Who knew? Your best way to survive this might be to go to church...

So once again cutting edge research shows that if the church will just be the church, she will be better positioned to respond to crisis than any other institution.  For the last two or three years I have been winding up my presentations with a call to the church toward Repentance (change our attitude toward God’s creation), Restoration (work to restore what has been damaged), and Preparation (be ready for more disasters to come).  A report from NPR this week reinforces the effectiveness of this kind of preparation.

You could start with a multiple choice question:  In the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami, which Indian villagers had a great chance of survival?

a)      Those who were rich.

b)      Those who were influential.

c)       Those who attended weddings and funerals.

And the answer, surprisingly, is …

c).  People who have lots of friends, who are socially connected to a community, have a greater likelihood of staying alive during, and of recovering after the event.  Daniel Aldrich of Purdue University has studied disaster response in New Orleans, India, Japan and elsewhere,  and has just published a paper, “Fixing Recovery: Social Capital in Post-Crisis Resilience”.

Highlights from the NPR story:

Aldrich’s findings show that ambulances and firetrucks and government aid are not the principal ways most people survive during — and recover after — a disaster. His data suggest that while official help is useful — in clearing the water and getting the power back on in a place such as New Orleans after Katrina, for example — government interventions cannot bring neighborhoods back, and most emergency responders take far too long to get to the scene of a disaster to save many lives. Rather, it is the personal ties among members of a community that determine survival during a disaster, and recovery in its aftermath….

The problem isn’t that experts are dumb. It’s that communities are not the sum of their roads, schools and malls. They are the sum of their relationships.

The Japanese government seems to get this. The government there actually funds block parties to bring communities together.

That might never happen in America, but Aldrich thinks each of us can do something on our own: Instead of practicing earthquake drills and building bunkers, we could reach out and make more friends among our co-workers and neighbors.

…”Really, at the end of the day, the people who will save you, and the people who will help you,” he added, “they’re usually neighbors.”

What does any of this have to do either with creation care or the church?

It has everything to do with creation care because our abuse of creation makes disasters more frequent and more deadly.  Take, for example, floods – driven both by paving our landscape (see The Price of Paving Paradise) and climate change.  Wildfires, caused by a combination of mismanagement of forest land (too many years without any fire at all) and climate change.  Oilspills – Alaska, Gulf of Mexico, Yellowstone river – you can kind of take your pick here.  Nuclear disaster in Japan – no, the earthquake wasn’t caused by humans, but the decision to put a plant on a major fault without adequate protections sure was.  The lesson?  As long as we persist in tearing apart the structure of our home, we can expect the beams to keep falling on us.

So where does the church fit in?  The church is not a building.  It’s not a collection of people attending a Sunday morning concert or lecture series.  No, at its most basic the church is a community of people who love and follow Jesus, and who, because of that, love and care for each other.  The church is what Daniel Aldrich is describing in his paper – a web of relationships.

A church that is being the church in this way has already given its people the gift of being prepared for the disaster that has not yet come.  A church that consciously prepares its people for that disaster is on its way to being the first-responder for its entire community.

[Read more on this in Our Father’s World.]

The Egyptian revolution now underway has a personal connection for me – my niece Annie is attempting to pursue graduate studies in the middle of the chaos.  I had a conversation with her mother, my sister Marilyn this morning:  “So what’s Annie doing?  Trekking to the airport every day to try to get out?”  “Not exactly – she’s trekking to demonstrations every day…” Anyone who knows Annie – heck, anyone who knows her mother – would not be at all surprised by that. Marilyn’s family lived in Egypt for a number of years, and she has been covering the crisis very competently on her blog here if you’d like a well-written day-to-day overview including occasional eye-witness reports from Annie.

There are so many dimensions to this uprising that it’s hard to know even where to start.  There are plenty of obvious dimensions of this crisis:  A hard-pressed population’s desire for freedom.  The fear many have of the possibility – maybe remote, maybe not – of an Iran-style Islamic state taking the reins after Mubarak leaves.

Peeling back the layers, though, there is a dimension of this crisis that directly affects the topic of this blog – creation care.  In yesterday’s New York Times we read

Entrenched corruption, the depredations of police forces and demands for free elections have all helped drive the protest movement, but for many Egyptians, rising prices and unemployment were the strongest motivations to stand up to the government.

When people can’t work or can’t even feed themselves they will do desperate things.  From last night’s All Things Considered:

ROBERT SIEGEL, host: Among the many forces driving political unrest in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries is the rising cost of food. Prices for wheat, corn, rice, sugar, coffee and other basics have been surging. A U.N. report shows its food price index is at the highest level ever recorded. Food subsidies in Egypt have helped tamp down some of the anger there, but concerns are growing along with prices.

NPR’s Chris Arnold reports.

CHRIS ARNOLD: In the past six months, the price of wheat and corn has nearly doubled in many parts of the world. And in areas where people spend as much as half their income on food, that’s making it very hard for people to feed their families.

This is at least part of what’s driving the desperation and anger that’s sending people out into the streets of Cairo, such as this protester who spoke to Al-Jazeera.

Unidentified Man: (Through translator) We are tired, ma’am. We are tired. Stop the price hikes. We are suffering. We are Egyptians. We love Egypt. But stop this. We want to eat. We want to live, we and our children.

ARNOLD: Across a continent in the snow-covered city of Davos, Switzerland, economist Nouriel Roubini spoke to CNN.

Dr. NOURIEL ROUBINI (Chairman, Roubini Global Economics): What has happened in Tunisia is happening right now in Egypt. And also, riots in Morocco, Algeria, Pakistan are related not only to high unemployment rate and to income and wealth inequality, but also to this very sharp rise in food and commodity prices.

ARNOLD: So why are food prices rising so quickly? One reason is that bad weather has ruined crops in many parts of the world. There have been floods in Australia and Pakistan. Extreme heat last summer in the U.S. hurt corn production. Russia was hit by a severe drought last summer.

