Photo courtesy Flickr CC License

The evangelical creation care movement, though almost invisible to many, has been around for quite a few years.  One of its most visible historical markers is probably the founding of Au Sable Institute in 1979, thirty-three years ago now – but well before that date there were many individuals and a few small organizations seeking to promote what was then called ‘Christian environmental stewardship.’  There are many more of us now, and there is a lot of good work going on, but we still fly below the radar in most cases.

So it was enlightening and important that many of the current key players in this movement were on the phone together last week to share what we’re all doing, and perhaps more to the point, what God is doing to continue to foster and strengthen this movement.

Here’s a brief summary with bullet points of the highlights.  [If you’d like to hear a recording of the phone call yourself, just call  (507) 726-4220 and choose to listen to recording #1.]  Read more »

Here’s the Christmas letter we sent from Care of Creation to our mailing list recently.  If you would like to be on this list, click here to sign up, and check off any of the different newsletter’s you’d like to  receive (we mail about every six weeks or so).

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

————————————————————————-

On this week of Christmas, I am very pleased to bring you greetings from all of us here at Care of Creation – from me and Susanna, from our staff and volunteers in Madison, from the Sorley family and our project staff in Kenya, and from the Ness family, preparing to launch our Tanzania project early in the new year.

Often at this time of year people ask me if I will be doing any traveling or speaking in December. Invariably my answer is, “No – people don’t want environmental talks during Christmas.”  Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining!  It’s nice to spend time closer to home.

Read more »

For many years, it has been our practice (my wife and I) to write a Christmas letter that includes one page of devotional thoughts about Christmas, and a second page of family news.  This post is taken from this year’s letter -I hope you enjoy it, or at least find it helpful.  Please note that you are more than welcome to sign up for our occasional newsletter - and then you can get the family news, too!   When you get to the sign up form, click on News from Ed and Susanna, and any of the other newsletters you would like to subscribe to.  

Here are my thoughts on Christmas, 2011:

Christmas.  It is a great story that we never tire of: The manger scene, stars, angels, shepherds, wise men. Underneath the story is the best news any of us will ever hear:  Immanuel – “God is with us”. In the words of John’s gospel, “the Word became flesh and lived among us…”

What we kind of lose track of, I think, is what it took to make this miracle happen.  Bringing a baby into the world is not easy…
Read more »

Last Friday was  “Black Friday”, when the world goes crazy over shopping.  There was a lot of controversy in the days leading up to the event concerning stores opening not at 5 am, not ta 4 am, not even at midnight, but as early as 10 pm the evening of Thanksgiving.  This controversy was misguided.  The issue should not have been Black Friday “invading” Thanksgiving’s time slot, but Black Friday happening at all… As for me, my experience of Black Friday was different and unexpectedly blessed. What did I do on Black Friday?  I went to a funeral.  Read on…

I am an incurable news-addict, so I suppose it’s my own fault that I had heartburn before breakfast on Black Friday.  I woke up to a story from the Los Angeles Times that many of you probably saw in some form sometime during the weekend:

Matthew Lopez went to the Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch on Thursday night for the Black Friday sale but instead was caught in a pepper-spray attack by a woman who authorities said was “competitive shopping.” Read more »

Our friends at the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) have developed a new program to train “Creation Care Champions” – people who will be equipped to give presentations in their own churches and communities.

Here’s the blurb from Alexei Laushkin, host of the program:

The Creation Care Teaching (CCT) Institute is a series of teaching modules for those interested in learning more about creation care, developing their creation care expertise, and/or for those who might want to speak about creation care to their church, school, and or local community. CCT offers monthly teleconference trainings on a wide range of creation care topics including: the biblical basis for creation care, global Christianity and creation care, climate change, mercury & the unborn, deforestation, relief and development work, protecting wild places, sustainable agriculture, evangelism, creation care as discipleship, green buildings, and much more.

For more information email support@creationcare.org

And actually, you need to do it right away – the next session will be held at 3 pm this Thursday, October 20. The topic is Creation Care and the Lausanne Cape Town Commitment with guest presenter Lowell Bliss (one of the occasional authors on this blog).

It’s free, and well worth your time – but you’ll need to contact Alexei via the email address above to get the call-in instructions and to have the material emailed to you.

Tell him Ed sent you…

Farming God’s Way is part of Care of Creation’s program in Kenya.  Essentially conservation no-till farming wrapped in a strong envelope of biblical teaching, the program consistently produces yields many times that produced with conventional farming techniques, even in – or better, especially in drought years like the one we’re in now, along with farmers who have a strong biblical framework for their farming work.  440% increased yield is nothing to sneeze at… but enough words!  Here’s a picture just received from Craig Sorley with his comments below:

From Craig:

Attached is a photo from the creation stewardship and farming God’s way workshop we held for 3 days last week with 30 farmers from Mai Mahiu and Ndeiya.  We harvested our onion crop with them.  The control plot produced 17.3kg of onions (as seen on the left of the photo) and the FGW plot produced 76.9 kg (as seen on the right).  The FGW plot produced 4.4 times greater yield!!!

Want to help Craig do more work like this?  Donate here!  (Select “Care of Creation Kenya Project” in the drop-down list).

Click through for another picture…

Read more »