Sustainability Plan and Policies

As a Christian liberal arts college, Gordon College has a responsibility to protect and preserve the natural world through local and international stewardship and environmental care. The campus's rich natural environment, which includes many acres of protected wetlands, serves as an excellent training ground for students interested in sustainability and environmental protection. Gordon College continues to build on its 23 years of focused efforts to make the campus efficient and sustainable.

Gordon’s commitment to sustainability and stewardship is reflected in President Lindsay’s strategic plan. His plan is executed campus-wide and is expected to be part of everything the campus community does.

The Evangelical Climate Statement

In 2006, R. Judson Carlberg, Gordon's president at that time, signed the Evangelical Climate Initiative’s statement "Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action." He was one of 85 evangelical leaders who signed the statement, which was created by Christians who recognized their moral responsibility to care for creation, to serve as a biblically-based moral witness, and to shape public policy.

President Carlberg took sustainability issues seriously and wrote this in a Stillpoint article after signing the statement:

Taking environmentally responsible positions is part of every Christian's mandate from our Creator God, who commands us, like Adam, to tend and keep this garden that is the Earth; who, through Noah, preserved species destined for extinction; and who, through the Sabbath principles of Exodus and Leviticus, requires that land and livestock not be relentlessly pressed but given rest.

As John Calvin once said, "Let him who possesses a field, so partake of its yearly fruits, that he may not suffer the ground to be injured by his negligence; but let him endeavor to hand it down to posterity as he received it. . . . Let everyone regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses."

Gordon’s former president, D. Michael Lindsay, is continuing this commitment to sustainable practices on campus and in the greater community. He does this by:

Making sustainability practices and creation care a major focus of his presidential strategic plan
Encouraging professors and students to pursue sustainable practices in all academic fields
Applauding student groups like Advocates for a Sustainable Future (ASF) and their commitment to conservation and recycling initiatives
Supporting the Physical Plant staff in their leadership role in demonstrating environmental responsibility from a Christian perspective