“Sustainability, like our formation in Christ, is not a destination, it’s a journey. As soon as your eyes open up to the possibility, you see opportunities everywhere.” -Talley Summerlin
Talley Summerlin dumps a bucket of food scraps over a small dirt pile behind his Central Austin home. His two little girls, Rose and Vivian, join him as he composts the family’s latest kitchen waste.“Here are the rakes,” Summerlin tells them as they begin to cover the pile.
Summerlin began composting more than two years ago. It’s now a way of life for his family, along with recycling, using canvas bags at the grocery store and carpooling each day. These small choices have become a lifestyle and now a business opportunity for him and his wife, Elizabeth Freese.
“This business venture is a convergence of three life passions,” Summerlin explains. “One of them is our life in the church, one is our environmental and sustainability activism over time and one of them is our experience as communicators.”
Summerlin, a former public relations VP whose clients have included Seventh Generation and Whole Foods Market, and Freese, a recent graduate of the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest, recently launched Deep Conversion Communications. The Austin-based business will help organizations in leveraging the ideals and missions common to both environmentalists and the Church. “It has been a goal of ours for some time to merge vocation and profession so that all our energy is going into God’s ministry,” Freese says. “With Deep Conversion, we think we’ve hit upon a way to do it that taps our specialized skills and complements the work of the Church.”
Freese began giving “The Gospel is Green” workshops during her seminary training at SMU in Dallas. This opened the door to a lay leadership role at St. David’s in Austin, where she and Summerlin are members. Last spring, Freese led the group “Sustainable Life Support” which focused on green living according to the Baptismal covenant, and last fall she introduced “Voting Kingdom Values” as a nonpartisan engagement with the stewardship of political power. She says Deep Conversion’s main goal is to help people comprehensively change their behaviors by connecting with their Christian story, kingdom vision and values. “Sustainability is ultimately a cultural issue– the intersection of group values, worldview and behavior,” Feese says. “And the church has a powerful, kingdom of God culture at its heart that is extremely resonant with sustainability. The world needs us to live this more fully now.” Through their work, Summerlin and Freese will first help a faith community establish a “green” mission and strategic plan, within the context of the larger faith story. Next, they will guide the organization in creating formation programs and communication campaigns in order to change people’s perceptions of how they live a sustainable life and why, specifically as Christians.
Freese will most likely lead a small group in the fall at St. David’s, and will roll out Deep Conversison workshops this summer. Meanwhile, Summerlin is leading the St. David’s first-ever, on-line small group via Facebook. “This experience will provide insight on how we can leverage the internet and online communities to help us with our mission,” he says. “It all feeds each other.”
Summerlin says often people can begin living a sustainable lifestyle by doing a personal inventory and figuring out where they can improve. It’s usually one, small step at a time.And while they will be the first to tell you no one can do everything, they firmly believe everyone can do something.
