Worship & Advocacy Resources

The CJL continues to compile and share recommended resources for environmental advocacy and for bringing more climate-relevant material into liturgy. We invite you to explore the links below, and to send us an email if there’s something you’d like to add to this list.

• Creation Justice Ministries educates, equips, and mobilizes Christian individuals, congregations, denominations, and communions to protect, restore, and rightly share God’s creation. We invite you to check out their online Resource Hub where you can find resources for worship, events, and advocacy.
• Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development is an interfaith organization committed to mobilizing faith communities for a sustainable future. Helpful resources include “How to Preach a Sermon on Climate Change and Your Congregation” and a liturgy about the theology of water protection.
• The BTS Center is a private foundation in Portland, Maine, building on the legacy of the former Bangor Theological Seminary. They offer a variety of programs and resources, including the EcoPreacher Cohort, an online program designed to help church leaders understand climate change and other environmental justice issues more deeply as spiritual crises that require creative, faith-rooted action, and a video library with helpful videos about the church and climate change.
• Not Ordinary Church is a collection of worship resources and personal reflections from Rev. Allyson Sawtell. Some of her resources include a Tenebrae for Creation, a Blessing of the Animals, and a Holy Week Service of Lament and Hope for Creation.
• The United Church of Christ offers a variety of resources for Creation Justice churches, including worship tools and ways to connect with other eco-justice organizations.
• SeasonOfCreation.com and SeasonOfCreation.org (two separate organizations with similar URLs) both offer liturgical resources for incorporating environmental awareness and creation stewardship into your worship.
• Interfaith Power & Light has an extensive list of climate-related sample sermons and prayers from a variety of faith traditions. They also have information about solar power options and rebates that can help make your church more environmentally sustainable, and additional resources for participating in Faith Climate Action Week.
• Let All Creation Praise is another great resource for worship materials, liturgical tools, and devotions.
• The United Church of Canada website has materials for Earth Sunday liturgies as well as other worship resources.
• Climate Sunday: In the run-up to COP26 in Glasgow, over 2,200 churches and church groups throughout Britain and Ireland participated in the Climate Sunday Initiative, addressing climate change by holding Climate Sunday services, committing to practical action, and speaking up for climate justice. Their resources page has sections on Service Plans, Music and Hymns, Readings, Sermons, Prayers, Young People, and Audio Visual. Through these, you can explore links to many organizations and denominations in the United Kingdom.
• The Southern New England Conference, UCC has an Environmental Ministries page with sections on worship and preaching, along with links to sermons, prayers, liturgy and poetry.
• Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, a Presbyterian pastor, is a prolific hymn-writer putting new words to familiar tunes. Her website has an extensive “Caring for Creation” section. For many of the compositions, permission is given for the free use of the hymn in worship.
• Doxecology has thirteen new, congregational worship songs (and music videos) that celebrate the wonder of creation, acknowledge our failures, and anticipate a glorious restoration in Christ. The accompanying thirteen-chapter study guide includes contributions from leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of environmentalism and worship, plus three service plans with new resources created by engageworship.
•  In the late 1990s, Rev. Peter Sawtell wrote a Three Layers of Environmental Preaching, a short article for a newsletter of the Colorado Council of Churches that encourages pastors to use a mix of “issue preaching”, generalized themes, and background perspectives as they reflect theologically on environmental topics.