And that is the creation-care connection to this crisis: People are hungry.  Just two weeks ago we commented on this  food crisis, citing Lester Brown:

The unrest of these past few weeks is just the beginning. It is no longer conflict between heavily armed superpowers, but rather spreading food shortages and rising food prices—and the political turmoil this would lead to—that threatens our global future.

If we are not willing to feed the hungry for their own sakes, setting aside what Jesus clearly teaches us, would we be willing to feed them for the sake of our own security?  I wonder – and mostly because feeding the poor now doesn’t mean bringing a can of food to church for the food pantry or even donating to an international development organization.  Neither of these will hurt, but when the problem is weather (read: climate) , or water, or soil degradation, they aren’t going to help much either.  Lester Brown again:

Unless governments quickly redefine security and shift expenditures from military uses to investing in climate change mitigation, water efficiency, soil conservation, and population stabilization, the world will in all likelihood be facing a future with both more climate instability and food price volatility.

And many more scenes like this:

So how do we respond?  Where to begin?  The people of God have got to take these things seriously.  We may not be able to solve all of the problems, but we can start.  Check out some other recent posts on the role of the church in mobilizing in response to problems like this.

Countdown to Cape Town: What does the church have to offer? Part 2

Countdown to Capetown – Final: A Call to Respond

If you are in the Madison area, check out this upcoming conference.  I will be participating in the Saturday morning session (but attending the whole conference).  NOTE THAT there is no cost, but the folks at New College Madison would like you to preregister so they know who and how many are coming.

Register here – and see you there!

“A Conversation About Environmental, Familial and Social Sustainability: An Issue for the 21st Century”

In memory of Don Browning, 1934-2010

Friday evening and Saturday, January 21-22, 2011
Pres House, 731 State St. Mall, Madison, WI 53711

———————————————————————-

Conference schedule…

Friday, January 21: A multi-disciplinary picture of an unsustainable way of life (with a few bright spots)

7:00 p.m.: Welcome, Mark Elsdon, Pres House

7:05 p.m.: Introduction, James Knight, Bradshaw-Knight Foundation

7:10-9:30 p.m.: Presentations by Cal DeWitt, biologist, UW-Madison, Colleen Moore, Psychologist, UW-Madison, and W. Bradford Wilcox, Sociologist, U of Virginia, Charlottsville, VA. With comments to each other, and a response to audience questions. Pridham lounge, Pres House.

9:30-10:15 p.m.: Reception, Pridham lounge

Saturday, January 22: Remedies, theoretical and applied (bright spots, systematically pursued) Pridham Lounge, Pres House

8-10 a.m.:  Reflections on some basic, underlying solutions to unsustainability as a way of life (developmental psychology and forgiveness [Gayle Reed]), and the Christian doctrine of sin and salvation [Vern Visick & Ed Brown]). With reactions to each other and to the audience.

10-10:30 a.m.: Coffee break

10:30-12 noon: Additional Session 1: Some particular problems and possible solutions

(1) Dealing with the porn problem (Steve Musto)
(2) Overcoming the effects of fatherlessness
(3) Better preparing students (and others) for a stable and enduring marriage (Marline Pearson)

With reactions, comments, and questions from Friday’s speakers, other presenters, and the audience.

12 noon-1:30 p.m.: Lunch (on your own, on State Street)

1:30-3 p.m.: Additional Session 2: Deeper Understandings and Practical Solutions

(1) “The Roman Catholic Approach to Marriage & Family Life” (Fr. Eric Nielsen, Director, University Catholic Center, Madison)
(2) “A Protestant Approach to Marriage and Family Life,” (Mike Winnowski, Pastor, Geneva Campus Church)

3-3:30 p.m.: Coffee break

3:30-5 p.m.:  Town meeting: Toward an “ecology of the family,” and a sustainable environmental, familial, and social life–with comments from our biological, psychological, and sociological experts, and from our “practitioners”–as we attempt to answer the question, “How can the church become a better ‘infirmary for marriage’ [Bellah])? This is our chance to participate in the national dialogue over marriage and family!

5:30-6:45 p.m.: Dinner on State Street

7-9 p.m.: Service of sung and read psalms, Pres House Chapel. Celebrating our conversation, and beginning the new academic semester in the right spirit. Watch this space for a program for the Psalm Service.

Conference leaders:

Cal DeWitt, PhD University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, is professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Emeritus Director of the Au Sable Institute for Environmental Studies.

Colleen Moore, PhD Claremont Graduate University,  is professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the book Pollution and Children (Oxford University Press).

W. Brad Wilcox, PhD, Princeton University,  is professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, director of the National Marriage Project, University of Virginia, and author of the book Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (University of Chicago Press).

Ed Brown, Director, Care of Creation, a Christian environmental organization that works in both the US among evangelical churches and overseas (Kenya). Ed is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Seminary.

Alex Gee (asked), Pastor, and speaker at such international events as Inter-Varsity’s Urbana Convention.

Steve Musto, Adult Ministry Pastor, Blackhawk Church, Verona, WI, graduate of Wheaton College in Communications. Steve oversees or leads a number of adult ministries at Blackhawk Church, including a group focusing on sexual addiction.

Fr. Eric Nielsen, Director, University Catholic Center, Madison. Eric leads one of the largest and most active Roman Catholic campus ministries (Newman Centers) in the United States.

Marline Pearson, Instructor in Sociology, Madison College, a leader in preparing high school and college students for marriage. Just a few years ago, Marline was part of a national public television production on marriage, “Just a Piece of Paper?”

Gayle Reed, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Forgiveness Recovery, Ltd., www.forgivenessrecovery.com. Gayle is a specialist in the role of forgiveness in interpersonal, familial, and social relations.

Vern Visick, Ph.D., University of Chicago, and Director, New College Madison.

Mike Winnowski is pastor of Geneva Campus Church, the campus ministry of the Christian Reformed Church on the UW-Madison campus. At an earlier point in his life, he was a graduate student at the UW-Madison.

…and others (check this space as we add participants for this conference.)

