This is a Christian retreat template for Stewardship and Reconnection: with God, self, others, and all of Creation. It is suitable for groups of approximately 8 - 20 participants attending multi-day reflective spiritual retreats with elements of ecological immersion. The template has modular sections. You can choose how to use it:

• in weekend (2 night/3 day) retreats,
• in a series of one-day or evening meetings,
• as daily sessions of a longer (week or 10-day) retreat,
• with one theme as a starting point for a month-long or Lenten learning focus

 Download PDF (1.4 MB)

This pdf document is a presentation for use with your faith community or garden team to kickstart or support your community garden program. It is a companion to the Edible Community Garden Guide.

 Download presentation (4.5 MB)

 Download one-page gardening group facilitation sheet (258 kB)

Explore the connection between your faith and the health of the Earth, and create an action plan to begin making changes and encourage one another. This is a single session workshop guide for introducing the Greening Sacred Spaces program to your faith community. Participants focus on aspects of daily life, such as food, home, place of worship to explore how they may make small and significant changes and apply their spirituality in practical ways to reduce energy consumption and help care for creation.The goals of the session include:

• Exploring the relevance of “greening” to our way of life
• Exploring how “greening” sacred spaces is relevant to this faith community
• Exploring the connection between our faith and the health of the Earth
• Exploring how our beliefs become concrete in our behaviour
• Exploring possibilities to make our homes, lives, and sacred spaces greener
• Creating an action plan to begin making changes
• Encouraging one another to change

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Climate, Faith and Action: Presentation to Chinese Pastoral Council
Feb 19, 2020

Presenter: Kirthan Sathananthan

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Recorded May 23, 2019

Archdeacon Michael Patterson and parishioner Mac Morrison of Anglican Church of the Incarnation (Oakville, ON) share their faith community's journey from needing to replace their HVAC system to deciding to go bold and implement a geothermal system instead.

Watch the free webinar to learn more about how the Anglican Church of the Incarnation went Geothermal:

Download options include:

• Entire webinar
• Individual pdf presentations:

Download Webinar to your desktop (50 minutes)

 Download Geothermal Presentation

Building Automatic Systems Lunch 'n' Learn Webinar
Jan. 30, 2019

Presenter: Murtaz Abid, C.E.T.

Learn more about controlling the heating, cooling and ventilation in your faith buildings. This subject is somewhat complex, and thus requires specific knowledge and expertise. Murtaza a.k.a Taz, a Certified Engineering Technologist, talks about ways to save energy by controlling your building through technology, whether it be smart programmable thermostats or smart self-sustained Automation Systems, or everything in between.

 Download PDF (1.2 MB)

 Listen to the audio recording.

May 10, 2016
Faith communities are increasingly looking for ways to grow their mission, with their congregation and their community. We call this "Mission per Square Foot"; it involves looking at re-purposing the faith building, in order to better accommodate the needs of the congregation, the surrounding community, and community partners.

The portion of the webinar posted here is the PowerPoint presentation on "Best practices for marketing to and retaining long term tenants." The presenter was Kendra Fry.

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This presentation was given by Lenore Fahrig at the Diocesan Synod of the Anglican Diocese of Ontario, held in Kingston November 3-5, 2016.

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November 24, 2015
With support from Live Green Toronto , Olive Tree Foundation, Evergreen CityWorks, Wellbeing Toronto, City of Toronto’s Environment & Energy Division, City of Toronto's Office of Emergency Management OEM), and the University of Toronto’s Geography & Planning department, Faith & the Common Good conducted a 2015 proof of concept project to understand how Toronto’s diverse faith communities could be better utilized as local service centers during extreme weather emergencies. This presentation was the culmination of that effort.

Presenters:

• Moderator: Dave MacLeod
• Donna Lang, Faith & the Common Good
• Adam Garcia
• Adriana Chang, University of Toronto
• Boris Rosolak, City of Toronto OEM

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The cost of acting as a local extreme weather resilience site is one of the principal concerns for faith communities. Can we afford to serve vulnerable residents during extreme weather emergencies? What kind of capital and operating costs does this work entail? University of Toronto's Geography & Planning graduate students helped us look at this question in 2015. The result is this PowerPoint presentation.

