Guest post: Lowell Bliss of Eden Vigil

“Wangari Maathai–Nobel laureate, founder of the Green Belt Movement, and sister-in-Christ Jesus–passed away on Sunday, Sept. 25, at the age of 71.  We at Eden Vigil wish her the joy of her resurrection.”

Ed has asked that I post this latest issue of the Environmental Missions Prayer Digest, something I’m happy to do.  But first let me forward a story from Ed himself.  On Sept. 28, Ed wrote:

Wangari was a good friend of Care of Creation Kenya. . . . She did attend a 2006 God and Creation conference – funny story there:  She had been invited and finally showed up on the last day of the conference.  They had to give her platform time which turned out to be right before my presentation, which was to be the closing talk of the conference.  Well, she took the entire slot (45 minutes) which meant that by the time I got up to talk, it was already past lunchtime…  wouldn’t have worked in the US, but these were Africans – so I just pretended there was no clock in the room and took my entire time as well (and then some, as I recall!).  I had the honor of a future-Nobelist telling me after that she ‘enjoyed my talk very much.’ Of course, at that time we had no idea that she would be winning the Nobel.

 Environmental Missions Prayer Digest, October 2011

Often in this opening paragraph, we offer a Scripture passage or a quotation.  This month, in tribute to Professor Maathai, we refer you to a song, Peter Mayer’s “Holy Now.”  (You can find a nice version of it at YouTube here.)  The songwriter arrives at the conclusion:

So, the challenging thing becomes

Not to look for miracles

But finding where there isn’t one.

Often what we come away with from a song, like how we interpret Wangari Maathai’s Catholic faith or her activist life, is determined by what we listeners and observers bring to it in the first place.  For what do we have eyes to see, or ears to hear?

Wangari Maathai proposes an Easter Monday celebration

Professor Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977.  Its mission, as described, was “to plant trees across Kenya to fight erosion and to create firewood for fuel and jobs for women.”  In 2004, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first African woman and the first environmentalist to win the prize.

While Green Belt’s “Billion Trees Campaign” may be calculated in the number of seedlings planted, Professor Maathai’s legacy may be best understood in her statement: “The planting of trees is the planting of ideas.  By starting with the simple act of planting a tree, we give hope to ourselves and to future generations.”

In 2005, Professor Maathai gave an interview to Mia MacDonald of Beliefnet which was entitled “Heaven Is Green.”  When asked how she had sought to engage religious leaders in environmental activism, she replied:

For the last few years, I have been trying to communicate with leaders of various Christian churches to urge them to bring protection and conservation of the environment into the mainstream of their faith and their teachings. I have been suggesting that Easter Monday could be a very good day for the entire Christendom to plant trees. If we could make that Monday a day of regeneration, … it would be a great celebration of Christ’s resurrection. After all, Christ was crucified on the cross. In a light touch, I always say, somebody had to go into the forest, cut a tree, and chop it up for Jesus to be crucified. What a great celebration of his conquering [death] it would be if we were to plant trees on Easter Monday in thanksgiving. 

Please join us in prayer:

•  For comfort to the family and friends of Professor Maathai who are mourning her death.
•  For the continued success of the Green Belt Movement, now that its founder has passed away.
• For the re-forestation of Kenya.   The country’s forests have dropped below 2% of total area, and as such are exacerbating drought, erosion, and climate change.
• For the Ogiek, the ancestral forest dwellers of the decimated Mau Forest. They live in constant tension
  

  Ogiek men examine a 3D map that they helped create from tribal memories, detailing the landscape of the Mau Forest prior to its decimation.

  with the government and have often been displaced.  Less than 5% of the Ogiek are Christian.  Literacy rates are low, so the Gospel must come in oral forms.

Link: Heaven is Green: An Interview with Wangari Mathaai

Photo of Maathai: Martin Rowe

Photo of Ogiek: Giacomo Rimbald

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.

My niece Stephanie Burkard has just finished her freshman year at Old Dominion University and wrote the following essay for a scholarship contest.  (See the link toward the end of the piece to help her win…)  I post it here with her permission.  [And if you are also a student and have a piece like this that you'd like to see published, send it my way. ]

I picked up Blue Like Jazz this week.  Chapter 2 coincided with some deeper thoughts I’ve been having.  One sentence sums up the chapter.  ”I am the problem” (Miller, 20).

