Green Documents
Through Faith & the Common Good we are able to provide a variety of Ideas and resources for greening our faith communities, our spirituality, and our homes. Our faith traditions encourages us to revere the natural world as sacred. Below you will find resources created by Faith & the Common Good and Greening Sacred Spaces to help faith communities and individuals realize a healthier, greener lifestyle.
Documents
DIY Walkthrough Audit
New in 2018! This easy-to-use 62-page guide is intended for decision-makers in faith communities who wish get to know how their buildings work and reduce the amount of energy they use in their buildings.
Energy audits of religious buildings show that 80 to 85 per cent of the energy used in places of worship is for heating and ventilation. Operators of religious buildings can take advantage of that finding to reduce their operating costs by making sure their heating and ventilating equipment is working as efficiently as possible, and by reducing heat loss from their facilities.
This guide discusses low or no-cost measures to give operators of religious buildings a range of options they can apply to reduce their energy bills while adding comfort and attractiveness to their facility. It includes a 14-page DIY energy audit.
Order the DIY Walkthrough Audit ($15 each) or download a digital copy (free with sign up).
Practical Guide to Improving the Energy Efficiency of your Religious Building
This easy-to-use 74-page guide is intended for property managers, green team members, and other decision-makers in faith communities who wish get to know how their buildings work and reduce the amount of energy they use in their buildings. It covers how to ‘tune-up’ your building through regular maintenance actions, details a wide range of retrofits that can help you save energy and money without sacrificing your comfort. It offers insights to lighting, heating and cooling systems, and concludes with a 20-page DIY energy audit.
Order the Practical Guide to Energy Efficiency ($15 each) or download a digital copy (free with sign up).
The Green Guide: What we can do to Preserve our Sacred World
- Eco-Spirituality: Why should we look after the natural world?
- What can we do? Think about values, systems of production and consumption, true life-cycle costs, and changing our habits.
- Greening our homes, gardens, workplaces, and transportation methods.
Greening Sacred Spaces: Eco-Spiritual Workshops
A Framework for Reconnection
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
Greening Sacred Spaces Workshop
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
Order the Greening Sacred Spaces Workshop ($4 each) or download a digital copy (Free)
Youth Voices Manuals
Youth Voices Outreach Manual
A comprehensive manual on how to organize an inter-faith youth group.“This is not a typical manual. It wasn’t written by a famous author, or even a single author, but by members of the Sacred Water Circle (SWC), who collaboratively contributed to the words on these pages. This how-to-manual is based on our experience reaching out to young adults of different faiths and backgrounds to rally around a common cause
Community Gardening Resources
Community Garden Guide
- setting up a garden
- forming a volunteer team
- planting a garden, including depth and drainage, organic matter, container gardening, rooftop gardening, tools, and other options
- maintaining a garden – weeding, watering, and pest control tips
- harvesting the garden – picking, monitoring, and chronicling the crop, freezing and fermenting, storing and replenishing soil
- a garden resource list
Community Garden Presentation
This pdf document is a presentation for use with your faith community or garden team to kickstart or support your community garden program.
Environmental Resources
Extreme Weather Toolkit
This Extreme Weather Tool Kit will help your faith group think through the essential components of an extreme weather response plan. It is tailored for faith groups in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) who want to support their most vulnerable community members to better withstand extreme weather emergencies.
