May is "Sustainable Travel to Worship" Month

Each year for the last several years, we, along with other faith communities in Madison and Dane County, have participated in “Sustainable Travel to Worship” month during May. We have encouraged all of us to travel to worship in a more “energy-sustainable” manner than we usually do, in an effort to model behavior that can cut down on petroleum use and environmental pollution. This year, we will be participating in this program once again.

Driving cars causes more damage to the environment – air and water pollution, global warming and habitat alteration – than any other human behavior. This is why we participate in Sustainable Travel to Worship month with other faith communities. It is an effort to encourage people to discover, learn and practice new behaviors around automobile transportation and energy consumption. It is a way to see how people of faith in Wisconsin can work together to increase our percentage of energy-sustainable trips to worship. The idea is to honor the environment by having a high proportion of all trips to worship use a car-limited transportation mode such as carpooling, bicycling, walking, skating, riding the bus, sharing a taxi with others: anything other than driving alone, or only with members of the same household. By using less gasoline, we do something positive about global warming and preserving the air quality in our community, while also enjoying the health, social and financial benefits of driving less.

When we arrive for the worship service on each of the Sundays in May, we will be directed to a “travel survey” wall chart in the back of the sanctuary. We will be asked to place a mark beside the mode of travel we used to get to worship that day. At the end of the month, the data will be tabulated; and the results will be sent to the statewide coordinators of the event and published in our church publications. Each Sunday morning at the beginning of worship, we will have a show of hands to see how many people arrived that day using car-limited transportation.

Let’s have some fun and be creative with this, while at the same time practicing some new ways of saving energy and burning less fossil fuel, putting less pollutant material into the atmosphere, and improving on the excellent record and results that we have had in the past. Melissa Baumann and family will coordinate the record-keeping for us.

Curt