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how to change the world.  Well, no.  I’ve thought more about how to change campus.  It’s an easier target than the world.  I also know campus and what I want to change very specifically.  Safety is one.  I’ve only ever heard gunshots twice in my life.  I was in New York City once.  The other time, I was chilling on Beth Anne’s porch on 41st street.  Other ones are tuition rates.  I pay a lot of money to go to school.  Thank you so much, federal government.  Because of your financial assistance, our schools have no problem raising prices for things like i-pads at libraries and pizza parties for the social clubs.  Anyone else get mad thinking about this?  Man, I pay for a lot of pizza with that tuition of mine.  That’s why I spend hours working.  So SGA can throw a pizza party!  Not so I can learn the stuff I’m paying to learn.

Where do I find myself talking about this stuff?  Frustrated.  Nothing changes.  I see no difference in my life.

Let’s get bigger than campus here.  World poverty.  How many people live on less than 2 dollars a day again?  Oh yeah, every other person ever to be born.  We care, so we campaign.  We care, so we write letters to our government.  We care, so we cry when we watch the news.  We care, so we expect others to fix that problem!  They’re the only ones who can do anything about it!  What’s your problem, government!  Stop wasting money and feeding some hungry people!  I am conveniently selfless when it comes to fixing problems.  That’s about 3 % of the time.  The other 97%, I think about me.

Several years ago, my family sat down to watch An Inconvenient Truth.  It’s a documentary by Al Gore about global warming.  Basically, the world is being destroyed by people.  Now, since then, there has been much controversy about the validity of global warming, but anyone who’s sat at the Faith Academy soccer field overlooking Manila by day knows that people are indeed destroying the world.  As I was saying, my family sat down to watch this documentary.  Now, my father is a smart man and he understood a concept most people are not willing to admit.  ”I am the problem.”  My father made two changes in his life that reflected his understanding of this concept.  The first is he changed the shower head in the bathroom to a water conserving one.  The second is he stopped making foam surfboards.  He now makes wood ones which are better for the environment.  Sure, trees are involved, but for every one cut down, many more are planted, at least I believe Dad started shaping with a kit that promised that.

Dad got it.  I am the problem.  It took me a few more years to catch on, but I get it now.  I am the problem.  I am the safety problem at ODU.  I am the pizza party.  I am world hunger.  I am destroying the environment.  So where’s the shower head that I can change in my life?

Everyone has something they can do- recycle (and drive less ;P).  It costs you nothing to recycle other then minimal effort.  Something else you can do too- and all online!  Go to http://www.castleink.com/ and see what ink cartridges on your printer you can use to cut back on your Manila-smog output.

(This is for a scholarship contest.  The more of you who go to castleink.com directly through this note, the more chances I have of winning.  Feel free to share this with your friends.  Thanks.)

You just never know who you’re going to meet at a conference (or a guest house). This time it was Orlando, Florida – and the person waving across the auditorium turned out to be Mark Morris, a friend and former member of the church I pastored for a time in Pakistan from about 1991 to 1995. He and Cindy were raising three of the cutest little girls… but I digress: We’ve both changed places and jobs numerous times in the last fifteen years and had completely lost track of each other. It was fun catching up personally and professionally. Our ministry at Care of Creation was new to Mark; this is how he described our conversation on his own blog. Enjoy:

Confession time. I’ll just put it all on the table…my actions and lifestyle might just demonstrate that I am complacent about the creation God has stewarded into my hands. It’s ok, because I balance this neglect with a high level of care for the least reached hearing a verbal and living proclamation of the living Lord. I invest myself in seeing churches and individuals traverse cultures in order to spread the saving name of Jesus to the glory of God the Father. So it is simply off my radar to get on the “liberal-minded” green kick of environmentalism. And yes I chew my gum and spit it out the window while driving 65 miles an hour down the highway. I don’t even know how many gazilians of years it will take for my juicy fruit to reprocess back into the environment, if it does at all. I’m obviously sinful and uncaring about God’s creation. So why am I writing in this blog about the Care of Creation?!

