Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park

Thank you to Jo Faren King for many of the photos

On the third Sunday of Eastertide, Augustana celebrated the successful completion of its two-year-long solar project, which resulted in new roofs on our nearly sixty-year-old building and two solar panel arrays on the east and west roofs, generating electricity for the building. This post is about the first piece of that celebration – a worship service planned by Pastor Goede and led by Augustana’s Green Team, pastors and cantor, including guests from the city, the synod, and ecumenical and interfaith partners

We began in the courtyard, where Green Team member Chris Weber burned coal scavenged from the Lake Michigan shoreline. From the liturgy: “Coal has long been a staple of our energy consumption in the fossil fuel economy. Coal has long been burned to produce electricity across our country and across our world. Todayu as we celebrate our transition to sustainable solar energy at Augustana, we say goodbye to a reliance on fossil fuels like coal. As a congregation we say, we are going in a different direction.”

Our procession inside was led by a new banner to mark the occasion. Lise Sveen designed and dyed the cloth, and Robin Mitchell assembled and sewed it.

After the readings and Pastor Goede’s message (more about that in the next post), Jim Schwab, a member of the Green Team and the lead author of the grant proposal that significantly funded the project, spoke to the assembled about the project. Here is an excerpt:

“. . . we at Augustana, and our remarkably dedicated Green Team, are not swimming in our own private pool, isolated from everything around us. We are swimming in vaster, deeper waters populated by tidal waves of inspired action to combat climate change and reverse the damage to our planet that has occurred for centuries. Despite all the despicable efforts in some quarters to turn back the clock on social and environmental progress, we are committed to moving forward. And we have lots of company, which is why we will soon hear from the City of Chicago, and our faith partners at Faith in Place and the Interfaith Council and the Metropolitan Chicago Synod. What we have done is an act of faith.” Read his full remarks here.

Lindy Wordlaw, the City of Chicago’s Assistant Commissioner for the Environment, was our first guest to speak at the service. She shared with us about the grant program that underwrote Augustana’s project, her work with other faith communities through the program, and her hope that our project will be inspirational to others.

Between guest speakers, we performed a liturgy centered on spiritual gifts, relating those gifts to some of the gifts of the Spirit that we have experienced through the solar project. Dan Friedrich led us in prayer for each gift as Elizabeth Roma lit a candle for that specific gift, arrayed around the Nave.

During the liturgy, we lifted the spiritual gifts of Courage, Hope, Wisdom, Faith, Discernment, Prophecy, and Healing. After the candle for the Gift of Healing was lit, everyone walked around the Nave to visit the candles and then lit their own candle from one of the spiritual gift candles.

From the Metro Chicago Synod of the ELCA, the Reverend Nathan Klein joined us and added his words to our celebration, bringing greetings from the synod. Nathan serves as Associate to the Bishop.

One of Augustana’s key partners in the journey that led us to the solar project has been Faith in Place, an interfaith organization dedicated to building a movement for environmental justice. The tag-line on their website is especially appropriate for Augustana’s solar project celebration: “Spiritual Communities Leading the Way Toward Just, Resilient, Thriving Communities.” The Illinois director of Faith in Place, the Reverend Nic Faison, spoke on the work of Faith in Place and our partnership.

Our final guest was Tilly Davis, a member of KAM Isaiah Israel, a Reform Jewish community in Hyde Park, and the Vice President of the Hyde Park & Kenwood Interfaith Council. KAM Isaiah Israel recently renovated their worship space and installed a geothermal heating and cooling system, another example of green technology to lower carbon fuel use.

After our worship, we enjoyed a lunch in the fellowship hall together – more about that and photos in an upcoming post.