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.

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.]

Floods in Kentucky - Photo courtesy Flickr CC License

Care of Creation, my organization, does a lot of work teaching people in Kenya and other East African countries about the dangers of destroying forests.  God gave us trees for good reason:  In terms of hydrology (water cycles), trees are essential.  They are like the columns holding up the roof of a building – lose the trees, the whole system falls apart.  It turns out that something very similar is going on in the Mississippi River watershed of middle America.  We’re a richer country – but it appears that mere wealth can’t stop a flood.  When we human beings carelessly destroy vital parts of the world God gave us to live in, it doesn’t seem to matter whether we’re living in a village in Kenya or on a farm in Missouri.

Lost in the blizzard of headlines over the last week – tornadoes, weddings, the death of a terrorist – is the developing  flood situation in the Mississippi River valley.  The few stories that we’ve seen have focused on what one commentator called a solomonic dilemma:  Whether to save a small, struggling riverside city (Cairo, Illinois) or hundreds of thousands of acres of the country’s best farmland in Missouri.  That case has been all the way to the US Supreme Court in the last 48 hours, with the result that last night the Corps blasted two miles of levees at Bird’s Point, just south of Cairo in order to reduce the pressure on that community’s flood defenses.  As of this writing, the river has receded by a foot – the Corps hopes that they’ll see three more feet of decline in the next couple of days.

Of course, that’s only one city, and the Gulf of Mexico is a long way away.  Look for a lot more excitement on ‘Old Man River’ before it’s over:  This may take a month or more to play out.  But to give you a taste of what’s to come, here are some of the headlines today from Google News (search on ‘Mississippi River Flooding’):

Ohio River Sets New Record, Mississippi Waters Still Rising

Bloomberg - Brian K. Sullivan – ‎4 hours ago‎

The 6- to 10-day outlook from Commodity Weather Group LLC calls for below-normal rain in the southern US, including the Mississippi River valley. “These areas will be drier over the next 10 days, helping to ease the severity of flooding a bit for …

Isle of Capri Casino Hotel in Lula closed due to Miss. River flooding

Today’s THV - Amanda Terrebonne – ‎15 hours ago‎

(KTHV) — The Isle of Capri Casino Hotel announced Monday that as of 3 am central time on Tuesday, May 3, the casino will be closed temporarily until flood waters recede. “As the Mississippi River continues to rise access to our property has been …

Water reaches Tiptonville

State Gazette - ‎4 hours ago‎

Lake County, as well as other counties, is also experiencing rising water levels, both from the Mississippi river and rainwater. Lake County Mayor Macie Roberson stated the northern part of Tiptonville has begun flooding and almost 50 residences have …

As an aside, that last story may be the most important one in the list.  I’ve never heard of Tiptonville (it’s in western Kentucky), nor Lake County, nor Mayor Roberson.  Nor have you (unless this blog has a bigger reach than I expect).    But Tiptonville is a special place for all of the folks who live there, and who are heading into their own slow-motion version of what the tornado victims across the south experienced last week.   We measure disasters with numbers, but the reality is that every disaster is a collection of hundreds, thousands of individual human stories.  It’s people who will suffer in all of these events.

So what’s to be done?  There is not much you can do about tornadoes or earthquakes.  While there are suspicions that a warmer world may lead to more and stronger tornadoes, it appears that the link between climate change and tornadic activity isn’t there yet.   Like earthquakes, tornadoes are part of God’s world – we’ve got to learn to live with them.

Floods are a bit different.  In most places, the natural world doesn’t have drip irrigation.  Our water is delivered in batches.  When it rains, there will almost always be more than we need for the moment – sometimes so much more that we have a flood.  And then it will be dry, sometimes for a very long time.  In this sense, floods are part of the system by which the natural world runs.  And in fact, throughout most of history, floods would have been welcomed as nature’s way of restoring depleted soil with a fresh new layer of silt.

Care of Creation’s project area in Kenya comes to mind as an example of how a normal hydrological system should work.  In this region of East Africa, farmers have long counted on two rainy periods in the year:  The “long rains” come about now and last for six weeks or so.  The “short rains” come in November.  In between, hardly a drop falls from the sky.  In normal years, in normal times, this wasn’t a problem.  God’s creation and human beings had all adapted to this rainfall pattern:  During the brief, intense rainy periods,  the mountain forests acted like sponges, soaking up the rain when it came, and gradually releasing it into streams and rivers over the entire dry season.  Many mountain streams would flow year round, even during the months with no rain.

