My Story

This is how I (John Watson, ordained pastor in the Evangelical Free Church of America and LEED Green Associate) became passionate about supporting Christian community and caring for God’s creation.

Community and Small Groups: As a young freshman co-ed at Stephen F. Austin State University, I experienced life-changing community for the very first time through our campus ministry, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF). Participation in small group Bible discussion and prayer groups was at the core of my life-transforming community and subsequent spiritual growth and discipleship over the next four years with my new spiritual family. Following graduation, I served with IVCF for the next decade as a campus staff member at Texas A&M and Sam Houston State Universities and later as an area director, helping students and campus staff members develop life-changing community (especially through solid small groups) and providing intensive leadership and discipleship training, leading to vibrant spiritual formation, community outreach, and multiplication of small groups.

Following graduate studies in theology at Wheaton College, I moved to Chicago in 1997 and provided similar services for the next decade while serving on pastoral staff at First Evangelical Free Church (First Free) and helped this diverse urban congregation involve over 60% of the congregation, while enjoying the opportunity to regularly consult for other congregations in the area. Two decades later I carried out a similar role on pastoral staff in Kearney, Nebraska, and saw our small groups increase to 70% congregational involvement (including care groups) and 1,000 participants in 3+ years. Over the years I have also enjoyed the chance to co-lead small groups in Nacogdoches, Huntsville, College Station, Fredericksburg, and now San Antonio, Texas, Chicago and Nebraska. Having relocated to San Antonio in 2019, I’m enjoying my role as Small Groups Specialist for the Evangelical Free Church - Texas/Oklahoma Region.

Creation Care and the Environment: While pastoring in Chicago, I was inspired by reading a book that helped me for the first time realize the environmental catastrophe facing planet Earth. As a Christ-follower, I felt compelled to take the bold step of gathering together like-minded individuals from my congregation and formed a creation care group where we discussed the book, “Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action” by J. Matthew Sleeth. Within a short time our gatherings expanded in scope to include discussions about practical ways to apply creation care concepts to our individual lives, our church, and our community, and to the formation of a creation care team. I was personally motivated to collect rain water, replace energy-consuming incandescent light bulbs, and switch to non-toxic paint. Our creation care team launched a number of “firsts”: recycling bins in our church buildings, Green Sunday to encourage creation care (while team members shared about their pathway toward new creation care personal habits), a neighborhood cleanup, an outdoor creation care booth at Midsommarfest (a large Chicago festival), a freecycle, electronic recycling events (e-cycles), an urban composting workshop, a yearlong Green Urban Living class, and an Indoor Farmers Market. All efforts were enthusiastically received by our community!

In 2009 I moved to Fredericksburg, TX and launched my new business, Green Living for the Hill Country and later, the non-profit Fredericksburg SHINES, and Earth Stewards, a creation care ministry at my local church. Through Earth Stewards, I wrote a monthly column on creation care for our church’s newsletter and coordinated semi-annual creation care events. I also obtained my LEED Green Associate certification from the Green Building Certification Institute confirming my knowledge and skills in green design, construction, and operations. My wife and I also became the first homeowners in Fredericksburg to utilize solar electricity and water heating and were featured on the front page of our local newspaper. See front page newspaper article. For the next seven years, with God’s help, and with many dedicated volunteers from our community and my congregation, we made a significant difference in supporting God’s creation with many additional “firsts”. Some of those “firsts” included: freecycles, a public EV charging station, solarize Gillespie County, bicycle parking at Marktplatz, green home tours, solar and zero waste forums. For several years in Nebraska, I was also privileged to help co-lead an advocacy coalition that worked with political leaders to seek to create a more bikeable, walkable, and liveable community.