October 1, 2025
Seeds of Growth and Change
Don Schuld
Stillwater, MN
Saint Paul Area Synod
Care of Creation Work Group
When we constantly hear the urgent cry to save our planet so it will serve our grandchildren as it has served us, patience wears thin, and anger can come easy. In 2019 Our Savior’s Lutheran Church (OSLC) in Stillwater embraced the Covenant to Care for Creation. Our Church Council reaffirmed the Covenant this year. For the faithful members of our Care of Creation Team, progress often seems like it will never come. We often must persevere for months to change something so simple and obvious. In the face of such frustration, we need to take time to look back on what has been accomplished.
In the past six years the consciousness of caring for God’s gift of creation has been steadily raised at OSLC. Consequently, we have eliminated single-use dishware, cups and silverware, dropped plastic communion cups for glass, completed an energy audit, changed to LED lighting, added rain barrels for watering flowers, and created a sizable pollinator garden. Check out the photos of our garden after one year’s time and for a deeper dive, check out the YouTube video. That video was produced by Brian, a transplant from Montana, for one of our weekly newsletter editions on creation care. The fact that OSLC has a Care of Creation Team was a major factor in Brian and his wife’s decision to choose our church.
The seeds that have been sown over the past six years, have resulted in our congregation’s decision to move forward with the process of installing rooftop solar panels on our church. This has not been as easy lift. We still have hurdles to cross, such as a structural engineering assessment of our roof, but if all goes well, by this time next year we could be generating 80% of the electricity we use.
In the Kairos moment we are in, it is a challenge not to embrace the hypocritical prayer “God grant me patience and grant it now”. Psalm 27:14 reminds us to “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord”. Many times, I feel it would be so much easier to give up the fight for creation care. Yet Joseph M. Marshall III reminds us in his book Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance: “When the storm blows hard you must stand firm, for it is not trying to knock you down, it is really trying to teach you to be strong.”
Don Schuld
Care of Creation Work Group
Stillwater, MN
Saint Paul Area Synod
Always a big fan of water, forests, mountains and plains, that passion was sidelined by 40 years in education; ten years as a school psychologist followed by 30 years as a public-school administrator of birth – age 21 special services (special education, health services and alternative programs). Semi-retirement in 2016 and full retirement in 2020, allowed for the investment of time and energy in his passion for the environment, second only to family. Volunteering for civic organizations such as Sustainable Stillwater was a first step. In 2018 he was afforded the opportunity to lead the St Paul Area Synod Care of Creation Work Group. Combining a passion for the environment with God’s call to care for and nurture the gifts of our Earth, makes for a powerful message. Since 2019 Don has chaired and co-chaired the Care of Creation Team for Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Stillwater. In addition, he is a past chair of the Climate/Environmental Action Team for Stillwater Sunrise Rotary and is currently the treasurer of Lutheran Advocacy Minnesota Policy Board.
Don has been married for 52 years to Charlotte, a former art and music teacher who is currently a landscape artist, painting God’s creation in hopes others will look at it and care for it. They have been residents of Stillwater, MN for the past 25 years and prior to that time, spent 20 years in the Fairmont and Blue Earth areas of southern Minnesota. Both grew up in North Dakota. Together they have two children and four grandchildren. Their future, and the future of all people, is a constant motivator.