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.] 

These notes are presented in the order on the phone call.  I am sure any of these folks would welcome a note from anyone interested in learning more; please write to them through the contact page on each organization’s website.  [Tell them Ed sent you!]

Scott Sabin is Director of  Plant With Purpose (formerly Floresta for those who are a bit out of date…)  This is one of our older organizations, having begun as a development organization in Latin America and now with projects and staff in Latin America, South America, Africa, and Asia.  PWP did some important work in Haiti following the recent earthquake.  Highlights recently

• They’ve planted 11 million trees.  Not sure over what time span, but that doesn’t really matter, does it?  It’s a big number.
• Opened a new regional office in Denver (main office is in San Diego).
• Currently involved in a new joint venture not yet public that has the potential link organizations and projects with new sources of funds (if I understood what Scott was describing).

Matthew Sleeth is Director of Blessed Earth, an educational nonprofit based in Asbury, Kentucky.   Upcoming highlights shared by Matthew

• A major seminary project is now in progress focused around a covenant seminaries are being asked to sign to commit to ‘live, preach, teach, hold each other accountable’ for creation care and sustainable activities and lifestyle on their campuses.  To date Denver, George Fox, Colombia and Asbury have signed on – a number of other major seminaries are in process.
• A year of teaching at and in cooperation with the National Cathedral in Washington DC kicks off on Earth Day (April 22) with a special service and recognition of Wendell Berry.

Joe Sheldon is a faculty member at Pacific Rim Institute for Environmental Studies.  Pacific Rim is one of the newest arrivals to the movement, but has a long shared history with Au Sable Institute , having been formed just a couple of years ago to take over Au Sable’s 175 acre Whidbey Island campus just north of Seattle.  The Institute is close to completing negotiations that will leave them with free and clear ownership of the property.  Highlights of the current and projected program…

• Pacfic Rim will continue to host Au Sable students and faculty during the summers;
• Ongoing research and restoration on the largest prairie remnant in Puget Sound, including the introduction of the Golden Paintbrush, a federally listed plant that is now growing 1500 plants strong;
• Partnerships with USFWS, National Park Service and others;
• and ongoing work with local schools and churches.

[Au Sable was to have been represented by new Director Fred Van Dyke, but winter weather in Chicago prevented Fred from joining us.  Undergrads in any field with an interest in creation care or environmental studies should be aware that the Au Sable program is available to supplement course offerings at their home campus. Check out their new website.]

Tyler Amy is the new Coordinator for Renewal, a relatively new student-run, student-led, student-focused organization with chapters on a number of Christian college campuses.  Think of it like a creation-care version of InterVarsity or Navigators(!).  Recent highlights:

• A fall summit (the second one) at Houghton College featured 70+ students from Houghton, Messiah, Eastern, Wheaton, Geneva, and (drum roll….) King’s University College of Alberta.
• Issuance of their second Green Awakenings report, this one focusing on assets and barriers to creation care on Christian college campuses.  [You really need to get this report – it is quite amazing what is taking place on Christian college campuses these days.]

Renewal shares organizational ties with two other organizations that are old and well-know partners in the movement.  He also reported on

Creation Care Study Program (CCSP), Chris Elisara, Director. Similar to Au Sable and Pacific Rim, but offering semester-length study-abroad programs…

• Have moved into new facilities at their campus in Belize;
• Will be opening a new semester program on Camino Island (also in Puget Sound) focusing on sustainability.
• They also have an established and popular program in New Zealand.

Restoring Eden – Peter Illyn, Director, is known for getting students (and others) involved in visible direct-action efforts.  Current plans include

• Spring Break health surveys in coal mining areas of Appalachia – (last yr’s were published in the Journal of Community Health).
• Chapel lectures on campuses, recent trip in Indiana.

Alexei Laushkin is on staff with the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) .  Based in Washington, publisher of Creation Care Magazine, EEN has a number of things going on:

• Last year partnered w/Blessed Earth, Eden Vigil,
• Involved in a highly visible ‘Mercury and the Unborn’ campaign with radio ads, television ads and testimony at some high profile Washington hearings, thus adding a strong evangelical voice to the national discussion.
• Held their 2^nd Day of Prayer for Creation Care in Wash DC, and…
• Their big upcoming event is the 3^rd annual Day of Prayer for Creation Care to be held in Washington on April 26^th.  Featured speakers will include Dr. Chris Wright (primary author of the Cape Town Commitment), Leith Anderson (NAE), Lon Allison (Billy Graham Center), etc.  [Tickets are available for members of the movement – contact Alexei soon!]

Lowell Bliss is founding director of Eden Vigil , an environmental missions initiative operating under the umbrella of Christar, an established and well respected pioneering and church planting mission agency.  Eden Vigil’s recent and upcoming highlights include…

• Monthly publication (via email) of the Environmental Missions Prayer Digest.  This is a prayer publication unlike any other, and deserves a wider following than it now has (sign up here).
• Lowell has an important book in progress:  Environmental Missions: Planting Churches and Trees.  Now in the negotiate-with-the-editors-and-rewrite stage.
• A new podcast will be launched any day now.  The Agabus Project .  Interviews will feature people like Peter Harris, founder of A Rocha, and Joel Salatin, well-known proponent of sustainable farming and eating.
• “Sending Services” – similar to ‘tent-making missions’; Eden Vigil provides supporting services for Christians going to other countries in secular (environmental) jobs who want to go with a “missionary mindset”.

