Growing in Faith
Thank you to everyone who has been participating in our new Sunday faith formation offering: Growing in Faith. The idea behind both dedicated time for faith formation, as well as the name itself, is to encourage our congregation to spend time with one another, to spend time in God's word, and to grow in our faith in God's loving goodness. Even when it feels increasingly difficult to see that love or that goodness.
We welcomed two wonderful people this past Sunday 8/23 who shared a bit about the T5 Data Center that will be built in Grayslake.
But Pastor, what does a data center have to do with Growing in Faith?
More than 30 years ago, the ELCA shared a social statement titled, "Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice". In this short but full document, our denomination laid out the biblical foundation for caring for God's creation. Even where it overlaps with "political, economic, and scientific discussion, we know that care for the earth to be a profoundly spiritual matter" (1).
In Genesis 1, God repeatedly names each stage of their creation as "good". God's goodness was not and is not limited to humans, but to the whole of creation. From Genesis to the Psalms, Job to Romans, God's word is full of insistent reminders that God has a deep and abiding care for all that God has made.
Data centers have existed for some time now, so we have some decent data on the impacts they have on local, regional, and even global environments. Even a single data center can use as much energy in one year as the equivalent of 2,000 homes.* Many of them use water to cool their systems, and even if they bring in their own water, there is no oversight to ensure that that waste water is properly treated before making its way back to our water sources. Add to it the noise and light pollution that is often associated with these centers, and you can start to see how they might have a terrible impact on the very creation we have been called to be good stewards of.
We are also called to care for the least of these. The people our society is quickest to forget and shove aside--children, older adults, and those with chronic illnesses. The proposed T5 Data Center will be sandwiched between Saddlebrook Farms--a community for 55+ adults--and the Lake County Fairgrounds. It will be less than 1/2 a mile from family homes, and is already impacting some of the planned new developments in Mundelein.
We grow in our faith when we take seriously that God has told us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Even if you won't be directly impacted by this project, your neighbors will be. While we cannot fix every bad thing in the world, or even solve all the problems impacting our individual lives, we can do the good that is ours to do.
Growing in faith and caring for God's creation invites us to consider how we can use our faith in God's loving goodness to advocate for our neighbors right here.
We have copies at the church of everything Ami and Alyssa shared on Saturday, including links for more information, resources on next steps, and opportunities for broader connection with your neighbors.
Resources used:
* 2025 MIT report that analyzes data from the Department of Energy. https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/sites/stpp/files/2025-07/stpp-data-centers-2025.pdf
1. Yale School of the Environment, "Data Centers, Urban Heat, and AI Growth", https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/data-centers-urban-heat-and-ai-growth
2. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, "Data Drain: The Land and Water Impacts of the AI Boom", https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/land-lines-magazine/articles/land-water-impacts-data-centers/
3. A Google Scholar search for "environmental and human impacts of data centers" pulls up 3.24 million scholarly results
Image source: Tree Growing in Water, Robert Koorenny on unsplash.com