For more reflection on what will be happening at this conference, click here for the conversation between Jay Knight, Vern Visick, and Don Browning which led up to this conference.

To read further in some of the issues that will be discussed in the conversation, check W. Bradford Wilcox’s article in National Affairs, “The Evolution of Divorce,” (click here); in Christianity Today, “Marriage: Marginalized in the Middle,” with Chuck Donovan (click here); and in The Wall Street Journal, “Daddy Was Only a Donor,” (click here).

This is my final Cape Town post for the time being.  The Cape Town Congress is over, but the work of the Lausanne Committee continues with the now-in-process writing of Part 2 of the Cape Town Commitment, a plan of action for the global evangelical church.  I am eagerly awaiting that document, and will share observations on it with you in due course.  Meanwhile, my final thoughts on the Congress itself, and the remarkable Cape Town Commitment document released at the end of that meeting:

My particular interest at Cape Town was understandably creation care.  I had come to do a presentation on the topic, and personally and professionally I was curious as to what this gathering of the global church would have to say to itself on this topic.  My observations are three:

At ground level, the global church is very concerned about creation.

The hallways of Cape Town 2010 could be considered somewhat representative of the grassroots of the global evangelical church.  To the extent that is true, creation care is a topic that is full of interest and that generates a lot of concern among church leaders in almost every corner of the world.

I found myself in continual conversations with people at meals, in the hall ways, waiting for sessions to begin – and it wasn’t because I was looking for these conversations.  All I had to do was introduce myself:  “I work with a Christian environmental organization…” We would be off and running with a conversation ranging from the state of creation in his or her particular country to what evangelical theology has to say to this issue and everything in between.  Out of hundreds of conversations, I can only recall two people who questioned the reality of the crisis or the need for the church to respond: One was a wealthy businessman from Texas, and the other a sister from Australia.  Everyone else was unanimous:  “In my country, things are bad, are getting worse, and people are suffering.”

These conversations naturally moved to what can be done – and I came away with a stack of business cards and too many requests to come and visit.

On the other hand, at ministry level, there is little or no awareness of the crisis in creation, and very little action.

It is safe, I think, to use the program content of the Cape Town congress as representative of the kinds of ministries that the global church is involved in.  The days of the congress were organized under Lausanne’s motto: “The whole gospel from the whole church to the whole world,” and we were treated to reports from all the different parts of the world as well as surveys of various types of ministry, including evangelism of unreached people groups, Bible translation efforts, outreach to displaced people (refugees and international students) and ministry to HIV/Aids victims.   If you were to measure by the content in the main plenary sessions, you would conclude that there is no environmental crisis, or if there is, the church is unaware of it.

There was an afternoon program of smaller gatherings (called ‘Multiplexes’), and one of these was devoted to environment.  In a list of 160 still smaller ‘Dialogue Sessions’ there was just one presentation on creation care.  One.

I was not alone in thinking that there was a strange disconnect on this topic between what the participants were talking about in the hallways and what was being presented from the platform.  It is possible that this is an example of time-lag:  Ministry focus responds to needs as perceived in the world, but it takes time to change directions, develop strategies and move sometimes large organizations.  The people I was talking to ‘on the ground’ know things aren’t going well – but those in the control tower haven’t got the word yet.

The Cape Town Commitment makes a powerful theological statement about creation care, suggesting a new awareness is coming, and new initiatives won’t be far behind.

When I saw an early copy of the Cape Town Commitment, I was astounded.  I could not believe that this issue would be stated so explicitly.  Here is the relevant portion (click here for the source document):

We love the world of God’s creation. This love is not mere sentimental affection for nature (which the Bible nowhere commands), still less is it pantheistic worship of nature (which the Bible expressly forbids). Rather it is the logical outworking of our love for God by caring for what belongs to him. “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” The earth is the property of the God we claim to love and obey. We care for the earth, most simply, because it belongs to the one whom we call Lord.23

The earth is created, sustained and redeemed by Christ.24  We cannot claim to love God while abusing what belongs to Christ by right of creation, redemption and inheritance. We care for the earth and responsibly use its abundant resources, not according to the rationale of the secular world, but for the Lord’s sake. If Jesus is Lord of all the earth, we cannot separate our relationship to Christ from how we act in relation to the earth. For to proclaim the gospel that says “Jesus is Lord” is to proclaim the gospel that includes the earth, since Christ’s Lordship is over all creation. Creation care is a thus a gospel issue within the Lordship of Christ.

Such love for God’s creation demands that we repent of our part in the destruction, waste and pollution of the earth’s resources and our collusion in the toxic idolatry of consumerism. Instead, we commit ourselves to urgent and prophetic ecological responsibility. We support Christians whose particular missional calling is to environmental advocacy and action and those committed to godly fulfilment of the mandate to provide for human needs from the abundance of God’s creation. We remind ourselves that the Bible declares God’s redemptive purpose for creation itself. Integral mission means discerning, proclaiming, and living out, the biblical truth that the gospel is God’s good news, through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, for individual persons, and for society, and for creation. All three are broken and suffering because of sin; all three are included in the redeeming love and mission of God; all three must be part of the comprehensive mission of God’s people.  [Emphasis added.]

We are evangelicals.  Our beliefs and actions are guided by scripture, and expressed in our theology.  Thus should not be surprising that the thoughtful work of a group of theologians would lead toward a resolution of the disconnect described above.  If the program content of Cape Town 2010 represented the past, and the high level of interest in the hallways represents the present, it is my hope that this document represents the future:  This where the global evangelical church is going, and it is where it needs to go if we are really going to base our belief and action on scripture.

And this is exactly what we mean at Care of Creation when we talk about mobilizing the church toward a God-centered response to the environmental crisis.

I recently returned from a three week trip to South Africa and Kenya.  The South Africa portion of the trip was to attend and participate in Cape Town 2010 – the 3^rd Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation.  Today’s post is my first reflection on that meeting.  Note that these are general comments, not limited to the particular focus of this blog, which is creation care.  That topic did come up, and I’ll address it in a separate post in the near future.  The second half of the trip involved a visit to the Care of Creation project in Kenya, and that also will get its own post later this week.