Tom Rowley is director of A Rocha USA, the US chapter of A Rocha (ask Tom how to pronounce it!), the largest and probably oldest international Christian conservation organization, with a presence in about 25 countries now.  In the US A Rocha is involved in…

• 3 projects – Linden WA, Santa Barbara, and ‘the Texas hill country’, and several others under development.
• The Texas project is a  7,000 acre ranch, and is working with some new grant money on habitat protection, riparian work, and ultimately the development of a Field Study Center.
• The Rowley family recently relocated from Texas to Bend OR and Tom is developing new opportunities in the Pacific Northwest.
• Grass roots orgs can now join A Rocha as independent affiliates.  If you know of a local group that could benefit from a connection with (and the encouragement of) a national organization, contact Tom for more information.

And finally, Ed Brown (myself), Director of  Care of Creation… Our emphasis is on the mobilization of the church toward a God-centered response to the environmental crisis.  This has us going in a number of different directions:

• A long-established work in Kenya (Care of Creation Kenya) working in tree planting, agriculture (“Farming God’s Way”), and training and discipling church leaders, teachers, pastors and development workers about environmental issues and creation care principles.
• A similar new project will be launched in southern Tanzania this year.
• The Our Father’s World seminar is a weekend seminar for churches, presented around the country and in a number of overseas venues.
• Ed is the point person for a Global Consultation on the Gospel and Creation Care to be held in Jamaica October 29 – November 3 of this year, hosted by Lausanne and the World Evangelical Alliance.  Names are now being collected for this invitation only meeting – contact him now if you have people you would like to nominate for participation.

The Creation Care movement is most definitely alive and well.  None of these organizations has the resources they need to do the tasks that need to be done – we encourage you to find your favorite one(s) – send them a note thanking them for their work, and perhaps send a donation from time to time!

[Perhaps you can help us spread the word by reposting this in full on any blog you might have or sharing via Twitter or Facebook.]

Report compiled by Ed Brown, Care of Creation.

[Apologies if any important bullet points were left out…]

Subtitle: The Mission Field as field. . . and forest and river and mountain and topsoil

by Lowell Bliss, guest contributor

Ed has asked me to re-post this article from a recent issue of our Environmental Missions Prayer Digest, in particular as a means to discuss one way in which

Pray to Jesus for Tiger Protection: The people of the Sunderbans Mangroves (#139), from the Environmental Missions Prayer Digest

creation care can affect how the Church goes about doing missions: evangelism, discipleship, and church-planting.  “Go and make disciples of ta ethne, all nations,” the Great Commission says.   Even the Greek renderings of the words indicate that making disciples occurs among ethnic groups, or people groups.  Political nations may grant missionaries their passports and entry visas, but ministry occurs among smaller cultural and linguistic communities.  But what about ministry in something we would define as ecoregions?  To what extent should the local biosphere inform how we preach the Gospel to a particular people group?

A 1982 Lausanne Committee meeting in Chicago offered the following definition of a people group:  “A significantly large ethnic or sociological grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common affinity for one another. For evangelistic purposes, it is the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance.”  A creation care perspective looks at this definition from a number of assumptions.  One is that these “individuals” are homo sapiens, and thus not disembodied souls floating in a simple construct of culture and language.  People live, and they live somewhere.  That physical “somewhere” means something; it creates a valid “common affinity for one another.”  It also greatly affects how one hears and interacts with the Gospel.

The example mentioned in the Prayer Digest paragraphs below is of the Hindu and Muslim peoples who live among the tigers of the Indian and Bangladeshi Sunderbans Mangrove forests.  (You can access the entire article at www.edenvigil.organd even sign up for this free monthly e-letter guide to prayer.)  In considering just this one ecoregion, I learned three things I never knew before.

1. I newly learned of a goddess in the Hindu pantheon: Bon Bibi, the “goddess of the forest,” who defeats the demon disguised as a tiger.
2. I learned of a Muslim people group who apparently don’t think twice about participating in Hindu idolatry.   Why they do so is because “spiritual dynamics” invariably trump religious ones, something which traditional people group theory can have trouble computing.
3. That spiritual dynamic is fear, the result of living among the world’s most concentrated population of man-eaters (tigers possibly made more aggressive by the salinity of the tidal waters in their ecoregion.)  The people are afraid and so they pray to Bon Bibi for protection.

Just the little look I took at the Sunderbans was enough for God to put a longing in my heart to tell the people of the Sunderbans Mangrove forest that Jesus Christ is able to protect them from “the devil who prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (I Pet. 5:8).  It certainly has changed the way I pray for them, and all that’s the result of looking at them from an ecoregions perspective.

