committee of the NE MN Synod EcoFaith Network
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I am a year round resident in The Big Woods of Northern Minnesota. Having grown up here, I am not afraid of the bitter cold, and I actually worry if we don’t go through a winter some periods of knee deep snow! ‘It builds character,’ I quip.
Many pollinators winter in the north country too We should consider their welfare, as well. While we don’t see bees, moths, and butterflies in the cold months, they are here, overwintering in the mulch, in the fallen trees, and the stumps around our yards. Leave them in their hibernating environs!
Enjoy this quiet time, with the snow blanketing our yards and gardens, insulting our world. our pollinator neighbors. This snow is much needed. While providing insulation now, it will soak into the ground when the air warms. The spring melt will nourish the earth and the plants that will provide our pollinators with a new season of activity!
See on our website
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Stories & News
from Congregations, Campuses, Camps, Synods, & Communities
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Peace Lutheran Church in Pigeon Falls, WI is a Certified Cool Congregation!
Peace Lutheran Church in Pigeon Falls, Wisconsin, NWSWI, is a national IPL Certified Cool Congregation at the 80% level and above for their solar and geothermal installations. Could your congregation be Certified as Cool as Peace in Pigeon Falls?
Read the whole article from Interfaith Power and Light here.
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NE MN EcoFaith Network
We’re coming to Your Conference Assembly!
Expect to hear from members of the EcoFaith Network’s leadership team and its Pollinator Plot Steering Committee at your conference assembly, highlighting the EcoFaith Summit, EcoFaith Partners, microgrants, and the growth of pollinator sanctuaries across the synod.
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NE MN EcoFaith Microgrants for 2025 now available!
Each year, the EcoFaith Network provides microgrants to congregations, camps, and campus ministries in the NE-MN synod for projects related to creation care. Projects in a variety of areas are eligible for funding in pursuit of the following mission goals addressed by EcoFaith Network efforts: worship, education, congregational life, buildings and grounds, community action, and other creation care centered activities. Grants are available in amounts between $100-$2000.
Applications need to be received 30 days prior to the EcoFaith Network Leadership Team monthly meeting to allow for consideration during the upcoming meeting.
Learn more and find application materials here
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Worshipping with the Whole Creation | |
Green Blades Preaching Roundtable | |
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Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
February 2, 2025
Rev. Jonathan Dodson
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30
A Prophetic Call for Climate Justice
Jesus’ words in Luke 4 challenge us to persevere in the face of resistance. As pastors and leaders, we are called to be prophetic voices, advocating for sustainable practices, equitable policies, and a renewed commitment to the stewardship of God’s creation. Even when our message is met with rejection, we can find strength in knowing that we are part of God’s redemptive work, becoming midwives of hope to a world in desperate need of renewal.
Read the full reflection here.
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Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
February 9, 2025
Kristin M. Peterson
Isaiah 6:1-8 (9-13)
Psalm 138
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11
We too are hearing God’s call to speak up. How should we respond when it seems like those around us have minds that are dull, ears that do not hear, eyes that do not see? How do we get them to look with their eyes, listen with their ears, comprehend with their minds so that all of creation might be healed? As of January 20, Inauguration Day, it appears that our challenge has just become more challenging. Many of the steps we have taken are already being reversed. Where will we find the hope and strength to keep going?
Read the full reflection here
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Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
February 16, 2025
Rev. Gary Hedding
Jeremiah 17:5-10
Psalm 1
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Luke 6:17-26
The connections with God’s rich planet are right in the texts. Trees, streams, and fruitfulness are God’s gifts of life - even desert plants can be seen to thrive if in more challenging conditions. When humans choose not to work alongside of an environment but wrench it into something it is not, then we are seeking riches and overly full plates, and fail to care for the way we impoverish the land, waters, air, and soil. That does not go unnoticed by God. God’s Holy Spirit calls us to be presences in the world that, like Jesus in the Luke text, encourage thriving life and healing - not just amongst humans but also among God’s beloved Creation.
Read the full reflection here
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Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
February 23, 2025
Rev. Paul Brown
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Luke 6:27-38
Read the full reflection here (available soon)
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Connections with Creation
February
© 2024 Sundays & Seasons, reprinted with permission
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Book Discussion Opportunities | |
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Through the College of St. Scholastica, Pastor Dave Carlson of Gloria Dei in Duluth facilitates two monthly book discussion groups, to which all are welcome:
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Earth Harmony, Thursday, February 6 - Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological Economic Vocation by Cynthia Moe-Lobeda (2013). Meeting 8:00-9:00 a.m. in person at Chester Creek Cafe in Duluth.
