Our environment — God’s creation — is in deep trouble. From the effects of climate change and the extinction of animal and plant species to the growing shortage of clean air and water, creation is in a crisis more serious than ever before.

But the good news is, there’s no better group of people to help solve the problem than Christians. It’s us — those who love God — whom He has called to take care of the environment He made. And if we’re faithful to that call, He’ll empower us to heal our suffering creation.

God is counting on you. Here’s how you can mobilize your church to care for creation: Recognize the complexity of the problem. The environmental crisis we face is a vast and multi-dimensional issue in which every local problem is caused by or causes problems in other areas of the world. All of God’s creation is connected, and when one part suffers, all of it suffers. There are more people alive on earth now than ever before, and many are living a consumer-oriented lifestyle that’s damaging the environment for us all.

Understand the call to dominion. When God gave humans dominion — charging them with ruling over the planet — He intended that people accomplish His goals (not their own) in creation. God made creation to be one of the primary means by which people could come to know Him. It’s a temple that’s intended as a place to meet God, so it should be respected and cared for. Let your love for God motivate you to value the creation He made. Decide to take care of it as an act of worship to show your love for God.

Look at Christ’s example. Jesus Himself walked the earth and worshipped in the midst of nature. He used the fruit of creation in responsible ways, consuming its resources (like food) whenever necessary and enjoying them fully, but never diminishing or destroying creation’s ability to be fruitful.

Recognize the root of the problem. The core issue that’s caused creation to become broken is sin. But the creation that’s been damaged by our sin can be restored by our redemption. If we seek to restore our relationship to God, then to ourselves, and then to other people, our relationship with the rest of the creation can be restored. Realize that the way you treat creation has an impact on your relationships with God and others. The way you either take care of or neglect God’s creation is a measure of how well God’s redemption either is or isn’t working in your life.

Understand the church’s power to fix the problem. The church is the only organization on earth that can successfully address a crisis with as many dimensions as the environmental crisis. The church can deal with: repentance from sin, motivation for individual action, courage and influence to change corporate behavior, and the ability to recruit and mobilize millions of people to take redemptive action to solve the problem. Since the environmental crisis is an unmatched challenge that’s critically important to tackle, it should be addressed in every aspect of your church’s life.

Worship in ways that foster wonder and awe of God’s creation. Design worship that inspires people to feel passionate about creation and work to help heal it. Sing songs about creation and read Scripture passages that describe it. Make creation visible during your worship services, such as by opening window shades to bring in natural light and featuring fresh plants and flowers in the sanctuary. Schedule some worship services outdoors when possible. Pray for environmental healing, and for the people who are currently suffering because of environmental problems.

Preach and teach about creation. When preaching sermons and teaching Sunday School classes, help people see the connections between how they live and what is happening to the world God loves. Emphasize the comprehensive nature of God’s redemptive plan for the environment, and each person’s part in it.

Encourage the next generation to care for creation. Take children and youth outdoors whenever possible, and when the weather doesn’t permit going outside, bring creation indoors when you can (such as by having some unusual pets visit, setting up an ant farm or aquarium for fish, taking care of plants in the classroom, etc.). Urge your classes to conserve energy (like by turning off lights after leaving a room) and recycle materials you use in class. Use service project time for environmental projects. On missions trips, point out the damage that’s been done to the environment in each place you visit, and how that’s hurting the people you’ve come to serve. Encourage kids who are interested in science to prepare for possible careers in that field so they can help the environment even more.

Respect the environment when building or renovating. Whenever you’re building a new church building or renovating your existing one, make sure your plans are environmentally responsible. Minimize damage to your land and the creatures on it, such as by minimizing artificial landscaping (like lawns) and maximizing natural areas, saving animal habitats, planting gardens, and avoiding the use of chemicals that harm the soil.

Save energy. Conserve energy however you can, such as by updating your heating and air conditioning system to one that’s optimally efficient, using good quality insulation, switching from incandescent lighting to fluorescent lighting, turning office machines like computers off at night, using only environmentally healthy cleaning supplies, and reusing supplies like cups and dishes.

Work for a better environment in the community surrounding your church. Get together with others in your church to go out into your local community and contribute to the health of your part of creation. Do volunteer projects, like clearing and maintaining hiking trails or cleaning trash from stream beds. Collect specialized items for recycling (like cell phones and printer cartridges), use and promote public transportation and carpooling, turn over a part of your church’s property to be used for a community garden, host a farmer’s market, etc. Let non-Christians who also care about the environment see that people who love God also love His creation — that will give you a platform to share the Gospel with them at the right time.