My seat-partner on my flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town was moaning about the problems she had getting a hotel reservation in Cape Town for the Microsoft software conference she was attending.  None of her usual hotels had anything available.  ‘Oh, I can tell you why that is,’ I said, helpfully.  ‘That’s because of the conference I’m attending.’  Five thousand church leaders descending on Cape Town was not what she expected, and I could tell it was stretching her categories a bit.  On the other hand, I’m a veteran of many large (usually Christian) conferences, and I thought I knew what I was coming to.  Not so much – Cape Town 2010 turned out to be much more than I expected as well.

There were many highlights.  Thinking back over those 8 days, a number of images come to mind:  Libby Little, her husband having been one of those martyred in Afghanistan only weeks before, testifying to the grace of God in a time of intense grief.  A teenager from North Korea, having lost one parent to cancer, the other to political persecution, sharing her desire to serve God no matter what.  John Piper, eloquent and passionate in his exposition of scripture.  A brother from Rwanda describing how he suffered – and survived – the holocaust in that country, and sharing with us his thoughts on the inadequacies in the gospel that made that tragedy possible.  Two giants of the faith, Samuel Escobar and Renee Padilla, interviewing each other about their own experiences serving in Latin America over the last 50 years, and looking ahead to the next.  Exuberant worship in the African vernacular, along with many other flavors .  Praise songs in half a dozen languages and old English hymns in dozens of accents sang equally well.  And through it all the joy of spirit-engineered encounters in the hallways – old friends from earlier conferences (“Yando!  What are you doing here???” “Same thing as you, Ed!”) and many, many new sisters and brothers.  Not least among all these images, the sight of 4000 people all seated at assigned tables in the main hall doing “manuscript Bible study” (IV/IFES people will know what I mean).  It was kind of required small groups.  And it worked – Christian conferences may never be the same.

But this feels like talking you through a massive collage of photos – interesting for me, but a bit boring for you.  So, sifting the experience for the most meaningful nuggets, I come up with these three:

As part of the world wide church, I am (we are?)part of something far bigger than I usually realize.

The numbers speak of diversity:  Four thousand participants from 198 countries, all carefully chosen for their differences.  This was an ‘invitation only’ conference and the organizers worked hard to create an assembly that would do justice to the glorious variety in the global church.  Men and women, young leaders and old, battle scarred veterans and seminary students, professional church leaders and business people, leaders of denominations measured in the millions and pastors of tiny worshiping groups in the jungle – this crowd had nothing in common with itself.  There were six official languages – need I say more?  No, we had nothing in common – except Jesus.  There was a deep “shared culture” evident that included shared beliefs, a common respect for biblical preaching and teaching, and a great deal of shared music.  If one of the marks of a culture is its folk music, the way in which both new and old music crossed language and cultural boundaries at this event would seem to be proof of the organic unity of the worldwide church.

I have had some experience of multinational gatherings in other contexts:  Groups of workers or organizations brought together by disaster or convened around a cause by an agency like the United Nations.  Countries meeting over a common problem or challenge.  These meetings are minefields where every statement is offered in measured and nuanced phrases, and is parsed oh-so-carefully to discover the agenda behind the meaning behind the words.  Mutual suspicion and backroom attempts to maneuver for advantage are the name of the game.

But not here.  Oh, sure – there were disagreements.   John Piper’s view of the atonement, Os Guinness’ take on “truth” were not taken as universally valid statements, and there were plenty of participants who would be happy to let you know that.  But these were the kinds of discussion that my own family is famous for: loud and passionate and possible because we are part of the same family.  We can disagree and still love and trust each other.

And, honestly – what other institution in human society could gather a group of people from every corner of the earth and discover that there are songs almost all of them already know?  That what they agree about and what they believe in is so substantial that it overwhelms those occasional areas of disagreement?

I wonder what it might be like as a person with no previous experiences like this to walk into an assembly like Cape Town in the midst of the singing of ‘Crown Him with Many Crowns’ (Link – jump to 5:20 on the video).  It is possible that we really don’t appreciate what we are part of as members of this glorious, worldwide body we call ‘The Church.’

We are close to realizing the fulfillment of Jesus’ last command.

Jesus words in Matthew 24:14 came to mind frequently:  “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

The goal of the church from the time of the earliest disciples right to the present has been to preach the gospel of Jesus to the very ends of the earth.  This was, after all, the third “Congress on World Evangelization”, and this meeting made me think we’re pretty close to achieving that goal.  It’s only taken 2000 years, but the end may really be in sight.

The conference location was significant and highly symbolic.  Geographically, Cape Town is about as close to the “end of Africa” as you can get and as such is a decent proxy for the “ends of the earth”.  What was a lonely outpost of empire not so very long ago is now the site of a great celebration of the gospel having gone, almost, to the ends of the earth.  And Africa, once called the “dark continent” by Europeans, is now the continent where the church is growing fastest.  For example, there are more Christian students in Nigeria than in all of North America.

Frequent references to “the global south” were reminders that the great nations of the world that were mission fields a century ago now represent the new center of the worldwide church.  Many of them are in fact sending missionaries to the countries from which missionaries came to evangelize them in the last century.  The largest missionary force in the world is Korean.  Need we say more?

No, the task is not yet finished.  A session on “missing peoples” reminded us that there are still pockets of tribal, ethnic or linguistic units where there is no witness to the gospel, and missionaries are still needed.  A fascinating development (new to me, at least) is an emphasis on “orality” – finding ways to take the message of Jesus to people who cannot, or do not read the written word.  This is a fascinating parallel track to the long effort to translate the Bible into every language on earth.

Not finished, but amazingly close.

We have a lot of work left to do.

If basic evangelization has been remarkably successful in my lifetime, the uneven development of the church shows some serious gaps.  Planting the seed is only part of Jesus’ command – what he actually told us to do was to ‘make disciples’ (Mt 28:19) and some of the problems in the world can be directly tied to our failure to move from evangelization to discipleship.