The reason? Something happened today as I attended Mission America, a follow up to the Cape Town, Lausanne Conference on World Missions. At the conference today I ran into an old friend and my former pastor who wrote a book and started a ministry on the subject of Care of Creation. The book is Our Father’s World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation.

The book was written by my friend Ed Brown. Ed and his wife are both missionary kids from legendary missionary families who poured out their lives sharing the gospel and making disciples and planting churches in Pakistan. As an MK, Ed literally survived drowning in a Pakistani canal and he grew up to be an Intervarsity student worker. Later Ed became my pastor in Pakistan during the mid 1990′s. Thinking Ed and I would spend our time catching up on the 15 year gap since our last visit, I was surprised that I spent most of the hour extracting the story of Ed’s pilgrimage into this unlikely ministry. After our visit, I came back to my hotel room and in a very brief time read his 200 page Intervarsity Press book from cover to cover.

I’ll use another person’s words to describe my reaction to Ed’s message. One of our speakers today talked about a YWAM ministry in which he mobilizes saved and unsaved college students to action around the cause of human trafficking. In the process of taking action for a cause, this YWAM worker begins the systematic process of sharing the gospel with those students and discipling them as they engage in their action-oriented response to a cause. As he explained his ministry, he said, “I communicated the Gospel through the lens of justice.” That’s a great description of Ed Brown’s ministry called Care of Creation. He and his global missionary staff, communicate the Gospel through the lens of the care of creation.

Today I learned that unlike many other “green” efforts, this is not a Christian facade for a liberal political agenda. Ed Brown’s ministry was actually the brain child of a visionary missionary out of John Piper’s church, Craig Sorley, who serves in Africa.

The vision of Care of Creation is:

Mobilizing the worldwide church toward a God-centered response to the environmental crisis that brings glory to the Creator, advances the cause of Christ and leads to a transformation of the people and the land that sustains them.

The ministry involves educating the North American church and engaging the church in sharing Christ while using environmentally responsible technologies around the world: Farming God’s Way, Planting God’s Trees, and Harvesting God’s Water Responsibly. I’m reminded of some of the excellent agricultural work of the Asian Rural Life Development Center. Ed emphasizes that sound theology is at the heart of sound practice. He articulates that Christ-centered theology, calling for a theology in action.

Many of the innovative, non-traditional churches that I serve, are serious about the care of creation and are looking for resources. Here’s a good one. These churches want to know what you and I are doing as Christians about the environment? So, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll confess that it is absolutely sinful for me to spit my gum out the window. Perhaps I should not even be chewing gum? But I’ll repent and at least stop spitting my chewing gum out the window. Yes this is a ridiculous little example, as if it were the worst thing that I do to the environment. I’ll also take seriously my stewardship of this earth, and like Ed I will bolster my commitment to the communication of the Gospel among the least reached around the world. Is there a place for me in the Care of Creation? After reading Ed’s book I’ll reluctantly admit that I must cease to ignore the issue and I’ll admit that there certainly better be a slot that I fill in this matter of stewardship. What about you?

If you are looking for guidance in how your church can address the issues of Creation Care, I’m sure Ed Brown will be glad to visit with you. He offers weekend seminars and training on the topic and you can simply read the book. Contact Ed Brown at ed@careofcreation.org. The book is an excellent resource for any Christian who wants to grapple with the theological foundations on this topic. It’s also a helpful tool to familiarize yourself with the issues inherent to this discussion. Brown’s book forced me, and perhaps it could you, to stop and listen to the issues, not from a left or right wing political perspective, but from an intelligent, theopraxical, conservative evangelical perspective.

The following is a guest-post from Tom Rowley of A Rocha USA. A Rocha and Care of Creation partner in various ways in the interest of creation care and Tom blogs regularly at the A Rocha USA website. Here he tackles a fundamental question: How do we dance around the problem of modern technology when almost all the tools we have to deal with creation care issues are, in fact, technological? Enjoy and offer a comment.