Incorporate creation care into your church’s missions programs. Design missions programs that are theologically sound, scientifically informed, geographically comprehensive, and politically savvy. Learn about the environments in the places your church is serving through missions. Plan how to help the people there whose health is suffering because of environmental issues. Do what you can to help heal their environment as part of your overall service to them.

This is part 2 of a three part report on a major Earth Day conference held in Madison WI on April 20-21, 2010.  I am using that conference as  an eavesdropping opportunity:  What is the larger environmental movement discussing today?  Rather than go talk-by-talk, I’ve pulled out four major themes from my pages of notes.  Here are the first two:

[Bios from the speakers referred to below are available here.]

1.  Think local. Act global.

Yes, it’s the familiar bumper sticker saying turned on its head.   An estimated 10 million people celebrated the first Earth Day but this was not an organized campaign.  There was no internet to coordinate events.  There was a small office in Washington DC with a miniscule budget – but the 1500 colleges and 10,000 plus schools essentially organized themselves.

It is true that many of the important accomplishments of Earth Day in the next 10 years – legislation for clean air, clean water, protection of endangered species – came from Washington.   However, the genius of Earth Day appears to be that it tapped grass roots power to move Washington, rather than the other way around.   But the drive to pass legislation came from local people wanting to protect their own places.  Moving a legislative agenda was not the primary motive of the early Earth Day organizers, and more than one speaker reminded us that no one would have been more surprised that Earth Day was still being celebrated 40 years later than Gaylord Nelson himself.

One of the perhaps unexpected effects of this decentralized movement was what Adam Rome, environmental historian from Penn State, called “superb leadership training.”  Thousands of mostly young people had to figure out on their own what to do in their own communities – and the result was not only a tremendously successful national event but also the creation of what Rome calls ‘the first green generation.’

The lesson for the Creation Care movement?  Our success will not come from large events in Washington or even world-wide internet events.  These might be useful as occasional as markers of progress, but the gold is in a thousand congregations and ten thousand youth groups.  When these are converted, the world will follow.

2.  Place matters.

Introducing this conference report I noted that a surprising number of environmental heroes come from Wisconsin.  This is not just local propaganda:  Gaylord Nelson was standing on the shoulders of John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, and Aldo Leopold, author of Sand County Almanac and the concept of the “land ethic” which became our modern sustainability movement.  Dr. William Cronan reminded us that Nelson also followed Frederick Jackson Turner whose work helped to articulate the importance of the frontier in American history and culture.  Lesser known heroes were  Increase Lapham who warned in the 1830’s of the dangers of deforestation of the great forests of northern Wisconsin, E. A. Birge, who established the science of limnology (the study of lakes), and Frank Lloyd Wright, who was a ‘prophet of organic building and architecture.’  All of these are sons of Wisconsin.

More important than the names is a question that has challenged me since I moved to this state:  Why Wisconsin?  Is there something in the water?

We seem to have three things in Wisconsin that others don’t have:

First, in our “middling landscape” urban, suburban, rural and wilderness are not far from each other.  It is possible even in modern Wisconsin to experience all four of these in a single day.  We live with daily knowledge of the effects of the ice age – the ‘Wisconsin glaciation’ explains every bump in our landscape.   Those who live here, and especially those who grow up here, can’t help but develop a sense of the presence and importance of the countryside.

Second, we have an unusual university.  Unlike many other states where a liberal arts university sits separate from a practical Land Grant college, here the two became one.  The classic liberal arts were taught alongside the new and practical fields of agronomy, forestry and engineering.  This may seem like an obscure connection that only an academic would make – but there are practical implications:  Our resource people and our poets were working together, and that proximity tempered both groups.

And third, we have the “Wisconsin Idea” which states that the university exists to benefit every home in the state.  “The boundaries of the campus are the boundaries of the state.” This mission drove the university to seek to understand and develop  Wisconsin’s natural resources as belonging to the entire population,  and not merely to captains of industry who just happened to arrive before anyone else.

What this boils down to is what is called a strong sense of place.  People here knew and cared about the landscape where they lived.  They learned about and developed an appreciation for the natural world around them.  Environmental concerns grew naturally from that soil.

