1. St. Ignatius - Portland, OR
Parish Mobilization
St. Ignatius - Portland, OR

2. Choosing a Parish Focus
Year of Discernment
Ecojustice
From September 2014 – June 2015, St. Ignatius parish engaged in a “Year of Discernment,” hosting events to create a space for prayer, education, and faith formation around justice issues. By highlighting the diverse issues of human trafficking, immigration, economic justice, and ecological justice, we cast a wide net to allow room for exploration. Guided by principles of Catholic social teaching and Ignatian discernment, we held parish events throughout the year to explore these four justice issues.
This year took place within a larger framework of discernment – what is God’s preference for how our parish community works for justice? After exploring these four justice issues as a parish, over 60 parishioners gathered for the Year of Discernment Parish Retreat on June 6, 2015 to attend to this very question. Reflecting on the context and experiences of the past year, we imagined possibilities for action if the parish focused on a particular justice issue as a community.
As we prayed and listened to one another, it became clear to the community that we were being called to work for ecological justice together.

3. Building up Parish Leadership and Involvement
Year of Discernment and existing Parish Leaders
Ignatian Fellowship
Inviting in new leaders
Ignatian Fellow - creating a paid role for someone with background in a year of service has offered additional staff capacity, someone with knowledge and passion in the justice area, and can help mobilize and facilitate other parishioner leadership
Year of discernment - the existing Peace and Justice group, the Year of Discernment preparation and other existing parish leaders offered us a good starting point of 6-8 parish leaders. As we can look for existing leaders within our parishes who are drawn to this work and step up
Inviting in new leaders - sign up sheets at all events, follow up (formally with s or set up one-to-one conversations and informally at Masses, coffee and donuts and other events), personal invitations to leadership roles/events when people start demonstrating more interest and involvement, follow up with all those people after our survey, build-up of EJ newsletter...

4. Offering Many Ways to Be Involved
Liturgies
Faith Formation
Community Life
Service
Advocacy
Recognizing that everyone has different knowledge, amounts of time and energy, and comfort and passion around ecojustice and advocacy, we try to give people plenty of different ways to be involved.
Liturgies - Knowing this is where we see the largest

5. Liturgies Prayers of the Faithful and Announcements St. Francis Vigil
Earth Day
It is present each week through inclusion in our Prayers of the Faithful, announcements of upcoming events, bulletin, and our Pastor preaches occasionally on it, or ties it in in many homilies
St. Francis Vigil - special liturgy for the Season of Creation on St. Francis’ feast day with the plan to make this a regular occurence
Added songs, prayers for Earth Day with plans to make this a yearly occurence

6. Faith Formation RCIA Confirmation
RCIA - presentation on Catholic Social Teaching and Laudato Si, plus incorporation of CST into the prep and invitation to community events and many say they come to St. Ignatius for our justice and ecojustice focus.
Confirmation - recognizing that youth are often looking for an active faith community, we gave them many opportunities for service and talked about a faith that does justice - CST, two feet of love in action, connections to ecojustice
First Eucharist -

7. Community Life Incorporation into existing events
Creation of new Ecojustice Events
Incorporation of ecojustice into existing community events (eg reusable dishware and vegetarian potlucks for many existing events, and having an informational table or activity at existing events like the community picnic) and creation of new community events (Kinship Cooking, mini-retreats, Earth Day gathering, etc)

8. Service Opportunities
Partnering with a number of community organizations for depaving, tree planting, invasive species removal, etc.

9. Advocacy Clean Engines Clean Air Clean Energy Jobs
Portland Clean Energy Fund

10. Building Up Advocacy Capacity
Educational presentations
Giving people small advocacy steps they can take
Recruiting leaders
Partnering with other organizations