This piece started with me feeling rather smug over a major technological breakthrough at our house—namely, setting up the hand-me-down Wii that my sons got for Christmas and then, hold on to your hats, connecting that to Netflix for family movie nights. All without uttering an expletive (at least none that my dear ones heard). Before putting fingers to keyboard, however, the smugness gave way to heartburn over what we had unleashed on ourselves—yet again.

A bit of background: in our house, as in many I suspect, the dance with technology seems never ending. One step forward and two steps back, as we ask ourselves “What is good? What is frivolous? And what is downright evil?”

Luddites, we are not. We’d be hard-pressed and hungry to go without the microwave. Unemployed if it weren’t for wireless laptops and 3-, 4- or whatever-G-they’re-touting-now cell phone coverage. And flat out broke if we bought movie tickets, let alone the popcorn. In short, we are thankful for the blessings of technology.

But parents, we are. And though every generation has lamented likewise, the onslaught of games and gizmos designed to suck the very brains from our children’s heads is dizzying, draining and downright frightening.

And people of faith, we try to be. So we recognize that with all of technology’s good, there comes, too, a degree of insulation and arrogance that whittles away at our dependence on God. With life-enhancing and life-extending advances all about us, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that we are not gods. At the very least, there comes great distraction—bells and whistles and tweets—that crowd every waking moment, leaving scant space for attention to the divine. The most plugged-in era in history may well be the most disconnected from the Author of history. I can read the Bible on my iPhone, but do I take the time to ponder what it says—in between emails, text messages and ding alerts from Southwest.com? I can pull up any number of nature webcams, but do I get outside and savor God’s other revelation: the book of nature? Sadly, not enough.

This irony (“tragedy” really) took center stage in a recent discussion with colleagues about using Internet videos to teach and encourage environmental stewardship. Ed Brown at Care of Creation put his finger on it.

“Isn’t there a fundamental disconnect here?” he asked. “We are working to heal creation, to put people back in touch with the glories of God’s world and everything that goes along with that: I don’t think it’s going to happen by trying to get people to watch more pixels!”

He’s right, of course. The best way to inform and inspire people to steward the Earth (and a really good way to introduce them to its Maker) is to get them outdoors with their sleeves rolled up amidst the wonder of it all—whether ringing birds to study their migratory habits or planting streamside trees to improve water quality or tending gardens to feed those in need.

That is the best way.

Still, we first have to reach people in order to get them outside. People with eyes glued to a screen. Ironically (“sadly” really), in this age we have to use technology to counter technology. For good and for ill, it is part of life.

The question then is “how will we use it?” As with every other aspect of life, we are called to be thoughtful, full of thought, in our relationship to technology. Not daftly dancing along to the latest drumbeat, enticing as it may be. Rather, asking ourselves whether we “should”, not simply whether we “can.” Should I let my children play a video game now? Or should I accompany them on a hike? Should I watch a movie? Or ought I read or write or pray? Should I buy another gadget—knowing that its manufacture put carbon in the atmosphere and mercury in the water? Or should I say enough already? As Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, all things may be permissible, but not everything is helpful.

Lowell Bliss is the director of Eden Vigil and Care of Creation’s partner in environmental missions.  He’s appeared already in these pages as a guest blogger and has now agreed to be a regular contributor. Having spent fourteen years in India and Pakistan, Lowell, his wife Robynn, and three kids now reside in Manhattan, KS.

I know that YouTube is primarily used to apprise ourselves of this week’s media spectacle, but it’s also a wonderful tool for nostalgia.  Every once in a while, sitting at the computer, I announce to my family, “Classic Rock Night!”  The kids groan and the speakers play Creedence Clearwater Revival.   One day I went to YouTube in order to relive my childhood environmentalism.    When the world celebrated its first Earth Day in 1970, I was still in second grade.  YouTube allowed me to revisit the Ad Council PSA familiar to my generation of Saturday morning cartoon watchers.  I typed in “Crying Indian,” the name under which the ad is apparently archived in our collective memory, and watched the old chief paddle his canoe past a riverfront factory.  He beaches it on a littered shore and climbs an embankment alongside an eight-lane highway.   The narrator’s voice is deep and accusatory, “Some people have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country. “  We then see a bag of fast-food garbage flung out from a car window.  It splatters the Indian’s moccasins.  “And some people don’t.”    The camera then pans closely to his face and we see the famous tear.  “People start pollution; people can stop it.”