Here’s the article.  It will serve as an introduction to Christian missions seen through the lense of the World Wildlife Foundation’s Global 200, and to our plans for the Environmental Missions Prayer Digest in 2012:

Praying for the Peoples of the WWF Global 200

I’m scheduled for a phone call today or tomorrow with a publisher whose biggest sticking point on my book manuscript seems to be my environmental reflections on people group theory.  For a few decades now, the missions community has been profitably engaged in classifying the peoples of the world, with an emphasis on the “unreached,” “least-reached,” and “unengaged.”   For however much objective identification we might claim this work to be, there’s a whole lot of subjective conceptualizing in our classifications.  Exactly what cultural and linguistic factors make up this people group, as compared to that one?  What other factors might be important?

There’s actually a great deal at stake in people group theory.  Sometimes it can uncover a people who have been hidden from the Gospel.  We thought we were preaching to everyone, but we were only talking to the larger culture in which this people group had been subsumed and marginalized. People group classifications can help hone our message.  But, as in anything, a “hardening of the categories” can also be harmful.  In North India for example, our team spent a great deal of energy trying to reach a 19th Century vision of “the Brahmin caste,” rather than a 21st Century version of “the emergent middle class.”

Beginning in 2002, the World Wildlife Fund adopted an Ecoregion-Based Conservation (ERBC) strategy.  They defined an ecoregion as “a large area of land or water that contains a geograph-ically distinct assemblage of natural communities that:

(a) share a large majority of their species and ecological dynamics;

(b) share similar environmental conditions, and;

(c) interact ecologically in ways that are critical for their long-term persistence.

     With the help of the Nature Conservancy and other organizations, they reclassified this world of political boundaries and identified 825 terrestrial, 426 freshwater, and 229 coast and shelf marine ecoregions.  From this number, they further identified 238 places which they consider “the most biologically distinct. . . ecoregions of the planet.”  They call these places the Global 200, and according to the subtitle of their fabulously-beautiful photobook, they are “Places That Must Survive.”

Now, employing a definition of environment that understands it additionally as “that which surrounds those we love, those for whom Jesus died,” then people can be understood as one of those species that live in, depend on, and alter for better or worse that ecoregion.  For example, we could take a people group such as the Indian Bengali Hindu people and define them as we’ve traditionally done according to nationality/ethnicity/religious bloc.  But what if we reconceptualized that group of people as “the people of the Sunderbans Mangrove” (#139 of the WWF Global 200.)  What would that suggest for Christian love, evangelism, and church-planting strategy.  What would it suggest for prayer?

In 2012. the Environmental Missions Prayer Digest wants to find out.  Each month we’ll feature a different people group from an unlikely source: the WWF’s Global 200.   Thank you for joining us for another year of prayer.  (Although, if you bow your knee in the Sunderbans, you might sink in the mud.  If you close your eyes, you might get eaten by a tiger.)

Link: WWF Global 200

Link: book Global 200: Places That Must Survive, viewable at Amazon.com here (orderable through your local bookstore)

Lowell Bliss is the director of Eden Vigil.  Watch for his new podcast, The Agabus Project, to premier this month with an interview with A Rocha’s Peter Harris about the creation care legacy of John Stott.

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.”

…”People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray,” [a] Selmar resident said. “I guess what triggered it was people started pulling the plastic off the pallets and then shoving and bombarding the display of games. It started with people pushing and screaming because they were getting shoved onto the boxes.”

Later, during the day I heard an interview on NPR with a guy who “had to” get in line at a Toy Store during his family’s Thanksgiving dinner .  “My mother didn’t like it, but I had to do it.” And another with a shopper who admitted that among all of her purchases, there was a total of one – 1! – item that was for someone else.  She had bought everything else for herself.  A review of the posts of my “friends” on Facebook showed a few expressing dismay over Black Friday, but also a disturbing number who were caught up in the spirit of the thing, and dragging their Facebook friends along for the ride.

Do I object to Black Friday starting at midnight or earlier?

No.

I object to Black Friday happening at all.

You could hardly find a sharper contrast between two events than the differences between Thanksgiving and Black Friday.  Thanksgiving is, by definition, a humbling experience.  I cannot be thankful without an implicit recognition that there is someone besides myself who is responsible for what I have and even for who I am.  Thanksgiving as traditionally practiced is about family, and sharing, and giving and as much as anything, about acknowledging those nonmaterial aspects of life which have no price but have incalculable value.

Black Friday – well, we’ve already seen it, haven’t we?  It’s about money.  Consumerism.  Irrational material acquisition.  Greed.  Black Friday is, perhaps, the middle class playing the same games that Wall Street bankers play every day.

You could make a pretty good case that this is one “holiday” that Christians should shun with all of the passion available to them.

So what did I do on Black Friday?  I went to a funeral.  And I found Black Friday turning into a very, very good Friday.

Ralph was an old friend of our family.  In fact, he was one of my father-in-law’s best friends, and showed that friendship in his own quiet way in the days leading up to my father-in-law’s own death some ten years ago.  Though we had to drive two and a half hours each way on a holiday weekend to attend the service, we felt we owed it to Ralph’s family.  After all, Ralph had already done more than this for our own family.

