JERRY HARTZ: I love the fact that this church is always at the front of the line.

From civil rights in the 1950s, the first desegregated library to helping found the first homeless shelter, the first food bank, social mission is embedded in this church.

I began to struggle with this personally for several years.

And what can you do with something like climate change?

It's so big.

It's so, I mean, as an individual, it's just so overwhelming and so you have to break it down.

You have to start, here's the steps I take before I can run and that's kind of the way we looked at this whole thing.

LAURA MARTIN: We started with an evaluation of our energy consumption and we got that through an audit that really let us see how much we were using and where the energy was going.

JERRY HARTZ: Roughly 100-year old campus in some places, there was literally nothing between the inside and the outside except the drop ceiling.

So we were heating and cooling the outdoors and you can imagine the tremendous waste not only waste in terms of climate impact but waste in terms of what it cost.

We did as much insulation as we could.

We have cut by 80% the amount of natural gas usage in terms of HVAC within one year.

LAURA MARTIN: We also discovered that there was a lot we could do with windows, with ventilation.

There was a lot that we could do of course, with putting solar on our building which we've also done.

So our commitment to working on lights and lighting is one that we've been working on for more than 10 years now led by John Overholt.

John really did the study when people in the choir were complaining that they were getting hot under the lights and so John saw that as an opportunity to change out the lights and to replace them with LEDs.

He has then gone on to create over 450 different lighting elements here in the church.

JOHN OVERHOLT: Looking at reducing your lighting budget, the first thing you should look at is lights that are always on.

Things like exit lights, it would be simple to just replace those.

In six months, you could practically repay the cost of the exit lights.

LAURA MARTIN: We realize that over the long term and we're talking like 20 years, we actually save money and are better stewards for the earth and the climate by making these changes.

JOHN OVERHOLT: I've had a satisfaction of getting things done here.

I want to tell people how they can reduce their carbon footprint without having to change their lifestyle in a major way.

LAURA MARTIN: Fundamentally, if we are called to love one another as God has loved us, then we recognize the way that everything and everyone we love is at stake in climate change.

JERRY HARTZ: I think people tend to look the other way on big subjects that are difficult sometimes, there doesn't need to be that difficulty now.

It's a much easier pathway than we had before and you can have a wonderful life and not emit carbon.