Forty people from seven synods, Lutheran Advocacy-Minnesota, and Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light  participated in the 2026 EcoFaith Leadership Retreat, “Let the Fires of Your Justice Burn: Fanning the Flames of Earthkeeping in the Upper Midwest, August 30-September 1, hosted by Camp Onomia. They came together to worship and pray, nurture relationships, share highlights of their work for Creation justice and healing in their contexts, and do group discernment on the mission of the Summit, the 2027 Summit theme and date, and to identify first steps toward intentional inter-synodical collaboration and support for earthkeeping.

Presentations:

Green Blades Rising: an unfolding story (Kristin Foster); Creation Care as Evangelical Mission (Dave Carlson); MNIPL initiatives (Bret Pence), the Pollinator Plot (Jan Bilden), and Stretching Our Civic Engagement Muscles: an introduction Advocacy in Action (Tammy Walhof).

Retreat outcomes:

Mission of the EcoFaith Summit:  

Joel Abenth, Director of Donor Engagement with WAPO, introduced, facilitated, and summarized these sessions. Thank you, Joel! Attached is the summary document he created with cloud pictures and the text of everyone’s responses to the five questions he posed.

Pastor Dave Carlson (NE MN Synod) will now convene a group of five people to draw from the ideas we generated in small group discussions to write a succinct articulation of the mission/purpose of the EcoFaith Summit. Others who offered to help are Sue Lyback, Melinda Quivik, Bishop Dee Pederson, and Kristin Foster. 

They hope to finish this work by mid-October so that it can inform organizing for the 2027 EcoFaith Summit.

Inter-synodical collaboration and mutual support:

In a lively conversation and brainstorming facilitated by Pastor Diane House (D.E.M., Northwest Synod of Wisconsin), we identified ways that our synod earthkeeping initiatives are already learning from and collaborating with each other. These include:

·      The EcoFaith Summit

·      The EcoFaith Leadership retreat

·      The Green Blades Rising Newsletter and ecofaithnetwork.org (SPAS Care of Creation, NE MN EcoFaith) with a jointly funded EcoFaith Network Communication Coordinator (Rev. Beth Pottratz)

·      Collaborative conversations between Saint Paul Area Synod Care of Creation Work Group and the Minneapolis Area Synod EcoFaith Network

·      Advocacy Circles and this Fall’s Advocacy in Action: Joining Our Voices for Neighbors and Nature, a collaboration of NE MN EcoFaith with Lutheran Advocacy-Minnesota and Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light

·      MNIPL work with congregations and synod teams around becoming resilience hubs, guidance for solar power incentives

·      The Pollinator Plot of the NE MN Synod, now connecting with the Northern Great Lakes Synod with a Fall class, and sparking interest in the SW MN Synod.

Grace Corbin (Minneapolis Area Synod) will convene one or two people from each of the seven participating synods to get acquainted with each other’s contexts and current or hoped for earthkeeping initiatives, and then to develop an initial framework for staying connected.

Thank you, Pastor Diane, for facilitating these sessions!

Date, season, and location for the EcoFaith Summit:

We agreed that the Summit needs to remain a spring event, on a weekend in April that does not coincide with Easter or other annual synod events.  Looking ahead 10 years, this is possible every year. We recommend setting the date for the EcoFaith Summit at least one year in advance, maybe two. The 2027 Summit will be on April 16, First Lutheran, Duluth has graciously agreed to host it again this year.

Future Summit location(s):

Some discussion took place about whether the Summit should begin to move to locations within different synods.  More thorough reflection on the potential benefits and challenges of changing locations needs to take place. 

Theme for the 2027 EcoFaith Summit:

Facilitated by Summit chairperson Emily Meyer (Minneapolis Area Synod), we sifted through several possibilities for theme, grounding scripture, and speakers. Recognizing that both water and food issues are currently urgent and compelling, we finally chose to focus on food next year (2027), and water the following year (2028).

The 2027 theme will be Creation’s Hunger, Creation’s Hope: Holy Disruption with a Starving World. This theme intersects with the 2027 Earth Day theme, “Feeding the Planet, issues of environmental-food justice, the current El Nino’s disruptions of the growing season, increased threats to food security and access, the new Feast of Creation in Christ, and the Bread of Life sequence in the Year B lectionary.  One keynote speaker possibility is author, organizer, podcaster, and pastor, Derrick Weston, whose forthcoming book, “Food for All”, is the fourth in the Building a Moral Economy: Ecological, Equitable, Democratic  initiative begun by Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, our 2025 EcoFaith Summit keynote speaker.  

Launching the 2027 Summit Organizing Team: current and prospective members for the 2027 Summit organizing team met at the end of the retreat to set our initial meeting schedule and to review a proposal for how it will organize its work. The first meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, September 15, 4:00p.m.  Others are welcome to join. Contact eplmeyer@gmail.com for the zoom link.

A FEAST OF THANK YOUS!

To everyone who came, thank you for making this heartful commitment to attend the retreat.  Thank you to our hosts at Camp Onomia. Thank you to those who coordinated hospitality and provided home baked snacks each day, Jan Bilden and Peggy White, and to those who helped with evening social hour. Thank you to those who led worship in morning and evening liturgies, and to Paul Jacobson for coordinating it all.  Thank you to our facilitators Joel Abenth, Laurel Boyer, Diane House, Emily Meyer, and to our presenters Jan Bilden, Dave Carlson, Kristin Foster, and Tammy Walhof.  Thank you to our registrar Beth Pottratz.  Thank you to the synod staff who participated this year from the Minneapolis Area Synod (Grace Corbin), the Northwest Synod of Wisconsin (Diane House and Laura Ramlow), Northeastern Minnesota (Tanner Howard), and Southwestern Minnesota (Bishop Dee Pederson). Thank you to Laurel Boyer for assembling the retreat folders and providing nametags. And thank you to everyone who is carrying our work forward. 

Green blades are rising.

Together in hunger and hope with all Creation,

Laurel Boyer, Dave Carlson, Kristin Foster, John Sippola

Retreat planning committee