One of the most powerful talks at Cape Town was from Antoine Rutayisire from Rwanda.  A survivor of the Rwandan holocaust, he offered a perceptive critique of the church – and missionaries’ – roles in that tragedy.  The problem for us is this:  At the time of the Rwandan genocide, that country was one of the most “Christian” in Africa, yet those same church members used machetes to hack each other to pieces, and church buildings to burn their own spiritual brothers and sisters to death.

Antoine’s critique (you need to listen to his talk or read the original paper) was but an extended version of Renee Padilla’s very brief answer to a simple question:  What concerns you most about the future?  Three things, he answered:  1. The lack of discipleship in churches.  2. Globalization.  3. The ecological crisis.

Renee would have connected his sentence with Antoine’s talk like this: We have tragedies like Rwanda in Christian nations because we have neglected discipleship.  We have tremendous poverty in large parts of the world, in spite of the advance of the gospel, because of the perpetration of a fundamentally unjust economic system that has seduced large portions of the church.  And we are threatened with a global ecological collapse in part because the global church has done nothing about it.

And so we come back to the central theme of this blog – creation care.  Though there was little in the main sessions about the crisis in God’s creation, the Congress produced a document called the Cape Town Commitment that has a powerful statement on Creation Care.  Some of us are in communication with Lausanne leadership on this topic – stay tuned.  Meanwhile, please take the time to watch some of the Cape Town videos, and even join the Lausanne Conversation web site.  Your voice matters.

This is the final post in a series leading up to the third Lausanne conference that begins in just a few days – on Sunday, 17 October in Cape Town.  Earlier posts in this series are here; up to now, these have been summaries and excerpts from my book, Our Father’s World.  Today’s post is different.  This is a call to action that summarizes the challenge I will be sharing with a group of delegates at Cape Town.

We have been making the following case in this series:

• the environmental crisis is a direct result of human sin;
• God’s redemptive plan in Jesus Christ includes the restoration of all of our broken relationships, including our relationship to non-human creation;
• The church – the people of God – can respond to the environmental crisis in ways that no one else can;

From this case, it is hard to escape the following conclusion:

• Because we can respond, and because we have been commanded to respond, we must respond.

All that is left is to ask and answer the question, How?  What should we then do?

There are three steps we need to take as individual christians and as churches to begin to move forward.  Each one could be a full post or a full chapter  in a book, but here are a few thoughts:

1.  We begin by Repenting.

We have established that the problem is sin.  Biblically, there is only one way to handle a sin problem: Repentance.  Biblical repentance has a couple of important dimensions that go far beyond “I’m sorry!” -

Repentance means admitting we are wrong, acknowledging we are at fault.  We have disobeyed.  We have ignored God’s first command to us, to care for his creation.  We have used the authority he gave us over his creation to satisfy our own selfish cravings rather than using it to govern his creation according to his purposes.  We have sinned.

Repentance means, first,  changing our minds. When we repent of sin, we are in effect changing our minds and agreeing with God that what we did, and how we thought about it, was sinful.  In the present context, this mean changing how we think about God’s creation.

Repentance also means that we begin to stop sinning.  In this setting, true repentance means that we start, to whatever extent is possible, to do no more harm to God’s creation.  Changing lightbulbs, reducing our use of toxic chemicals in our homes, using public transportation all become acts of repentance.

None of these actions are by themselves sufficient – but they are necessary.

Repentance means making a start.  Now.

2. We work to Restore God’s damaged creation.

It is not sufficient to stop harming creation.  The world we now live in is a far cry from the bountiful and flourishing world God gave us.  As stewards we are called to care for creation.  Our mission should be to seek to do everything in our power to increase the value of the Master’s property in the little time we have on this earth before he asks for an accounting.

What might this look like?  I know a half a dozen people in several countries who have taken the call to restore creation very literally.  They either purchased – or in some cases inherited – small to medium size tracts of land, and have worked for many years to bring the land back to health.  One example in particular is spectacular – a broken down plantation in Jamaica 25 years ago is now a flourishing rainforest and a major tourist attaction.

Not all of us will have the resources to work with a piece of land like that – but we can start where we are.  If your church has land of its own, what a perfect place to start.  But even public areas – parks or watersheds – can be arenas in which we can work to begin to bring health back to God’s creation.

To do it right will be a big job – we will need the help of scientists, we’ll need to recruit members of our larger communities.  We need to learn to see things on a long time scale:  In my experience, 25 years seems to be what will be needed to do the job right.

To paraphrase an old proverb, if a journey is going to be a thousand miles, it would be best to start today.

3. We Prepare for the inevitable disasters ahead of us.

In the fall of 2009 I was scheduled to travel to Manila, Philippines, to present my ‘Our Father’s World’ seminar.  Just weeks before I was to come, Manila was hit by several typhoons.  Much of the city was flooded, including the homes of several of my hosts.  I offered to cancel the trip – it seemed like the wrong time to bring in a foreign speaker – but my host organization insisted that I come as planned.  “We know from these disasters that we have been guilty of sins against God’s creation.  We need your message more than ever.” [Several posts on this situation are here.]

It is evident both from current events and from a logical analysis of our situation that the abuse of creation globally has reached the point where environmentally related disasters are inevitable.  The typhoons in Manila were not caused by humans – though there is some evidence that their unusual power might have been exacerbated by global warming.  No, typhoons are a normal and natural part of creation.  The damage and human suffering came from the fact that Manila has been built in a watershed area.  The region’s orginal marshes and wetlands would have absorbed the power and the water of these typhoons and would have been better and stronger because of them.  These natural buffers have been replaced by streets, houses and concrete culverts.  The result was massive flooding, great damage and enormous human suffering.

The same lessons apply in this summer’s floods in Pakistan, China and most recently in Indonesia.  And every time a hurricane strikes Haiti.  And in the increasing numbers of wildfires in the US west every year, as well as in Russia this last summer.