This system has been severely disrupted – almost destroyed – in East Africa.  Vast stretches of forest have been removed for firewood, charcoal, or to make room for farmland, and the result has been completely predictable:  Erratic rainfall (made worse by global climate change), floods when it does rain, contributing to massive erosion, and then droughts when it doesn’t.  I have personally stood with Kenyans who showed me a dry stream bed that used to flow year round when they were children.  The important lesson:  It is not God who dried up the streams.

We have a tendency to lecture people in countries like Kenya about how dangerous it can be to destroy the natural systems God has provided.  I give some of these talks myself.  Such lectures aren’t misplaced.  People in these countries tend to live closer to the edge than do those in, say, middle America, and when your country’s water supply is fragile anyway, destroying the forests that provide that supply is not ever a good idea.

All of this makes the following Google News entry quite interesting:

Mississippi Floods Can Be Restrained With Natural Defenses

NatGeo News Watch (blog) - Sandra Postel – ‎4 hours ago‎

As riverboat casinos close along the lower Mississippi River as a precaution against disastrous flooding, another form of river gambling is coming under the spotlight — the bet that levees will be able to safeguard cities and farms from the rising …

Take a minute and click through to read the story.  It turns out that here in the US we are doing with our natural wetlands what Kenyans have been doing with their forests:

Over the last three-quarters of a century, while engineers were building hundreds of miles of flood-control structures along the river’s banks, the water-holding wetlands in the Mississippi watershed were being drained and filled to make room for more farms and homes. Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio have each lost more than 85 percent of their wetlands.  Minnesota, where the Mississippi originates, has lost a whopping 9.3 million acres of wetlands, 62 percent of its pre-industrial total. All together, eight states of the upper Mississippi basin have lost 35 million acres of wetlands, an area the size of Illinois.

Those wetlands worked like a giant sponge: they absorbed rainwater and then released it slowly to nearby streams or the groundwater below. In this way, they mitigated floods and made the job of levees that much easier. But with these natural protections largely gone, levees have been left to do all the work.

So… we could say, with the Kenyan ladies of the cartoon, ‘God, why have you let these floods destroy our homes (again)?’ while looking out at acres of mall parking lots where wetlands used to be.  I think we’d get the same answer.

It’s not God’s fault.

It would appear that when we “pave paradise to put up a parking lot”, there are consequences.

Long-time readers of this blog will remember John and Dorothy Priske of Fountain Prairie Farms in Columbus Wisconsin.  We’ve been friends for a couple of years and I’ve watched John and Dorothy’s progress as they have developed Fountain Prairie Farms. John stopped by one of my seminars in Madison a couple of years ago and stole the show, and the Fountain Prairie table at the Dane County (Madison) Farmer’s Market is the first place I stop just before Hook’s Cheese and Pecatonica Farm and the guy who sells me purple potatoes. I’m starting to learn that ‘eating local’ isn’t a principle – it’s participating in a web of relationships.

So when I turn on my television for the evening news, and my favorite farmer is featured – that’s exciting stuff! John and Dorothy were named ‘Wisconsin Conservation Farmer of the Year’ for their work at Fountain Prairie. Here’s the story, and here’s a clip:

What’s exciting about John’s vision is that it is a vision. John doesn’t only want to manage his land and cattle in a way that will heal the land – he is also working to find ways to encourage others. If you were to visit the farm during the growing season, you might see as many as a half-a-dozen other projects on the land – chickens, vegetable plots – being run by other folks, mostly young people, who want to learn this way of life and need a place (and an encouraging mentor) to help them do it.

You may never meet John and Dorothy. (If you live in Madison, I sure hope you try to – tell them I sent you, and be sure to try the pot roast!) But what they are doing is important for your world – and I’ll bet there are people in your community just like them. Look for those folks – and if you want to encourage my Farmer John, add a comment and I’ll pass it along to him!

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 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 part 3 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 last two:

3.  It’s all about us and how we treat each other.

It was, frankly, surprising to note the number of times during this conference we were told that we should be – and most of the early leaders of this movement were – concerned about people as much as about nature.  Nelson himself was as much concerned with conservation of urban resources as with environmental resources.  Leopold’s “land ethic” was based on a concern not only for the health of the land but for the health of the people who live on it.

The wider environmental movement has had its radicals in the past – those who are quite convinced that human beings are not much more than a fungus running wild on the surface of the globe, and that most natural places would be better off without us.   The problem with this approach is that even these radicals are human beings themselves – and I don’t see anyone rushing to the front of the line to check out.