As Creation Care proponents, this principle like the last points us to the importance of the local even when we need to reach globally.  People will care for what they love, and they will love what they know.  Encouraging local church leaders to get to know their own places so they can communicate that love to their communities is the place to start.

[To be continued...]

Screwtape is history… but it appears that his nephew Wormwood is alive and well and busy tempting Christians and church leaders in North America!  This year’s must-reading for fans of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters is The Wormwood Archive by T.G. Brown, an updated look at how demons might operate in a world of email and the internet.

The following excerpt will give you a taste, and as you will see, the topic fits our theme at Our Father’s World perfectly.  In fact, it almost makes one think of a section of my own book – Our Father’s World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation – that argued that ‘church planting’ is better for creation than ‘church building.’  It should – T.G. Brown is one of my younger brothers! – and I am pleased to encourage you to take a look at this well-written, clever and timely look at church life today.  The following excerpt is used by permission from Doorlight Publications and the author.

Here’s Wormwood’s take on Parking Lots:

Dear Professor Slubgob,

Last Sunday, we had an elaborate dedication ceremony at ECC that truly—and I’m sure I speak for the whole staff—warmed my heart. One of our oft-repeated mottos speaks to the need for leaders to feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in their work; taking a portion of the Sunday worship time to celebrate the completion of a new piece of construction made the ECC leadership very happy. To have it done over a live video link from the site—as part of Sunday morning worship—sent all the right messages.

It helped that so many hours of planning and elaborate execution were expended to celebrate . . . the new parking lot.*

This does three things for our cause. First, the missions team is well aware that they are limited to about two minutes to introduce visiting missionaries on Sunday morning. This will communicate clearly that, at least on Sunday morning, the dedication of a parking lot has a higher priority than the Enemy’s great commission. It may also occur to a few people that the annual maintenance of the parking lot could build several new churches in Africa each year, and the resulting dissatisfaction, criticism and potential for bitterness plays into our hands admirably.

Second, it will help reinforce the idea that the church does not care about creation. The lyrics to the old song they paved paradise and put up a parking lot ring in my ears. The newly paved area was one that had a long history of sports ministries and family events, an area with green grass where a restless sixth grade boys group could go on a warm Sunday morning. Now it is nothing but hot asphalt and spilled auto fluids beautifully reminiscent of our home down under.

Finally, the parking lot dedication cements the idea that accommodating a large Sunday morning attendance is the prime mission of the church. Our pastor is enamored of large attendance, and shared recently that achieving a church of 4000 attendees is ‘the reason he gets up every morning.’ That passion will be very useful in suppressing any church planting efforts.

Until every paradise is paved, I am

Your Loyal Student,

Wormwood

[*Wormwood may not have been aware of how close to reality this situation really is:  Northpoint Community Church in the Atlanta area, Andy Stanley, Pastor, is currently engaged in a major fundraising effort (5 million dollars), not to build a parking lot, but to build a bridge to a parking lot! Some things are hard to make up.]

The time I’ve spent living in Tanzania has helped me to appreciate many things that I used to take for granted.  58% of the population of Tanzania lives on less than $1 per day. Although I often don’t feel rich, I am very rich by comparison. Many things (running water, washing machines and dryers, cars, electricity, refrigerators, ovens, microwaves and computers for example) that Americans expect and accept as the norm simply aren’t an option for the majority of Tanzanians, or the rest of the world. Most Americans have been born into a situation where our daily needs are met and greatly exceeded.  The things we have been given are not rights, but privileges.  Now, I am not suggesting that we need to feel guilty for being born in the United States or for having our daily needs met. Instead I am suggesting that we should be thankful to God for everything he has given us, and that we should live out that thanks by being good stewards of what we have been given.

God has provided us with a beautiful world to live in.  He has carefully crafted every detail so that His creation can live in harmony.  He reveals Himself to us through the Bible and through the Holy Spirit, but also through the beauty of creation.  Many things that we do as humans can destroy that creation.  It is easy to see this destruction in countries like Tanzania where trash is thrown into the streets and plastic bags clog streams making the sanitation problems even worse.  However, problems also exist in the United States, they are just not as visible in our daily lives because we tuck them away in landfills and the like. This destruction is because of broken relationships with God, with others and with the world we live in and is a result of sin.  Our job as Christians is to work to restore those broken relationships.  God has entrusted us to care for His creation.  He has given us the privilege of ruling over it, not as self-seeking and corrupt dictators, but as stewards who want to do the best we can for the glory of the creator.  My question is this:  Are we doing all that we can do to appreciate and take care of this gift that God has given us?