No matter how quickly we repent, and no matter how energetically we work to heal and restore creation, there will be more of these disasters.  Thus the final word to the church is to prepare:

First , we should prepare for disasters in our own communities:  Every congregation has the potential to organize itself as a first-response agency for its own community, whether the danger is flood, fire, toxic chemical release or any of the myriad other ways that our abuse of creation might endanger us and those we love.

Second, we should prepare to assist sisters and brothers in other places as disasters strike.  This is difficult – when tragedy is heaped on tragedy, those in unaffected areas asked to respond lose interest.  The nonprofit community calls this ‘donor fatigue’.  We dare not grow weary in well doing; at the same time, it is apparent that our resources will have to be managed carefully if we need to plan on several major disasters every year.

Much more could be said in this area – perhaps I will expand on these thoughts in the future.

The conclusion, though, is clear:  We are called to be God’s people in this world at this time.  Let’s get moving.

This is a continuation of a series of articles leading up to the third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization that begins in Cape Town South Africa on October 15.  Today’s post is a continuation of the last as we continue to explore the answer to an important question:  When the problems raised by the environmental crisis are as big and technical as they seem to be, what exactly does the church bring to the table?  Do we really have anything to offer? [Find the whole series to date here.]

———

An agent for change

We concluded in chapter four that the environmental crisis is essentially a disease caused by sin and by sinfulness.  Essentially, bad behavior (materialism, greed, selfishness) caused and perpetuated by a tendency toward and an inability to break out of bad behavior patterns lies at the root of the whole problem.  Any psychologist or psychiatrist could tell us what we need to do:  Break the pattern so we can stop the behavior.  If this sounds like therapy, you’re right.  Therapy is what we need.  And this is something the church is very, very good at:  Helping people to understand their sin and guilt, coming to God for forgiveness and help, and changing how we live.  We need to apply our ability to confront and change behavior to creation care.  Environmental problems are sin problems – and sin is something the church knows how to handle.

Will it work?  Can Christians make a difference?  These are early days – but the signs are promising.

Here’s one brief example:

In the Chesapeake Bay area, a community of local fishermen listened to a graduate student, Susan Drake (now Susan Emmerich); they became aware of the disconnect between what they said they believed in church on Sunday, and how they were actually acting when they abused the waters and shellfish beds from which they made a living.  They signed a public covenant together – in church – and changed the way they lived and worked in a dramatic fashion.  The entire environmental community of Maryland took notice.

In the Pennsylvania farm country, some of those same fishermen took the time to show their Christian brothers who were farmers that how they fertilized their fields was damaging the bay and hurting the shellfish beds the fishermen depended on.  The farmers determined, before God, that they had to change the way they were farming.  How else could they be said to be loving their neighbors?  And they changed.  [These stories are told in an award winning film documentary, When Heaven Meets Earth.]

In Kenya and East Africa, at the conference I described earlier,  260 church leaders signed a public declaration in March, 2006, declaring that “we believe God calls us to be good stewards of his creation” and calling on all Christians in their region to “begin developing God-centered strategies to educate, disciple, and mobilize the entire church to action.”  A number of churches have since started their own tree nurseries and plans are being proposed for a Kenya-wide tree planting effort every year the week after Easter.  The Church in Kenya will call the nation to celebrate the resurrection by planting God’s trees.

A mobilized church can make an impact.

A spiritual organism and a human organization

I love my Bible.  Not just “the Bible” as a general term, but the particular copy of the Bible that is mine.  This copy is getting a bit worn.  The leather is seriously frayed on the back, and my wife is starting to talk about how tattered it looks.  She wants to get me a new one.  She’s right, of course, but I’m not quite ready to retire the one I’ve got.  I’m much attached to this one, though I could find the same words in a nice new one.  The marks on the pages, even the pages that have been torn, remind me of experiences I have had with God while reading this book.

That strange mixture of the divine and human is what the Bible is all about.  On the one hand, it is a very human document.  Written by ordinary people, it was copied by hand for centuries, and accumulated typos and spelling mistakes.  Its thousands of manuscripts and papyri have been the subject of and have stood up under academic research and scrutiny more intense than that given to any other document.

And yet the Bible bears the marks of God’s hand as nothing else that we possess.  It faithfully records history about God’s dealings with humanity, and teaches about God in language that surpasses any other human literature.  Was there ever a poem in any language that could surpass the last half of the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans for eloquence and passion?  Any more universally loved and moving poem than the twenty-third Psalm?  And with all this, for millions of us it is an almost direct connection to God.  Often I start my day with a cup of coffee and this old, tattered Bible. I read passages that grow more familiar as the years go by, and still I discover new truth every time.  I hear the voice of God’s Holy Spirit encouraging, or prodding me or in some other way showing me what I need to know today.  I don’t mark my Bible, but you can still tell which parts have been most meaningful to me over the fifteen years or so that this particular copy has been my mainstay.  And that’s why I hesitate to give it up.  It is a map of a spiritual journey – marking times and ways that God has stepped into my life in a very direct and personal way.

My church is like my Bible, exhibiting the same mix of divine and human.  It is a human institution, existing under a charter granted by the secular authorities of my community and my state.  It has founding and guiding documents that are legal in character and that are not very different from those of other nonprofit organizations.  It has leaders that are very human, and members that are even more so.  It struggles with pragmatic issues like budgets and finances and organizing dozens of volunteers and complaints from the neighbors about cars blocking their driveways.

But my church is not just a nonprofit organization.  Its human elements are all tangled up with spiritual realities.  It is a divine organism as much as a human organization, and there are times when the Spirit is very real as he moves among us while we worship and sing praises together.  I have no question that important actions taken by this church – like buying a new building – have been conducted through the ordinary human medium of taking a vote, but I can believe that that vote was mysteriously guided by the Holy Spirit working through the lives of the people in the room.  The divine element in church life is hard to pin down – it defies analysis – but is nonetheless real for that.  And I suspect you might agree with me, and you might also have laughed and cried at the strange combination of joys and frustrations that come from trying to live with the strange organism/organization that is the church of Jesus Christ.

