Green Sanctuary
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
Congregational Stewardship Services
25 Beacon Street
Boston, MA  02108
617.948.4251

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Congregations and congregants working together to restore Earth and renew Spirit.

October 6, 2011

Green Sanctuary Team

Kitty Meyers, Contact

1025 Mount Vernon Hwy

Sandy Springs, GA  30327

            Congratulations!  With this letter, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, Office of Congregational Stewardship Services is honored to formally recognize the Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation as an Accredited Green Sanctuary. 

            We appreciate your thorough documentation of your Green Sanctuary activities.  Descriptions of each activity helped us to understand how much you have accomplished.  You have succeeded in integrating the Green Sanctuary program goals into the ongoing life of your congregation through the many projects you have carried out.  Your application offers strong evidence of the positive environmental consciousness that has developed in your congregation, resulting in new behaviors and new lifestyle choices by members individually and by the congregation as a whole.  We were excited to lean that “Services and aspects of services throughout the year began to contain ‘care for the earth’ messages and express love of nature” – this is really one of goals we want congregations to shoot for.  Additionally, we were excited to hear about your Natural Beauty through Photography project and how it seemed to have an impact on congregants.  We were inspired by your Hemlock project and how it spread from five hemlocks at your congregation to Georgia Interfaith Power and Light featuring it on their blog site to a Mennonite church planting 200 hemlocks.  Your work with WAWA has clearly made a significant impact on your congregation and West Atlanta. 

            We know you are looking forward to celebrating your accomplishments with your congregation.  Your Green Sanctuary certificate is being sent under a separate cover for you to display in a prominent place.  You may be recognized as an Accredited Green Sanctuary at General Assembly 2012 in Phoenix, AZ or General Assembly 2013 in Louisville, KY. As that time nears I will send you more information. In the meantime, you may want to begin to assemble a “scrapbook” which shares information about your Green Sanctuary movement – congregations create these in many different way; some use their applications, some include orders of service, newsletter columns, fliers about special events, and pictures, some write storybooks about the journey, and some come up with new ideas that we’ve never seen before – this will be a wonderful reminder of where your congregation has been and will be on display at the Congregational Life booth at GA for other congregations to peruse. 

            We encourage all congregations to continue engaging in stewardship of the Earth even after they have become an Accredited Green Sanctuary.  In four-to-five years, as you look towards re-accreditation we encourage you to follow-up on Mani Subramanian’s small group ministry Low Carbon Diet experiment.  We’d like to see you follow-up with the Gwinnett congregation and perhaps other houses of worship/congregations to help them get an environmental stewardship program going.  And continue your wonderful relationship with WAWA.

I do hope you are proud of your accomplishments.  You have truly taken the goals of the Green Sanctuary Program to heart.  Again, congratulations on successfully becoming an Accredited Green Sanctuary.  Your accomplishments serve as a beacon of hope, demonstrating that we can all make a difference!

To a greener faith-community and world,