His death was unexpected but not surprising – he was, after all, 86 years old.  The service was a comforting tribute to a husband, father, grandfather who by all accounts had lived his life well.  There were the usual favorite hymns and Bible readings.  But what struck me was the contrast between what we were experiencing inside that church with what I knew was going on in every shopping mall in the country at that very moment.

This man had captured the essence of Thanksgiving in every aspect of his life, and he stood, even in his coffin, as a silent rebuke to all that is Black Friday.

According to the values of the world of Black Friday, Ralph didn’t accomplish much of note.  When the history books are written, he won’t get even a footnote.  But in the world of Thanksgiving, it’s going to be a different story.   Ralph’s eldest son paid tribute in simple eloquence.

“He was quiet.  And he was faithful.”

If something needed doing, Ralph was the one who did it.

We were treated to a number of examples of the kinds of little things that Ralph did quietly and faithfully.  What sticks in my mind, though, is the church sign.  The Pastor told us that the sign in front of the church – you know, the kind with moveable letters that announces a sermon title and maybe a verse of the week – had been updated every week by Ralph for years.  No one asked him to do it.  He just did it.  Every week.

In fact, the words on the sign on the day of his funeral had been placed there by Ralph himself.

“Quiet… and faithful.”  What a tribute.

You know the kind of person Ralph was because you know someone like this yourself.  People like this represent the triumph of selflessness over selfishness.  The victory of humility over arrogance and greed.  And the inevitable and glorious transformation of all of our Black Fridays into Good Fridays.

by Lowell Bliss, guest contributor

Dancing at a Pakistani wedding is a safer celebration than gunfire. It's an analogy we can stand to learn in God's "what goes up, must come down" creation.

“What goes up, must come down,” is one of those multi-purpose aphorisms, functional on the natural level as well as the moral.   A physicist might use it to describe the Law of Gravity.  A preacher might recite it in a sermon on Galatians 6:7: “for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

Last week, the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Lab reported that global carbon-dioxide emissions saw their biggest one-year rise, a 6 percent jump in 2010.  (The report is linked here.)  Tom Boden, director of the lab, calls it a “big jump.”  His colleague, Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, was a bit more descriptive: it’s a “monster” increase, Marland said.  Part of the monstrosity no doubt is how the study indicates that emissions are now growing faster than what the IPCC projected as a worst-case scenario in its 2007 report.  A worsened pace of carbon emissions will result in higher projected temperature averages (up now to 5.2° C by 2100, according to MIT models.)

What goes up—including CO₂ molecules—must come down, but in the case of carbon dioxide, it may take 100 years or so.  It is true that our planet’s oceans and vegetation act as carbon sinks, that is, they absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere, albeit at a rate slower than what industrial society and natural processes are emitting it.   A single molecule of CO₂ will float unmolested in the atmosphere for one hundred years.  Imagine that the atmosphere is a bathtub.  The tap of carbon emissions has just been bumped that much further open, a faster flow.  The tub is filling faster than the drain can regulate it.  Like our friend, climatologist Katherine Hayhoe has said, the thing about climate change (including the greenhouse effect) is that it is “just basic physics,” in this case, illustratable with your own bathtub and cupboard full of towels to mop up the results.

Once, during a summer spent in the Pakistani foothills, we got a report from family friends down on the plains that their young son Timmy had been struck in his shoulder by a stray bullet.  He had been playing outside.  It was wedding season in Pakistan.  Occasionally in exuberance, someone from the wedding party will take an automatic weapon and spray a number of rounds innocently and joyfully into the air.  But what goes up, most come down.  That’s a law of physics.  Timmy recovered well from surgery, but every year some bystanders, many miles from any wedding, are not so fortunate.   To what extent though is “what goes up, must come down” a moral aphorism for a trigger-happy wedding guest?  Whoever Timmy’s assailant was, he was just shooting into the sky, adding to the joy.  Forty one percent of 2010’s monster carbon dioxide increase is attributable to China’s greater output, and an additional 12 percent to the U.S. trying to happily put the financial crisis behind us.

When it comes to CO₂ we can tweak the proverb.  Employing our best street lingo about threatening prospects, we can say, “What goes up, means sumthing is gonna go down.”

Lowell Bliss is the publisher of the Environmental Missions Prayer Digest, which this month features the Tar Sands of Madgascar.  He and his wife Robynn were missionaries for 14 years in India and Pakistan.

Attention, Students!

If you…

• Have an interest in caring for God’s creation
• Can put together a video
• Could use a thousand dollars

Then Listen up!

A creation care video contest has just been announced.  Here’s the blurb:

The idea is simple… make a video; upload it as instructed by December 10; collect and cash the check (*IF you’re good enough, of course!)

Note that this contest has been designed for groups as well as individuals – submit a video on behalf of your campus InterVarsity chapter, or your campus green club or just you and your roommate.

Here’s the Facebook group link – go ahead and Like it and Share it with others.  While you’re at it, give this post a +1 on Google Plus to spread the word further.

The famous Ben Lowe of EEN is behind this project.  Contact him at ben [AT] creationcare.org if you have questions. [Care of Creation is a cosponsor of this contest.]