Many Christians don’t have a positive view of environmentalists, thinking of them as “tree huggers” and “fanatics” and assuming that they would rather save the spotted owl than help their neighbor. Extreme environmentalism that ignores the needs of humans and the presence of a creator is not what I am advocating. In fact, it is quite the opposite of what I am suggesting.  I believe that because we are Christians who know that God created the heavens and the earth, we should be more excited about and willing to care for that gift than people who are not believers. Christians should be leading the pack in trying to take care of what God has given us rather than sitting on the sidelines.

In the last few years the environmental movement has taken off.  Nearly everyone is going green, or at least talking about it.  Shouldn’t the church be at the front of the pack, leading the charge?  Those in our community see how we act and observe whether or not we practice what we preach.  If we say that God created the world and we are the caretakers, is that evident in the way we live our lives as Christians?  Is that evident in the way we conduct our worship and church activities?  Are people in the community saying, “Now that church is a great example of what caring for God’s creation is all about!”?

Unfortunately, I don’t think that is what is happening.  In fact, I think many of us (myself very much included) have been part of the problem rather than part of the solution.  You can think what you want about global warming and climate change.  It doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree with what Al Gore thinks.  God is calling us to appreciate the gift He has given us and to care for it.  Picture this scenario: What if our church did what we could to cut our waste?  What if instead of using plastic and Styrofoam cups, people brought their own mug for coffee on Sunday and drinks on Wednesday nights?  What if we just served water out of pitchers rather than using all those plastic water bottles? What if we used only recycled paper to print church materials and recycled it again when we were done with it, or maybe didn’t print as much in the first place? What if every person from our church decided to use reusable shopping bags for their groceries and said “no” to both paper and plastic?  What if we composted our biodegradable waste (like fruit scraps, coffee grounds, grass clippings and leaves) rather than burning it or sending it to the landfill?  What if we made as much use as possible of the wonderful recycling facilities that our nation has (and other nations don’t have), or even made recycling facilities available at church?  Think about all the waste we could cut down on!  The United States produces the most waste per person of any country in the world².  What if our church decided we were going to do what we can to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem?

Let’s take it a step further and think about the energy and fuel we use. What if we carpooled to church and even to work?  What if we bought local produce as much as possible so stuff wouldn’t need to be shipped from California or Central America?  What if we used long life, efficient light bulbs in our homes and at church?  What if we turned off our computers and lights and unplugged things when we weren’t using them?  What if we turned the temperature down (or up in the summer) a few degrees when we left the house or just in general?  What if we even went so far as to purchase green energy for our church and our homes or investigated if solar panels or wind energy might be a viable option for us?  What if we drove hybrid cars, or just smaller more fuel efficient cars or even rode our bikes a little more in the summer? What if we all made an effort to make our work places and businesses a little more environmentally friendly?

What if we made caring for creation not a one time event, but a regular activity for our small groups, Sunday school classes, and youth groups?  What if we taught children from a young age about the amazing creation God has provided us with and encouraged them to do a better job than we have to take care of it?  What if this became not a new and separate ministry of our church, but just a part of everything we do?

I’m sure that some of us are already doing some or maybe even most of these things.  I’m sure that there are also many of them that we are not doing simply because it is not convenient.  Luke 12:48b says “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”  God has given us so much, but he has also given us responsibility.  Many people in the world face the inconvenience of walking a long way to get water every day or hand washing their clothes, or walking or biking to the nearest town to get supplies.  Just because we have the option of convenience, it doesn’t mean that the convenient way is always the right way.  I challenge you to think about what you can do individually and what we as a church can do together to be better stewards of God’s creation.  In doing so, we may be pleasantly surprised at the positive effect it will have on the community looks at us, and maybe even on our bank accounts.  If nothing else, we will be doing what God requires of us.

If you are interested in reading more on this topic, check out a good book called “Our Father’s World” by Edward Brown.  Many of the ideas I am suggesting here are inspired by this book.

Thank you, Rachel!

[If you'd like to encourage her, send a note via the comments.  I suspect she'll find them.]