Providing Sanctuary for Resilience: An Interview with Gary H. White of Congregational Church of San Mateo

Molly Johnson (MJ) spoke with Gary White (GW), Lead of Environmental Justice Ministry for the Congregational Church of San Mateo on the potential conversion of his church’s community center into a resilience hub. 

MJ: Tell us about your congregation.

​GW: My congregation is the Congregational Church of San Mateo, California. We are located in San Mateo County, directly south of San Francisco, between San Francisco and San Jose. It's a suburban community. It's a church that, believe it or not, has been in operation since 1864. There are a few different buildings on site. Our current building is a classic historical, old building that was built maybe in the 1930’s or 40’s. ​​

Our campus is about a half of a square block of area, where we have a preschool, a parking lot with a solar canopy to generate solar panel electricity, a garden, and a variety of things. The church has about 400 members of all ages. We are a progressive Christian church, connected to the United Church of Christ. We are probably one of, if not the most progressive Christian churches on the map. We are an open and affirming church around LGBTQ issues. We're a sanctuary church as well as a creation care church which confirms our commitment to environmental justice.

We started our green team, which we call the environmental justice team, in 2017. I was one of the founding members. We are a voluntary committee of 12 members and volunteers from the church. We’ve worked on a variety of projects over the years. The biggest project we completed over a five year period was the building of a solar canopy in our parking lot. It's a parking lot cover that generates renewable electricity. We have recently added solar batteries to enable us to store our excess electricity.

Once we completed our solar project, we decided to expand our efforts by launching a variety of concurrent climate programs. One program in particular is our Solar Ambassador Program, where we promote solar at  home of our church members. We provide a variety of resources to church members to consider installing solar panels. We also conduct a collection of nonrecyclable plastics. This program is run by the youngest member of our committee, who is a high school student. This Precious Plastics program collects hard to recycle plastics (#2, #4, and #5) and converts them into new plastic products. 

Our committee successfully obtained the Creation Justice Church designation from the United Church of Christ. Additionally, we are planning a sustainable landscape project on our church campus. We're also exploring the creation of a resilient hub at our church which would assist our members and neighbors during disasters.

MJ: Tell us about your resilient hub and what inspired your environmental justice group to take action?

GW: I and other members of the committee have been reading a lot about climate change and the role of a church in climate change activities. We were in touch with volunteer organizations here in the county, including the fire department, and we found out that there were very few resilient hub locations in our county for disasters. So if we have an earthquake, there's a flood of fire or whatever it might be, there are very few places where residents who can't utilize their home can walk or even drive to and have a meal, collect their thoughts, figure out what their next steps are, potentially recharge their phones/computers, and possibly even stay overnight for a night or two. We thought that it would be good for our church to do that since we consider ourselves a climate justice church. We have a large community room here at the church that could be used as a resilient hub for people in our community.. 

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​Our church board is supportive of the idea and wants us to explore and investigate the cost and commitment required. Then we started working with our local Red Cross. They play the key  role on resilient hubs anywhere in the US. The Red Cross is set up and very supportive of organizations, especially churches or community organizations with facilities, to be resilient hubs. The Red Cross here in San Mateo said that once we set up a hub, they'd be able to lead it. They will send one or two representatives to our Center right after an emergency to help us coordinate and run it. The Red Cross will provide hot meals, insurance for people that would be here at the resilient hub, a reimbursement for some material costs, blankets, and cots. We certainly will also need a number of volunteers, people from the church that we're recruiting, to be able to run it. We're also going to need a program manager, likely someone from our environmental justice committee. So right now we are identifying what the volunteer roles will be, write them up, recruit volunteers and then train people to be volunteers. The Red Cross will be providing first aid training and resiliency training free of charge to our volunteers. 

MJ : How do you see your initiative as “faithful resilience”? 

GW: We feel that taking this step is certainly in concert with who we are as a progressive Christian Church and our commitment to be a climate church. Additionally, we want to take care of our neighbors, low income Latino families, many of whom are part of our Latino ministry. We feel it's important to provide sanctuary and give back to members of our Church, if their facilities, their home, or their electrical power center, goes out.

MJ: What would you tell someone interested in completing a similar project?

GW: The important thing, whether or not your church has solar, is if you have enough space in your facility to be able to support a hub? I would say you have to have a community room that should probably be ~1000 square feet. I'm sure it could be smaller, but that's what we have. You are then in a position to set up stations for electrical device recharging, for feeding, and for hosting people to rest or stay over. Having the solar system and battery system already set up was a contributing factor to our project because we can provide stored renewable electricity for about three days. But I wouldn't dissuade any congregation that doesn't have solar to consider being a resilient hub, because they certainly could. What they wouldn't be able to do as easily is provide emergency power to charge an electrical vehicle, charge cell phones or computers, but they would still be able to provide a refuge for the community. 
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I would encourage people to visit the United Church of Christ (UCC) central group website that's collecting resources about this. People can also certainly come to me and we can update them on what we're doing. There are plenty of resources on the internet about resilient hubs. You can put your toe in the water by just exploring it, thinking about it, talking to a few church members, even if you don't have a green team or environmental justice team, and building support that way, and then contacting the local Red Cross or the county emergency services group. When we reached out to the Red Cross, they were very responsive and supportive. 

MJ: What is something you would like the Creation Justice community to know?

GW: I want to let them know that this is a relatively simple, low tech action the church can take to provide environmental and climate support to local communities and members, and by doing that, provide a really valuable service.