Here’s some additional information including upload instructions:

Some ideas to get you started

• Conserving our resources
• Reducing energy usage
• Improving energy efficiency
• Generating renewable energy
• Promoting humane treatment of animals
• Cleaning up the air, water, and landscape, and making changes that will prevent or reduce pollution
• Encouraging enjoyment, understanding and appreciation of God’s creation
• Creatively supporting good public policies on environmental stewardship
• Preserving famland and wilderness areas
• Promoting healthy and diverse food supply
• Protecting endangered species

Prizes

First Place: $1,000 for individual winner; $2,000 for the group winner
Second Place: $500/individual; $1,000/group

Third Place: $250/individual; $500/group

Special Mentions (up to 3): $100/individual; $200/group

Contest runs from Oct. 1 to Dec. 10

Submit Your Video

1. Create a YouTube login at YouTube.com.
2. Search for the NAE Channel (theNAEvideos).
3. Send the NAE Channel a message through YouTube containing your video. Also include your name/group name, phone number, email address, and group members’ ages and dates of birth.
4. Videos for the college contest can be submitted to the NAE YouTube Channel from Oct. 1 to Dec. 10.  Videos will not be accepted outside of those time brackets.
5. The NAE will notify you or your group of the results by email.

Criteria for Judging

1. Creativity, design of video and style
2. Originality of approach and biblical message
3. Clear understanding of concepts

Contest Rules

• All entrants must be 18-25 years old to participate.
• All entrants must agreed to the statement below.*
• Video must be about creation care and should include a biblical basis for stewarding God’s creation. The video could include a current project, future project idea, or a creative representation of “creation care” ideas or challenges.
• Video should be at least 30 seconds, but under 3 minutes.
• Inappropriate content will not be allowed.**
• Videos for the college contest can be submitted to the NAE YouTube Channel from Oct. 1 to Dec. 10. Videos will not be accepted outside of those time brackets.

Any questions?  Email the NAE office.

*By submitting a video, I certify that I have read the Rules and agree to adhere to them. All videos must be the original work of the Entrant and not infringe on the rights of a third party.  All people participating in the video must be participating with their knowledge and be willing to sign a Declaration and Release Form. Any video submitted may be used or reproduced by the NAE without further consent. I agree to release any rights to the video to the NAE.

Before being declared a winner, the selected Entrants will be required to sign a Declaration and Release form stating that he/she has read, understood and complied with these Rules, grants all consents required as contemplated in these Rules, authorizes the Contest Operator and/or their promotional agents to broadcast, publish and disseminate his/her name, address, photograph, likeness and voice, in connection with any promotion or publicity, and/or for general news, entertainment and information purposes at no compensation to the winner, except the prize as awarded and confirming the release described in the following sentence. By entering this Contest, each entrant hereby releases the Contest Operator and its operating divisions, affiliated corporations and their respective officers, directors, employees and agents from any and all liability of any kind arising out of the entrant’s participation in this Contest and, if applicable, receipt and use of the prize. Winners will be declared from the final pool of qualified entries, pending the receipt of signed Declarations and Release forms.

The Contest Operator assumes no responsibility or liability whatsoever arising from or in any way related to this Contest or the acceptance or use of the prizes awarded or for tampering, theft, defects, viruses, human errors including gross negligence, deletions, technical or telephone problems, undeliverable messages, computer errors, lost, misdirected, late or incomplete entries or for any online difficulties that may result in damage or malfunction the computer or the failure of the Contest Operator to process any entry and otherwise award any prize.

The Contest Operator is the National Association of Evangelicals.  The decision of the contest judges will be a final decision by the Contest Operator.
**The NAE reserves the right to not post a video to its YouTube Channel or to remove a video and/or comment from the channel if the NAE deems it inappropriate in any way.

This summer Brittany Ederer, a student at UW-Madison, served as an intern in the Care of Creation office in Madison.  Based on her interest in camping, education nature and environment, we assigned her to start a survey project of Christian camps in Wisconsin, the upper Midwest and then throughout the country.  Are there Christian camps who are actively promoting creation care as part of their camp program?  Are they using creation care principles in caring for their properties?  This blog post is a preliminary report on a visit to one camp not far from Madison.  It turns out one of the best examples of creation care at camp is right in our own back yard.  We’re looking forward to a complete report from Brittany later on, but in the meantime, enjoy her thoughts on what’s going on at Timber-lee…

In mid-August I had the opportunity to visit Camp Timber-lee in East Troy, Wisconsin.  Timber-lee is an Evangelical Free camp that is busy year-round with summer camp, retreats, and school programs including Environmental Education.  I met with the Environmental Education Instructor/Animal Care Manager, Karen Good, and she showed me around their impressive Science Education Center.  My excitement turned to delight when I entered one of their several animal rooms and saw a myriad of snakes, turtles, and other herpetofauna  (look it up!).

While I held a beautiful orange and yellow kingsnake, Karen explained that many of their animals were adopted from rescues or donated to the camp.  The other room of animals was mostly mammals with a few birds, including a rescue squirrel that could not be released to the wild because he was raised by humans-and now thinks of himself as one too!