 Download PDF (2.6 MB)

Recorded January 22, 2018
We were delighted to welcome Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, Dr. Dianne Saxe, to the webinar launch of our new Faith Building Energy Benchmarking program.  For those of you who attended, we hope that you found Dianne Saxe’s talk inspirational, concerning the moral, physical, and economic urgency of meaningful action on climate change.

Download options include:

• Entire webinar
• Individual pdf presentations:
  
  • Dianne Saxe presentation — Facing Climate Change
  • Faith & the Common Good presentation — Energy Benchmarking
  • Toronto Hydro presentation — Energy Saving Programs for your Place of Worship
  • Enbridge presentation — Minimizing the Cost Impact of Cap and Trade through Energy Efficiency

 Watch and listen to webinar (1 hour, 23 minutes)

 Download individual presentations

November 18, 2015
PRESENTERS:
Alix Taylor is the RAIN Marketing and Communications Coordinator for Green Communities Canada. She has been involved in community environmental engagement for over 10 years. For the last 6 years Alix’s focus has been on engaging the public and municipalities in urban and rural water issues.

Andrea Prazmowski is the former Faith Formation Leader at Kitchissippi United Church in Ottawa. Prior to that she established the Ecological Christianity Circle at the church, and has been active in local environmental initiatives since 1990.

Alan Coughlin is in charge of the Green Passion ministry at St John the Evangelist Anglican Church in Kitchener, where he helped champion the Rainwater cistern project.

 View the PDF

August 30, 2011
Background: The Community Energy Partnerships Program (CEPP) was a program of the Province of Ontario to assist community groups with new renewable energy projects.

Download options include the following pdf presentations:

• Greening Sacred Spaces — Introduction to solar
• Solar Projects by Faith Communities — Monastery of Mount Carmel
• The Neighbourhood Solar Project — Neighbourhood Unitarian Universalist Congration
• Guelph Solar Community Cooperative — St. Ignatius Jesuit Centre

 Download presentations

October 6, 2015
Description: Does your faith group want to help build a clean energy economy for your children and grandchildren? Is your faith-based organization looking for an ethical, low carbon, and socially responsible return on investment? This webinar described how your community can generate energy from the sun, including roof-top solar success stories and cooperative bonds and shares. The webinar explored both the ethical and the business case for engaging in Ontario’s Feed in Tariff program to generate electricity from the sun. The PowerPoint presentation from this webinar is available for download.

Presenters: 
Steve Dyck, President of Guelph Solar www.guelphsolar.net
Brian Unrau, President of Community Energy Development Coop
Cathy Hansen, Erin United Church, on solarbonds.

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Growing food, growing community.

Abstract

This research examines the enabling conditions and reported impacts of community gardens hosted by faith communities. Community gardens are one way for faith communities to demonstrate good stewardship of their land and contribute to local food security. In the context of declining membership and financial hardship, faith communities might be concerned about their capacity to take on such a project. Through semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and document review, ten Canadian faith-based community gardens were studied to identify
factors contributing to their success. The results highlight that community gardens and faith communities are mutually beneficial. Faith communities can provide many prerequisites for community garden development, and the presence of a community garden provides exposure and neighbourhood connections for the faith community. Based on participants’ experiences and the existing literature, recommendations are made regarding best practices for faith communities considering community garden projects, with particular emphasis on sustainable leadership structure.

Gardens Built by Love: Faith-Based Community Gardens, by Karla Winham, 2021.

Breton Books
Tompkins Institute
Faith & the Common Good

DOWNLOAD RESOURCE HERE.

Caring for Creation, Our Communities and Our Congregations: The Case for a National Carbon Reduction Program for Faith Buildings (2016 report)

"The United Church of Canada (UCC) has long recognized that the global climate crisis poses a grave threat to our planet and must be tackled urgently. It has a proud track record of leadership and action...[T]he UCC’s General Council Office recently identified one vital missing dimension to its climate action program: supporting congregations across the UCC in their efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of their places of worship...In an effort to fill this gap, the General Council Office commissioned this report."

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