Lake Junaluska Conference & Retreat Center (Lake Junaluska, NC)

General

• Mission:

The mission of the Caring For Creation experience, as a featured event sponsored by the Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center, is to educate people of the need to implement changes in their homes, churches and communities that will safeguard the environment, protect wildlife, conserve energy and eliminate practices that contribute to irreversible damage to our planet. It is an experience for laity and clergy addressing how the faith community can promote justice for Earth and its people.

The 2011 Caring For Creation experience will focus on mountain top removal, economic and environmental justice and degradation, violence and weapons, sustainable agriculture (locally and nationally), more ecological awareness and lowering the carbon footprint of churches and communities. We are hoping to offer scholarships to six students, two of whom will be asked to give thirty minute presentations on their environmental study project, and the other four will have displays and be given opportunity to explain their projects. A group entitled "One More Generation", which was founded by two elementary students with a passion for endangered species, will be doing a forty five minute presentation related to their projects and goals for endangered species.

Information regarding transition communities, which is an international process, will continue to be presented, enabling local communities to be sustainable. Additionally, there is a pre-conference opportunity to spend twenty-four hours in a sustainable community, located in Granger County, Tennessee, where participants learn about all the processes necessary to making sustainability become a reality in their own communities.

The Caring For Creation experience is committed to informing and offering means of enabling faith communities to be greener spaces through their practices of sustainability. This will lead to helping members of the faith community to act personally and be better caretakers of Earth. The experience is open to anyone interested in preserving and improving the world in which they live.

• History:

Nestled in the Great Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina, the Lake Junaluska Assembly, now referred to as the Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center, was created in 1913 as a place of spiritual enrichment, leader development, and transformation for United Methodists. Although it has become a central place of ministry for Methodists, it remains a welcoming center of hope and inspiration to people of all faiths and denominations. Lake Junaluska is one of ten businesses in Haywood County serving as a pilot group for the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce Green Initiative. Lake Junaluska has completed its sustainability plan and has developed plans to meet the goals set for a Green Business, and was recently named a "Going Green Leader". The Caring For Creation experience is a yearly Spring event coordinated by Mr. Loy Lilley. He confers with a leadership team of individuals with a passion for a sustainable environment. They are proponents of and active in groups who are working on creating a sustainable culture. They represent global, national and area groups, and help put together a conference led by prospective leaders in environmental areas whose main goal is to protect the environment.

Lake Junaluska is the center for the United Methodist Church in the Southeastern Jurisdiction, which encompasses the nine southeastern states, and was challenged with the issue of helping churches work on being sustainable communities and lowering their carbon footprints. The opportunity has now become a model for the entire UMC. Participants in the experience come from across the United States. A number of participants have been asked to serve on a group to design a plan for churches, annual conferences, camps and retreat centers to develop a sustainability plan for themselves. They will be recognized by the United Methodist Church as entities working to preserve Earth and its environment.

• Year established:2006

Registration

• Organization type:Grantseeker
• Country of registration:United States
• Year established:2006
• Tax Determination Letter:Received Determination Letter
• IRS Section:501(c)(3)