The rest of the tour included a spectacular “Seven Days of Creation” exhibit, classrooms with unparalleled insect collections and mounts of animals from around the world, a classroom all about energy and physics, a walk through some of their woods, and a stop at the marsh.

As I continued to chat with Karen, she explained how Timber-lee uses the resources they’ve been blessed with to teach summer camp kids and students alike.  I began to realize just how simple it could be to connect people with nature and help them develop a deep, Biblical appreciation and respect for the world God has placed us in.

Here are a few keys to the success of the environmental stewardship focus at Timber-lee:

• They introduce children to the animals in the Nature Center so they interact with living, breathing creatures that have specific habitat and diet needs.  In this way, the children can overcome trepidations they may have towards snakes, lizards, etc. while regaining an awe of nature.  It’s not always feasible to try and teach young ones about habitat destruction and the economic problems that accompany pollution, but if you can get them to care about the animals, then you’ve given them a reference point for being concerned about the environment as a whole.
• They use what they already have-for instance, they work on the section of forest they have to remove invasive species, they take advantage of the marsh shoreline to show and teach animal tracks, and use protected or endangered species already on the property to teach about conservation (like the kitten tail Besseya bullii, a threatened vascular plant in WI)
• They work with and take advantage of outside organizations, such as wildlife rehabilitation centers and conservation groups.  Numerous times rehabilitated wildlife is released on Timber-lee property because they maintain healthy native habitats.  They also have received grants from organizations like The Prairie Enthusiasts, which allows them to improve and expand their native prairie areas at camp.

This is a camp I would want my children to attend, because they’re doing it right!  The campers learn about what the outside world is like-what animals live where, how to identify their tracks, what a native ecosystem should look like.  It’s fun to learn!  Outside recreation should include more than wakeboarding or playing basketball, and can be as simple as learning about the trees around the campfire.  Also, creation care at Timber-lee isn’t just about how much money they can save or how many  “green” products they switch to, but about understanding a little better the heart of God.  Timber-lee has prayed and sought the face of God, and He has blessed them with many donations (like an insect collection) that they can use as teaching tools.

As I drove back to Madison, I reflected on a few questions:

• What would it look like for other camps across the USA to take their God-given resources to the next level?
• Many thousands of acres in this country are the property of Christian camps-how many of those acres are harboring invasive species, threatened or endangered species, or near-pristine habitat?
• How many camps are using what they have to actively engage their campers in environmental stewardship?

These are the types of questions I am trying to answer through my internship with Care of Creation, Inc.

Eight or nine months ago I got an email from a guy named Mark Davis.  Could I give him a call.  I was travelling – out of the country, I think – and the message got buried.  He emailed again.  Then he called.  I thought, Okay, this guy is serious – let’s find out what this is all about.

Mark is a large animal vet in Florida (think James Herriott in the Florida sunshine).  He is also, like my colleague Craig Sorley, a missionary kid who grew up in Africa.  He has a passion for Africa’s wildlife that matches Craig’s love for Africa’s birds and trees.  He is also a phenomenal photographer.

Anyway – Mark is involved in a film project to save the critically endangered Black Rhino.  Midway through the project he got hold of my book, Our Father’s World, and decided he needed to turn the film from a general nature appeal to an appeal directed at churches, using the force of the biblical arguments.  And he needed someone to talk on film about some of these issues.

Would I come to Florida?

I would.  And did last March.  A delightful day and half with Mark, his videographer and family.  The film is still in process, but Mark has given us permission to post some of the footage of me answering his questions.  These are on YouTube, but we’ve also set up a series of pages on this blog to give you access to them, and to add your own comments if you like.  Start here, (there’s also a tab at the top left) and then look below the first clip for links to five others.

Let us know what you think, and share with your friends.

Guest blog: by Lowell Bliss

As part of our summer vacation this year, we found ourselves at Canada’s Wonderland, a colossal amusement park near Toronto.  My teenage son has discovered roller coasters as a passion, and so we strapped ourselves into the Behemoth, riding up to a height of 230 feet and then plunging down at 77 mph.  The Behemoth cost $26 million to build.  But all day it was like that: we were surrounded by acres of ingenious and costly technologies engineered with the sole purpose to amuse and thrill.

As my old body began to wane in the late afternoon, I plopped down on a park bench and waited out my kids who were on another ride.   A young teenage girl was standing nearby.  Suddenly, I heard her utter a short squeak and I felt something rustling on the ground between my ankles.  I looked down.  A chubby woodchuck wandered out from under my bench.  Behind us was a small wooded lot between paths in the amusement park.  A little stream flowed into a pool there and it was hard to tell whether this patch of nature among the tarmac was original or manufactured.  Nonetheless, it was apparently where the woodchuck lived.  I suspect it was “suppertime,” if that’s what you can call his daily allotment of popcorn and funnel cake.

The woodchuck boldly walked out into the path of the crowd.  At first, people were as unsuspecting and jumpy as those of us at the bench, but soon the crowd, which had been moving from one multi-million dollar thrill ride to another, stopped and formed around the woodchuck.   This little creature had momentarily become the foremost attraction at Canada’s foremost amusement park.  Soon, young men who had apparently been unable to win a kewpie doll for their dates at the carnival games were demonstrating their manly prowess by petting the woodchuck and feeding it by hand.   I cringed.  I wanted to say something harsh to them.

