Planting Trees in the Communion Forest

What if every bishop, every congregation, and every member of The Episcopal Church and worldwide The Anglican Communion committed to the work of environmental restoration?

The Rt. Rev. Deon Johnson, Bishop of The Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, has launched an intentional effort to be good environmental stewards by giving every congregation in our diocese an oak tree to plant as part of the “Communion Forest.”

The Communion Forest is a global act of hope which involves a wide range of creation care activities. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, spoke of the possibility of the Communion Forest becoming the “most widespread and diverse” environmental project in the world.

Archbishop Welby and other bishops attending the Lambeth Conference planted the first tree of that forest in the garden of Lambeth Palace on Aug. 3, 2022.

Bishop Deon Johnson was at that tree planting and brought the idea back home. During our annual convention Nov. 18-19, 2022, the bishop gave a young oak tree to each of our congregations and instructed them to care for the tree until it can safely be planted.

The bishop hopes to organize a diocesan-wide event to bless and dedicate the trees on April 22, 2023 – Earth Day.

“Each congregation could see this as a seed towards being more cognizant of environmental stewardship,” said Bishop Deon.

The trees will take approximately 30 years to mature. What will our diocese look like in that time? What will happen in the life of that tree and your congregation – births, weddings, baptisms, deaths, construction, storms, maybe even additional creation care activities? Bishop Deon is asking every congregation to record the “story” of your tree. We’ll collect your stories and share them at the 2023 diocesan convention.

The trees came from Forest ReLeaf of Missouri, which operates the only nonprofit community-assisted tree nursery in the region. We received the trees at no cost (because we are a nonprofit). The only requirement is that the trees be planted in public spaces (churches are public spaces), and we provide information on where each tree was planted.

We encourage everyone to provide a lot of TLC to their trees over the winter! We’ll be announcing details for the Earth Day event soon!

In the meantime, take a look at the Communion Forest website – what else can you and your community to do grow the forest?