If the speakers at this conference are to be considered representative of the mainstream environmental movement – and I think this is a reasonable assumption – we would have to conclude that the movement as a whole not only recognizes a place for human beings in the world, but also sees the connections between environmental values and human values.   Doroceta Taylor reminded us that the long history of the oppression of minorities in the US is a history of environmental abuse of those peoples.  Even recent history like the building of interstate highways through our cities shows an uncomfortable pattern.  It was not white suburbs that were generally leveled for these new highways, but thriving minority communities.

Novelist Margaret Atwood addressed the question of ecojustice by asking for new language:  Using the term justice, she suggested, conjures up an image of judgment and law and a host of negative connotations.  Why not substitute ‘ecomercy’ for ‘ecojustice’?  Whoever is wrong – and all of us have plenty to be guilty about – perhaps we can start best by being merciful to each other.  If a wealthy person were to see reducing consumption as a conscious act of mercy toward those who have less and need more, might that not help a bit?

Conservation of natural resources and urban resources is one and the same.  Preservation of ecosystems and human societies cannot be separated.  These themes ran through almost all of the presentations of the conference, perhaps best summed up by the speaker who said, “The problem is us and how we treat each other.”

Surely the connection to Creation Care is clear?  The heart of a Christian approach to environmental problems is to recognize that ‘environmental problems are sin problems.’  The problem indeed is us – but the solution is God.  This more than anything else is what we can bring to this movement.

4. Even business agrees.

One of the most enduring fallacies surrounding today’s environmental crisis is that we have to choose between prosperity and environment.

“Green business is good business” was repeated over and over – by the business leaders among us.

We had a couple of top ones at this conference, the most prominent of which was Fisk Johnson of S.C. Johnson.  This premier consumer products company (Saran Wrap, anyone?) is a remarkable family company (Fisk represents the fifth generation) that takes environment seriously.  They cut CFC’s from their products three years before the government made everyone else do it and have pioneered a “Green List” of environmentally friendly chemicals that has some of their competition a bit upset with them.  “You’re going to change the whole industry!”  “You bet.”

But Johnson sounded almost sounded plaintive in expressing his frustration at making changes at the consumer level:  Even if a company is committed to doing the right thing, it isn’t so easy when consumers won’t go along.  By way of example, he tossed several rolls of toilet paper into the audience.  Paper made with recycled fibers is better for the environment but paper made with new fibers is softer – much softer.  Guess which one we consumers prefer to buy.  “What price softness” was his question.

Johnson’s best line:  “We need to change the social norm from keeping up with the Joneses to being greener than the Joneses.”

Robert Kennedy Jr. reminded us that those countries who have moved to ‘decarbonize their economies’ by moving away from fossil fuels as much as possible are among the most prosperous economies in the world today.  This very short list includes Norway, Sweden, Germany and Iceland.

How does the Creation Care movement interact with the world of business?  Business people go to church.  Or they would do if the church is doing its job of reaching into its communities.  If churches are committed to and are preaching love for God’s creation, this ethic and passion will penetrate the boardroom and will show up on the factory floor.

We started this series with an analogy.  We’re all citizens of a town about to be engulfed in flood waters.  We need to work with each other to save our homes.  It doesn’t matter what our faith-affiliation is when sandbags are waiting.  Applying this to the environmental crisis, we who are Christians have a perspective on the problem and a toolkit that is not available to the rest of our community and we need to use these in two directions:  We need to persuade our fellow Christians that the crisis is real and that our town needs us – many of them are still asleep in their beds even as the water rises.  And we need to reach out to the larger environmental movement to let them know that we’re here and we’re ready to work.

So let’s get going!

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...]

This post is the Christmas letter my wife and I have just sent out to our friends and financial partners in our ministry.  Suspecting that a few of the regular visitors to Our Father’s World might not be on our distribution list, here are our thoughts this Christmas season.  Note that the first half is a devotional – we’ve been doing this in our letters for at least 15 years – and the second contains brief news about our family.  You are welcome to read both – we’d love to have you meet our family in this way, if not in person!  And feel free to contact me directly if you’d like to be added to the direct distribution list or click here if you would like to partner with us by donating to our ministry.  Our work is mostly provided for my small-ish gifts from ordinary people. –End of Commercial– !

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Dear Friends,

Of all the common Christmas carols echoing in shopping malls, elevators and on the radio – not to mention in churches and on our music players – surely the most interesting and subversive is “Joy to the World.”

