**11. Conclusions**

In whatever ways students in theological education choose to address environmental issues in their ministries, I remind them that this work does make a difference. Research has shown that homilies and sermons can enhance the effectiveness of the message to embrace green Christianity. For example, the 2014 PRRI/AAR survey on religion, values, and climate change found that "Americans who say their clergy leader speaks at least occasionally about climate change are more likely to be climate change Believers than Americans who tend not to hear about climate change in church (49% and 36%, respectively)" (Jones et al. 2014, p. 4). In other words, people in the pews are listening to what their ministers have to say about climate and other environmental issues. Simply making the case that Creationcare is part of our responsibility as Christians is a vital message that clergy and faith leaders can and should convey.

As I reflect on the use of the "Who Is My Neighbor" Mapping Exercise for these four courses over the span of three years, I have come to see that the tool was a source of spiritual formation for many students. I encouraged them to prayerfully consider how the process of reading scripture, interpreting faith through an ecological lens, and attending to the suffering of their human neighbors as well as Earth kin could inform and shape their own faith and relationship with the Divine. In turn, they critically engaged matters of faith and ecological justice in local and global contexts.

The mapping exercise is also a useful reference point as I invite students to consider what concrete actions they might take on environmental issues beyond the conclusion of the course. Especially as they move beyond an individualistic framework (What should *I* do?) toward a more congregationally and community-based framework (What should *we* do?), the mapping exercise is a way for students to engage people in their houses of worship and local community on these questions.

As the examples above demonstrate, the mapping exercise also encouraged students to learn about the ways in which race, socioeconomics, culture, religion, and local context relate to and with environmental issues. Therefore, I sugges<sup>t</sup> that this exercise could be used in any number of teaching contexts, courses, and disciplines to help inculcate a "theology of place" and emphasize the importance of learning "*from* the places in which they are embedded in order to learn *for* the places they are embedded" (Tollison 2021). For example, this mapping exercise could be used in courses on food and faith, climate ethics, God and nature, environmental law and policy, biodiversity and nature's rights, ecological racism, and climate migration and the church, to name just a few. The "Who Is My Neighbor" Mapping Exercise is a project that can enable students to develop an expansive and holistic understanding of environmental issues while making the case that Jesus' teaching about showing mercy extends to our biotic neighbors as well. "Go and do likewise."

**Funding:** This research was partially supported by a gran<sup>t</sup> from the Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center which provided funding for students in the course, Witness and Testimony in Appalachia, Lexington Theological Seminary, June 2019.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
