26: Creation Care in Quarantine
Colombia
A Climate Pollinator story by Sierra Ross Richer
When the church services at the Iglesia Menonita de Teusaquillo in Bogotá, Colombia went online at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so did the congregation’s creation care group.
Each week for over a year, they produced a short video on sustainability that was played during the Sunday church service.
The videos, lasting two to three minutes, touched on a range of environmental themes including consumption, waste, deforestation, water usage and recycling.
“It was what we did to keep the dynamic up while gathering virtually because we were all locked in our houses,” said Juliana Morillo, a member of the creation care group.
The group was formed a few years before the start of the pandemic, with a Sunday School book study on the book Salvation Means Creation Healed: The Ecology of Sin and Grace by Howard Snyder (published in 2011 and available in Spanish as well as English).
It took the group over a year to get through the book. “That was the foundation,” said Grace Morillo, Juliana’s sister and a founding member of the group.
Soon, the group began looking for ways to take action. “We were looking for how to move from our reading that we were doing on the fourth floor, in the last room of our church, to doing concrete actions,” said another member, Yomaida Cardona.
The group began sharing sustainability tips during Sunday services and holding workshops for congregants. When the pandemic hit, they switched to videos.
The videos the group produced can be found on the church’s YouTube channel.
One video presents issues around water, and encourages church members to turn off the tap when it’s not absolutely necessary, reuse water multiple times before sending it down the drain, and take shorter showers.Another one asked church members to think about the question, “what would Jesus buy.”
Creating the videos was hard work. “It took a lot of energy,” said Juliana. In order to produce the three-minute videos, the group often stayed up until midnight on Saturdays, filming and creating graphics.
After about a year, Juliana said, “Our energy ran out.” The church returned to meeting in person, and the creation care group looked for other ways to carry out its mission.
But, Yomaida believes the videos, along with the group’s other initiatives, have had an impact on the congregation.
“There are people in the church who, as a result of what the group has done, have made decisions about consumption… recycling, composting (and) growing plants,” she said. “I think this is an impact. We haven’t measured it, but we have generated changes in people’s habits.”
The videos had an impact in her own family as well: After spending time with her daughter in Bogota during the pandemic, Yomaida’s mother returned to the coast and joined a recycling group in her city.
“It’s beautiful to see how one can be contagious,” Yomaida said.