The teenage girl next to me interrupted my self-righteousness.  “What kind of animal is that?” she asked me.

“A woodchuck,” I said.

I was surprised at the tenderness in my answer.  While I wanted to be pedantic with the crowd; with her, I had a longing to teach, in the best sense of that urge.  This was partly a wave of humility, since I was unsure whether there was any difference between a woodchuck and a groundhog and maybe if I should have called it a groundhog instead.  (I’ve subsequently learned that they are two names for the same rodent whose scientific name is Marmota monax.)  But mostly I felt sympathy for her.  Woodchucks might not be the most common of animals, but this girl didn’t know what they were.

“Did you ever hear the rhyme, ‘How much wood would a woodchuck chuck’?”  I asked her.

“Yeah.”

“That’s it.”

“Cool.”

I told this story last Sunday night when I spoke to a group of docents who volunteer at our local zoo.   I wanted to thank them for their service.  In a world of technological attractions, a simple woodchuck still has the power to draw a crowd.  I told the docents that our world needs animals.  We need zoos.  But as our world moves further and further away from Nature, we also need docents and interpreters.  We need them to share their knowledge about animals.  We need them to share their passion for animals.  We need to be tenderly re-taught about wild things, even to their very names.

And of course, this little event allows me to write another verse to Bob Dylan’s song Man Gave Names to All the Animals:

He saw an animal come from under a bench

It gave respite from the techno-stench

It waddled around with courage and pluck

“Ah, think I’ll call him woodchuck”

(. . . or is that, groundhog?)

Lowell Bliss is the director of Eden Vigil and the publisher of the Environmental Missions Prayer Digest.  He is getting too old for roller coasters.

I’ve been pushing hard all summer on a major writing project with the goal of finishing the intial writing by the end of September.  This is the main reason you’ve seen less posts on Our Father’s World than usual.  Sorry about that – but hopefully the end product will be worth the wait.

In the meantime, enjoy this video clip from Chipotle.  You may know that I’m not much of a fast-food advocate – but this company does seem different.

Enjoy and pass it along!

A couple of weeks ago I attended a conference in Bozeman, Montana.  The announced topic was ‘Human and Environmental Health: Social Justice Implications: A Program for Religious Leaders and others…’  The setting was magnificent:  A century old railroad inn an hour’s drive from the western entrance to Yellowstone Park, surrounded by the mountain ranges for which Bozeman is famous.  But what made this conference unique was the oxymoronic nature of the sponsors.  FREE (The Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment) is a conservative institution dedicated to the application of what they would consider ‘sound economic principles’ to environmental problems.  I call them my ‘libertarian economist environmentalist friends’, and while I happily retain my own convictions, I found much that was profitable in this conference.

New Friends

As with any gathering of people around a common concern, the most profitable and enjoyable aspect of this conference was the people.  There were just 25 of us including presenters, and we represented a wide range of intellectual and religious  and career backgrounds.  A number of mainline protestants (Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian and so on), a couple of Catholics, one Orthodox priest, two Rabbis (including one who survived the Holocaust as a teenager), and yes, four or five evangelicals. Someone commented than an afternoon hike could have been a joke:  “A priest, a rabbi and a minister went up a mountain…”

John Baden, founder and director of FREE has been doing these conferences for more than 20 years, and is a master of a ‘facilitated discussion’ format:  Everyone has an opportunity to participate, civility is required, and a conversation ensues that is far more in-depth than you would expect with a group of 25 people.   Of course, some of the most valuable conversations happen off-program – in breaks and during meals.  I have several new best friends after this conference that make the investment of time more than worthwhile.

And I have to say that the organizers and presenters are among the most delightful people I’ve ever interacted with.  John Baden wanted us to see his ranch, located just a mile away.  “Before you care about what we know, you need to know that we care.”  What was a broken down ranch when he bought it (a long time ago), is now mostly in conservation easements and features a series of trout ponds (see picture) which he uses to serve local organizations including the Wounded Warrior Project, a very cool program to help rehabilitate wounded veterans by teaching them fly fishing, among other outdoor activities. However much I might disagree with John on aspects of economics , there is no question he cares about the environment – God’s creation – just as much as I do.

Content

Conference content was not completely as advertised.  Of four topical components – economics, environment, human health, and social justice – the first received somewhat more attention than environment and health, and social justice was left to fend for herself.  This was probably to be expected given that the sponsors and many of the presenters are economists, and while not a fatal flaw, did reduce the value of the discussions a bit.

Part of the challenge here was a lack of upfront topical integration.  In my mind I had connected ‘environment’ and ‘human health’:  I see these as two sides of the same coin.  And I would like to have begun with some basic definitions:  What do we mean by ‘health’? Do we mean simply ‘not sick’ or are we looking for something more?   Wendell Berry has things to say that Adam Smith’s disciples need to listen to.