It is this very hybridness of the church that allows it to bring something to the real problems of the environmental crisis that will be found nowhere else.  The church can deliver spiritual power to practical problems.  The environmental crisis is a confusing tangle of sinful individual human behaviors, sinful corporate behavior, and the ecological realities caused by too many people, too many cars, the proliferation of invasive (nonnative) species and the global effects of climate change – and a whole lot more. It is a scientific problem, an economic problem, a political problem, a security problem, and a moral problem – and a matter of life and death for millions.  But at its root, it is a spiritual problem.  The church – properly understood and functioning in the full power of God – is the only institution or organization available to the human race that can address a problem with this many dimensions.  The church is capable of addressing every issue – repentance from sin, motivation for individual action, courage and influence to change corporate behavior, and the ability to recruit and mobilize millions of people from volunteers to scientists to move into creation and do everything from tree planting to weed removal.

[Note: This article is excerpted and revised from my book, Our Father’s World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation, chapter 6: “Ambassadors of Redemption”.  Order the book here.]

This is a continuation of a series of articles leading up to the third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization that begins in Cape Town South Africa on October 15.  Today’s post is a continuation of the last as we move from the Fall to Redemption. Find the whole series to date here. Today we begin to answer an important question:  When the problems raised by the environmental crisis are as big and technical as they seem to be, what exactly does the church bring to the table?  Do we really have anything to offer?  Let’s find out…

———

So how do we get the mission of the church out to onto the environmental Mifflin Streets of the world? How can a group of people that might know how to conduct a prayer meeting but doesn’t know anything about water quality make a difference?  What, really, does the church bring to this crisis?

A values-based organization

One of Wendell Berry’s phrases sticks in my mind:  “the people who might have been expected to care most selflessly for the world have had their minds turned elsewhere.” [Wendell Berry, Art of the Commonplace, p 23] Everyone who wrestles with the problem of Christians and the environment starts at the same point:  “These people should care more than anyone else.”  Berry’s complaint is a pointer to truth:  The church has been expected to care, and should care about these things more than other people because of what she already believes.

My own experience is instructive.  When I first began what turned out to be a major shift in career direction toward environmental stewardship, I had to do some intensive self-examination.  This had not been part of my thinking.  But I discovered something that surprised me.  I was already an environmentalist.  I just didn’t kn ow it yet. I already believed God made the world. I believed that he reveals himself through his creation. I believed he put me here to do his will, and doing his will includes taking care of his creation.  I had an entire theology – value system, if you prefer – that was deeply embedded with environmental or creation care principles.  It was packed away in the attic, and needed to be dusted off.  But it didn’t take much to get it out and functioning again.

The same can be said of all of the material I’ve presented this far in this book.  Nothing here is new; if you are a ‘bible-believing Christian’ you know that everything I’ve presented is already part of the church’s belief-system.  And I have to say that what has been happening among Christians in this area in the last few years is exciting.  If outsiders can figure out that ‘we ought to care’, it shouldn’t be that hard for those of us already in the family to figure it out – and then to act on it.

It’s time for us to wake up.

A laboratory for community

If we are going to successfully respond to the environmental crisis, we – the entire human race – are going to have to learn how to live in community again.  Think about how many of the responses to environmental problems have to do with community:  Community gardens, farmer’s markets, car sharing programs, public transportation systems.  They all have to do with living together, working together, travelling together.  When we live together in harmony – sharing with each other, buying and selling locally, travelling with other people instead of alone, we make fewer demands on God’s creation, and we live healthier – and usually happier – lives.

It should not surprise us that in a creation designed by a God who loves community, patterns of living that emphasize community work better than those that don’t.  God created human beings out of the community of his eternal Trinitarian existence:

Then God said, Let us make man in our image, in our likeness… [Gen 1:26]

The entire biosphere God produced has community written all over it.  Plants can’t live without the services of pollinators.  Pollinators depend on plants for survival.  Even parts of creation that seem at first glance to be in violent opposition to each other – the wolf and the deer, for example – depend on each other.  Populations of deer without predators – as in much of North America today – rapidly expand to the point of sickness and starvation.  Healthy numbers of predators mean healthy deer herds.

And God designed us human beings for community.  He made us male and female, anticipating the community of marriage.  He placed us in a garden, so as to enable community with himself.  All through history, God has been working to form a community.  Abraham was chosen not for himself – but to be the father of a great nation.  Jesus was raised from the dead as ‘the firstborn of many brothers’ (Ro 8:29).  History will culminate gloriously and majestically in what John calls ‘the marriage supper of the Lamb’ (Rev 19) – and you can’t get much more community oriented than a wedding.

One of the most important functions of the church now, in this in between period of history, is to be a demonstration community – to show the world how community is done.  Let’s face it:  Community is hard!  It’s hard in marriage.  It’s hard in a family.  It’s difficult in a small town. It is almost impossible in a city.  But community is part of how God’s creation works, and we will never live in harmony with creation – that is, we will never solve the environmental crisis – without learning to live in community again.  The church was designed by God as a community.  As a community we have what the world needs if the world is to successfully navigate through the storm of environmental crisis now upon us.

Bill McKibben’s latest book, whether he intends it this way I do not know, is an exposition of this concept.  Deep Economy, playing on the concept of deep ecology, takes us ‘deeper’ than the balance sheets and profit and loss statements that normally encompass what we think of as the economy.  McKibben shows us, gently and effectively, that one of the basic assumptions of our modern world, that “More is Better”, is a fallacy.  In fact, once our basic human needs are met, more affluence and increased levels of technology seem to result in a lower quality of life rather than a higher one.  And one of the reasons increased affluence results in less happiness and satisfaction is that it almost always comes at the cost of community.  We have grown immeasurably wealthier in the last decades – and incalculably more lonely at the same time.

