In 2002, the Sumner T. McKnight Foundation gave the Center for Law and Culture a generous grant to assist Emmerich in taking her faith-based stewardship approach to other resource dependent communities. The McKnight grant enabled her to develop a training seminar for environmental professionals, to carry out three successful outreaches in farm communities in the Bay watershed, and to complete a marketing strategy for the film Between Heaven and Earth. Through this film and the outreaches, she and her co-producer, Jeffrey Pohorski, educated hundreds of people concerning the moral obligation to care for God’s creation, in particular the Chesapeake Bay. Impressed with the momentum achieved under the McKnight initiative, the Bradshaw-Knight Foundation awarded the Center a large grant in late 2004 to produce an hour-long film focusing on Emmerich’s creation-care approach.
The documentary, When Heaven Meets Earth: How a Faithful Few Changed Everything, produced in the fall of 2006, builds on the film Between Heaven and Earth by incorporating footage of the faith-based stewardship initiative developed among Pennsylvania and Maryland farm communities. This film is designed primarily for national broadcast but also for viewing at film festivals, environmental and faith-based conferences, and in colleges and universities. With the same grant, the Center, through Skunkfilms Productions, produced a six-minute documentary, When Heaven Meets Earth: Faith-Based Stewardship Spreads to the Urban and Suburban Communities. Its subject is another faith-based stewardship initiative launched in 2005 among African-Americans in the community of Berlin, Maryland.
In 2008, the Bradshaw-Knight Foundation gave a generous grant to the Center for Law and Culture to market the When Heaven Meets Earth DVD.