Building a Moral Economy Book Discussion Series (Fortress Press)
All discussion groups are on zoom. Join the one that best fits your schedule, even if already begun
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8:00-9:00a.m. 3rd Wednesdays, February 19, March 19, April 16 - Discussion Host: The Rev. David Carlson, D.Min., pastor of Gloria Dei, Duluth and co-chair of the NE MN Synod EcoFaith Network. To register, email: pastor@gloriadeiduluth.org
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12:00 to 1:00p.m., 4th Wednesdays, January 22, February 26, March 26 - Discussion Host: The Rev. Emily Meyer, Executive Director of The Ministry Lab and member of the Saint Paul Area Synod Care of Creation Work Group Register at https://theministrylab.org/
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7:00 – 8:00p.m. 4th Thursdays, January 23, February 27, March 27 - Discussion Hosts: The Rev. Greg Kaufmann and Luke Pederson, Synod Creation Care Team Chairperson, Northwest Synod of Wisconsin. To register, email: gregkaufmann@me.com
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Book Corner
Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown
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At the global climate conference in Paris in 2015 (COP21), the nations of the world agreed to take necessary action to prevent average global temperature from getting more than 1.5°C warmer than it was at the beginning of the industrial age. In 2024, we reached 1.5°C of warming, and we see little sign that global temperature will stop rising. Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, by Andreas Malm and Wim Carton, is the recent history of how that came to happen. It happened with the introduction of “overshoot” into the economic negotiations around global climate change.
Overshoot is the concept certain economists have coined to describe a trajectory in which we blow past 1.5°C for the time being, and then at some undefined point in the future we will have the technologies available to start removing carbon from the atmosphere and eventually bring average global temperature back down to the target of 1.5°. Those economists argue that overshoot will be less disruptive economically than trying to end the burning of fossil fuels in the near term. Of course, their argument says nothing of the economic disruption that continued global warming in the near term will have on island nations, coastal communities, tropical zones, and other parts of the world that are already bearing the brunt of climate change.
Read the whole book review here
Find your next favorite book with EcoFaith's Book Corner
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Building a Moral Economy: by Cynthia Moe-Lobeda,
EcoFaith Summit 2025 Lead Speaker
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Building a Moral Economy
Pathways for People of Courage
by Cynthia Moe-Lobeda
Lead Speaker at the 2025
EcoFaith Summit of the Upper Midwest
Enjoy a 2-minute preview: Book Trailer
Early praise for Building a Moral Economy
“Cynthia Moe-Lobeda welcomes us, her readers, into a personal conversation about despair and hope, drawing us close with her own honest voice. This poetic volume resonates with emotional intelligence about readers’ feelings about extreme inequality and the accelerating climate crisis, and offers prompts for reflection and action. It’s an enlivening and empowering read, joyfully offering stories and voices of people of many faiths and nations who are carrying out varied efforts for planetary healing.”
Betsy Leondar-Wright, Author of Missing Class: Strenghtening social Movement Groups by Seeing Class Cultures and The Color of Money: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide
“Economics has famously been called “the dismal science”. Who knew, then, that a book about building a moral economy could be engaging, inviting, inspiring, constructive, pastoral, prophetic, therapeutic, and rich with stories? This one is, and it’s Moe-Lobeda’s finest writing and most important project to date.”
Larry Rasmussen, Lead speaker at the 2024 EcoFaith Summit Author of The Planet You Inherit: Letters to My Grandchildren When Uncertainty’s a Sure Thing
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Save 30% on the book through Fortress Press with the discount code EcoFaith25. Offer valid on domestic orders only through April 30, 2025. | |
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Check out the Green Lectionary Podcast!
Creation Justice Ministries produces a podcast that it describes as "a conversation on scripture with a creation justice lens." Check it out here!
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Trying to figure out how Faith and Science work together every week?
Listen to The Faith and Science Podcast, following the Revised Common Lectionary each week and try to answer that question. It can be found at wherever podcasts are found or at
https://thefaithandsciencepodcast.podbean.com/
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Read. Watch. Listen. Share! | |
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EcoFaith Network
NEMN Synod
Living out God's call to be stewards of the earth for the sake of the whole creation.
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St. Paul Area Synod
Care of Creation
We are called to care for God's creation as a central part of our Christian faith and identity.
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