You’re not in the habit of thinking of Christmas carols as subversive?  Take another look at this carol:

Joy to the World , the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the World, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

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,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

Have you noticed that this carol is not about Christmas at all?  We are not singing here about what is commonly called Christ’s first advent – angels, shepherds, manger, magi.  No, this song is a look into the future – when Jesus returns to establish his kingdom of righteousness and justice on the earth.  Far from being sweetness and light and romance, this is a song of triumph and of victory over evil.  Its message should make the powers that rule this world quake with fear!  And – not coincidentally –  it is perhaps one of the best expositions of a major theme in my own teaching, that redemption is more than salvation!  “Heaven and nature” are singing.  “Fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains” are echoing the sound.  Thorns will no longer “infest the ground”.  He – Jesus – will be present and will “rule the world with truth and grace”.  All of this is profoundly biblical (check out Romans 8:21, Psalm 148 to start with).

So why do we sing this at Christmas?  Because Christmas is only one chapter in the long story of God’s work in human history. The first Advent and the second Advent are two parts of one great plan.  As beautiful and romantic as the Christmas story is, it only becomes meaningful when we see the connections.  The baby is Savior.  The Savior is King.  The King is coming to restore his Kingdom.  And we, his subjects, demonstrate that by preparing for his coming by allowing him to rule our lives now.

We give meaning to Christmas and we prepare for the coming of our King by bringing his rule into our present in anticipation of this great future.  We learn to love the King and to accept his love.  We allow his Spirit to work in our lives to be more like him.  We practice our love for him by loving each other in family and in community and reflecting that love to all those in need around us.  We learn to live in God’s creation in a way that the “rocks, hills and plains” will rejoice and “heaven and nature” will sing, not just because King is coming, but because we, his people are already here, preparing the way for Him!

That, in a nutshell, is why this interesting and subversive Christmas carol is and should remain part of the standard list of carols we sing.

It’s also why we do what we do with Care of Creation!

And we thank you for your interest, partnership in and support of our life and ministry.  It is now almost 5 years since we sent out our “Sometimes you have to leap, and build your wings on the way down” letter marking the beginning of this adventure.  We now see a genuine movement beginning in the evangelical community – in the US and abroad – and we find ourselves right in the middle of it:

• Urbana09 – in St Louis right after Christmas –will feature an evening focusing on environment as an issue and no less than 9 seminars (workshops) on creation care, half of which will be taught by Care of Creation staff or our close ministry partners, Renewal and Eden Vigil.
• A new Zondervan book release – Zealous Love – features a chapter by me and Susanna on our call to the ministry of creation care, and Our Father’s World continues to sell moderately well.
• We are involved directly or in partnership with the Creation Care Consultation, a fellowship of like-minded organizations; with the National Association of Evangelicals, the Evangelical Environmental Network, the Evangelical Press Association, the US Committee of the Micah Challenge, and the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES).
• Our recent experience of bringing the Our Father’s World seminar to the Philippines and Japan is opening doors to many other countries.  It is our goal, everywhere we go, to seek to lay the foundation for a self-sustaining, biblical creation care movement.  This is already happening in the Philippines.

[But we’re still building the wings to sustain all of this.  Our current financial situation is precarious – personally and organizationally.  We anticipate losing our largest supporting church in February due to their own budget difficulties.  We need you!  Thanks for taking a look at the enclosed response form…]

Family wise, it’s been a good year.  We had the whole family together in June for a few brief days at a cousin’s wedding.  Tim even came from the Dominican Republic, where he is well into his second year with the Peace Corps, along with his lovely girlfriend Kim Dykwell.  He will end that service in May, and has been heavily engaged in submitting graduate school applications.  Other members of the family will also be transitioning in the coming year: Katrina graduates from University of Wisconsin in May, is also looking at grad schools and would like to do her Masters degree in China.  Amy will graduate from the University of Minnesota the same weekend and is still deciding what God has in store for her next year. She’s loved being a Nanny this year.  Melanie changed her position at Cornerstone Christian Academy in Philadelphia where she’s been for a number of years.  She’s now working in Administration, which she seems to be enjoying, and has been active with some significant leadership positions in her church.

And the parents are hanging on to the empty nest with glee.  (Most of the bedrooms have been repurposed so it stays that way.)  Susanna came through knee replacement surgery in April better than expected, and is now more mobile than in many years.  With improved health she has steadily added activities, including a bible study for three young(er) women, and involvement with some of the needy people on our street.  And I (Ed) keep on keeping on, grateful for good friends, health and strength sufficient (usually) for the demands of the day.

Thank you again for your love, prayers, and partnership.  We appreciate every one of you.

Ed and Susanna Brown