Most of us from the religion side of the table felt that the conference would have been better balanced with one or two presentations from a theologian.  Yes, there is a challenge implicit in that proposition (“Who would we ask?  Catholic? Jewish? Evangelical?”) but still:  In a conference trying to integrate economics, environment and health for religious leaders, the theological perspective was needed.  And this may be one reason it felt like social justice was left out in the cold.

My favorite comment from the floor came from an Orthodox priest after a presentation on how to use economics to evaluate environmental problems:  “The church doesn’t need what you are preaching.  We’ve been telling people how to live for thousands of years…”  He was not entirely correct – even after thousands of years, we in the church have much to learn from all of the other disciplines.  But he raised a valid point.  In a conference for religious leaders, the voice of the theologian needs to be heard.

A Tool – But Only a tool

The most important take-away for me came in a new appreciation for economics as a tool.  One of the early presenters laid it out this way:  “Warm hearts need a cool head.”  It’s not enough to want to help – you need to know which of your possible solutions will really help, what the tradeoffs are, not only in monetary costs but in exchange of one risk for another.  A great example from a toxicologist:  Yes, mercury in fish is a health hazard.  But eating fish is one of the best ways to reduce a variety of other health risks – lower risk of heart disease is just one.  Granted, eliminating mercury in fish would be the best option, what is the best way to proceed in the meantime?  Our current quandary with nuclear power is another excellent example.  How do we balance the risks of a Fukushima against the consequences of another century of CO2 emissions from coal?

Economics is a tool to bring us to the point where we can make an intelligent decision.  And like enthusiastic salesmen in the power tools department at Sears, we were invited to push all the buttons and watch this tool do its thing.

The challenge, of course, with any tool is to keep it in its place.  For a guy with a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. And a guy with a new chain saw can be really productive – or really, really dangerous.  I’m afraid that economics looks to me a bit like that new chain saw.  The economist sees the whole world as a balance sheet.  Everything is black and white – cost and benefit, risk and reward, dollars and cents. Things will work out when we finally understand and implement private property rights.  Markets can be solutions to environmental problems.  Um, yes.  Okay.  But. What about things you can’t own? Things you can’t measure? Can you really have a market that is free of manipulation and distortion?

One problem is language.  Economics speaks in monetary terms because we have no other language by which to communicate value.  While economics  really does try to include all costs in a given situation or transaction, in reality the conversation almost always returns to money.  That is the only metric we have to measure risk and reward, cost and benefit.  For the business man, “What gets measured gets done”.  For the economist, “What can be measured can be counted.”  But the only ruler the economist has is denominated in dollars and cents, pounds and pence, rupees and dinars.

Measuring what cannot be measured?

One solution is for those of us who really want to save God’s world is to learn to speak the language of the economist.  If the only way we can save a forest or a watershed is to put a dollar amount on it, maybe we need to do that.  Valuing ecosystem services is one way to do this.

An article in the New York Times this week addresses this issue:

“Currently, there is no price for most of the ecosystem services we care about, like clean air and clean water,” said Stephen Polasky, professor of ecological/environmental economics at the University of Minnesota. He says that because economic calculations often ignore nature, the results can lead to the destruction of the very ecosystems upon which the economy is based.

“Our economic system values land for two primary reasons,” said Adam Davis, a partner in Ecosystem Investment Partners, a company that manages high-priority conservation properties. “One is building on the land, and the second is taking things from the land.”

“Right now, the way a forest is worth money is by cutting it down,” Mr. Davis said. “We measure that value in board-feet of lumber or tons of pulp sold to a paper mill.” What has been missing, he says, is a countervailing economic force that measures the value of leaving a forest or other ecosystem intact.

I have a friend who is giving his life to saving rainforests through investment vehicles.  His goal:  “I want to make it so a tree in the forest is worth more alive than it is dead.”

Will this solve our problems?  Not completely.  Too many things can never be measured – a great deal of this work project remains out of reach of economics, no matter how shiny it is as a tool.

The Challenge of the Cube

I inadvertently had the last comment of the entire conference.  I remembered an illustration I often use in my talks that seemed to capture the challenge we were left with:

Take two Rubik’s cubes:  One is assembled and ‘perfect’, representing the world as God gave it to us, and the world that we would all like to live in – theologians, environmentalists and economists alike.  The other is thoroughly scrambled and needs to be solved.  Economics teaches us how to manipulate the cube, while theology holds up the picture of the solved cube.  (Think about it – the cube is a great picture of the world of the economist, because every move on one side of the cube has a ‘cost’ on the other sides.  And the world of the ecologist – where ‘everything is hitched to everything else’ – thanks, John Muir.)

But here’s the problem:  In my talks, I’ll ask someone in the audience to solve the scrambled cube for me.  (There’s one in every crowd…)  He or she always fails.  Why?  Because my cube has been tampered with.  It’s not solvable.   And that is the world we live in.  Economics is necessary, even essential, for tackling the environmental problems in the world, and all the other problems as well.  But economics can’t solve a tampered cube.  Only God can do that.

And with that, the conference came to an end.

But not our task.  Economists and ecologists and climate scientists and policy makers and politicians cannot put together a world that has been broken by sin.

But God can.