Dear Friends,
I want to say how excited I am that our congregation is on the cusp of installing solar panels on our church property.
For sixteen years I served a congregation that had the distinction of being the first certified “green business” in Santa Clara County, and the first congregation in the Presbyterian Church (USA) to be recognized officially as a green business. Compared to company that fabricates silicon wafers, for example, it’s easy for a Church to be a green business, but still it was a lot of work. We modified our water usage, we changed out our light fixtures for more efficient models, we got rid of our more toxic cleaning supplies, but for us solar panels were just a dream.
We were ideally located for panels and we had a lot of property that could have been used as a solar farm. We even had a south-facing roof with a perfect slope, but for some reason the nexus of financing and willpower never came together for us.
And now here I am in Oakland, and you are making this dream come true, for me anyway.
Solar panels are good for the earth because they generate power without burning fossil fuels, but on a church they also make an important spiritual statement: we, as people of faith, are doing what we can to live gently on the earth God has given us as a home. We are honoring the creator by refusing to soil the creation.
I really hope our solar panels will be visible from the road, for just as our steeple informs the community a congregation worships at our church, so solar panels would bear witness to the earth-honoring values that guide our spiritual life. I don’t know if solar panels will cause people to flock through our doors on Sunday Morning, but I do know that when people of faith use tangible actions to pledge fidelity to the things of God, important works begins.
Thank you for being the kind of congregation that wants to go solar!
Very Best,
Ben