McKibben shows us that the answer to the environmental crisis is the same as the answer to our quality of life problem:  We need to restore and strengthen our communities.  One of my own principles is demonstrated over and over in the pages of Deep Economy: “If it’s good for community, it’s probably good for the environment” and it’s corollary: “If it’s good for the environment, it’s probably good for community.”  As McKibben sees it, one of the answers to the environmental crisis is to regain the kind of community we human beings used to have, and which in some parts of the world we still do have.

We have lost community at the same time that we’ve been sliding toward environmental disaster.  Whether this is cause and effect, or the two phenomena flowing out of a deeper cause that has given rise to both doesn’t really matter.   What is important – what McKibben is pointing us to – is that we will not solve the environmental crisis without learning community again.  The road back to environmental sanity takes us back to community, from the Supermarket to the Farmer’s Market, and maybe from the drive-in church to the old Wednesday night prayer meeting.

The church is marked by a set of beliefs or values that call her to care for God’s creation (among other things).  And the church already is what the world needs to learn to be to solve this problem – the church is a community.  The church can begin to respond to the environmental crisis simply by being the community she is called to be.   We’ll come back to this in the pages ahead, as it deserves exploration.  Obviously, a church that gathers to race SUV’s through a nature preserve is probably not using the concept of community to advance caring for creation!  But for now, it is sufficient to recognize this basic truth:  An effective response to the environmental crisis requires that we learn community again – and this is what the church does.

[Note: This article is excerpted and revised from my book, Our Father’s World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation, chapter 6: “Ambassadors of Redemption”.  Order the book here.]

This is a continuation of a series of articles leading up to the third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization that begins in Cape Town South Africa on October 15.  Today’s post is a continuation of the last as we move from the Fall to Redemption. Find the whole series to date here.

————–

I live in a college town in the US – Madison, WI.  Our university is known for “partying”, and one of the annual events loved by students and despised by residents is known as the Mifflin Street Block Party, with a history that goes back to the days of Viet Nam war protests.  The party is normally leaves behind an incredible mess that the city has to clean up, at considerable expense.

But in 2005 something different happened.  That year several people from a local church here got a crazy idea.  “Let’s serve our community by cleaning up after the Block Party.”  Word went out by email and text message.  At six am on Sunday, more than 50 people, rubber gloves and trash bags in hand, formed a line and began marching down Mifflin Street.  In front of them, a carpet of bottles, cans, paper trash and worse.  Behind them, the street was clean.  By midmorning, the job was done – but the repercussions were just beginning.  Television crews showed up at the church.  No one called them.  The goal was not publicity.  But they came because they could not understand what had happened.  Why would Christians – opposed to everything that “The Party” represents – get out at six in the morning and do the clean up?  The answer was simple:  “We wanted to show what it means to love your neighbor.”

This is true Christianity.  This is the church at work in the world.  When this kind of thing happens, the world notices.  It can’t help it.

Here is an example of a church doing exactly what it was created by God to do.  As that line of people formed early on that Sunday morning, they were demonstrating the redemption/reconciliation pattern that we have been describing:

• Individuals whose relationship with God had been restored by an experience of forgiveness from God (the first relationship)
• and who were therefore at peace with themselves (the second relationship)
• joined hands with other people to work together (the third relationship)
• to clean up a mess in the world (the fourth relationship).

The Mifflin Street Block Party clean up shows what happens when God’s redemptive plan hits the street.

This image is the heart of what I believe it means for the church to respond to the environmental crisis.   If the environmental crisis is a result of our sin, and if God desires, as part of his redemptive plan, that the effects of that crisis be reversed and his creation be restored, this can only happen through the church.

Mobilizing the church goes to the very heart of what the church was created to be!

“Think globally; act locally” describes nothing so much as it describes the church of Jesus Christ being and doing what Jesus has created it to do.  The redemption, reconciliation and restoration that God is accomplishing in the world is being accomplished through the church.  Cleaning up a Mifflin Street should not be occasional, newsworthy add-ons to a church’s program.  They should be the church’s program – as closely tied to the church’s reason for being as performing baptisms or celebrating communion.

What was God  thinking when he decided that this frail, all-too-human fellowship of people should be at the center of God’s plan to bring his redemption not only to all people, but also to all of creation?

Reading the mind of God is presumptuous at best.  Granting that, it appears to me that God’s plan of reconciliation rests on redemption taking place in the same arena where the curse has reigned supreme – that is, in this physical creation.  Isaac Watts put the idea into one of our favorite Christmas carols:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found…

(Isaac Watts, Joy to the World)

In God’s wisdom, he seems to have decided that the creatures that caused the curse in the first place – you and me, the human race – should be those charged with the job of reversing its effects.  It is as if he were saying to us, “You broke it. I’m going to let you fix it.”

Think about what that means.  Unable to earn our salvation or in any way make ourselves right or righteous before God, he has done more than forgive our sins and offer us a restored relationship with himself.  He is giving us an opportunity to help set right what we caused to go wrong.

So how do we get the mission of the church out to onto the environmental Mifflin Streets of the world? How can a group of people that might know how to conduct a prayer meeting but doesn’t know anything about water quality make a difference.  What, really, does the church bring to this crisis?  That is the subject of our next post.  Stay tuned.

[Note: This article is excerpted and revised from my book, Our Father’s World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation, chapter 6: “Ambassadors of Redemption”.  Order the book here.]

The folks over at crosswalk.com have posted an unusually good summary of my book, Our Father’s World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation.  Most reviews feel as if the reviewer looked at the table of contents and the blurbs on the back cover.  Not so in this case: Whitney Hopler has done such a good summary of the content that I almost wish I’d written it myself.  If you haven’t got the book yet, or have it but haven’t quite got round to reading it (! I know this true of some of my own friends, so don’t feel bad!), her review/summary is below – you could almost read the summary and fake it in a conversation – not that you would, of course.  [Here's how to order from the Care of Creation website., and keep in mind that this is also a very good summary of the kind of content you get in the Our Father's World seminar - booking information is here.]

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.