Here now are the comments that appeared under the video on the day that I watched it:

• GENESIS101 (5 days ago)
  • this makes me want a burger now.
• accountabilabuddy1 (2 weeks ago)
  • I hated this psa as a kid. They used to play it all the time in the 70′s. Nealry [sic] ruined Saturday morning cartoons for me!
• Greebrew1 (2 weeks ago)
  • the indian in this commercial is actually sicilian.
• SanLUZARDO (3 weeks ago)
  • They should run this again on Primetime…It will never be out of time.
• Pking2death (1 month ago)
  • The thing about this commercial is that, you can rape our women, you can kill our entire race, you can take our land, but if you litter I’m going to break down and cry.
• patu8010 (1 month ago)
  • So that’s where Simpsons got the idea.
• DexFlames (1 month ago)
  • I lol’d anyway.

If nostalgia is a function of the past and the present somehow mediating through each other, then these comments I suppose are as significant as the replayed video.  Wow!  I never remember wanting to laugh out loud about this Indian’s pain, something I always accepted as real and sincere.   Maybe if I had known he was actually Sicilian.  Back then I don’t think I could have imagined cynicism anymore than I could have imagined cartoons taking a leap from Saturday morning to the Simpson’s primetime slot.   Pking2death’s comment on crying over litter, as compared to Native America’s loss of land, life, and health, does make sense to me, but only because I’ve grown up and seen how complicated justice can be in an adult world.  It makes litter seem silly.  Nonetheless, at some elemental level in me (that convergence of the 8-year-old me and the 48-year-old me), I still consider litter to be part of that injustice.  I still find that Indian’s tear human and sincere—be he now Native American, or Sicilian, or Pakistani, or Maldivian.

The environmentalism of my childhood was simple.   For everything that I may have read in My Weekly Reader about smog in Los Angeles or Lake Erie catching on fire, most of my consciousness could be contained on a poster made with stencils and magic marker: “Don’t be a litterbug.”   Woodsy the Owl’s admonition was a rallying cry for my Cub Scout troop as we picked up garbage in the city park.   Now I try to picture Woodsy before the licensing commission of a coal-fire power plant.  “Give a hoot; don’t pollute,” he says into the bank of microphones.  (I can’t picture it.)  And all of those bags of litter we Cub Scouts picked up, now I’m informed that the landfills are too full to accept them.   We may as well go out for burgers and fries.  It’s a slow but inexorable drift from complexity to cynicism, making the canoe in the commercial a fitting metaphor.

But of course, we can stop.  We can beach the canoe in a sandbar and get out and reflect.   Grief is the first line of defense against all sorts of evils.  Then we can choose.  “Some people have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country.”  Hey, that’s me!  Still now, four decades later.  And then we can choose to keep it simple.  “Give a hoot; don’t pollute” is exactly what industry and government need to hear.  Maybe the rhyme and the whimsy of that slogan is an integral part of the value of creation.  And maybe there is no more glorious activity for a Saturday afternoon than to grab a bag and go out into my neighborhood and pick up litter.   In my next guest blog at Our Father’s World, that will be my topic: picking up litter as a spiritual discipline.  Maybe the planet doesn’t need it, but our souls do.  Maybe two bags of pop cans and candy wrappers mean nothing to the complexities of the environment, but it can mean the world to our childlike faith.

Care of Creation and Eden Vigil are cohosting a Consultation on Environmental Missions in Manhattan KS July 12-16.  A small group of environmental and missions leaders will spend three days together hashing out issues that will help us to establish Environmental Missions as a new category of missions.  You can read the announcement of the event here – and you can contact Robynn Bliss, event registrar, here if you would like to join us.

Meanwhile, Lowell recently wrote the following piece for the Evangelicals for Social Action newsletter, answering the question, What do we mean by “Environmental Missionary”.  Enjoy!

What Is an Environmental Missionary?

Munnu-ji was my best Indian friend. He was my first landlord, renting me a small room off Assi Ghat before I was married. I’m not sure Munnu ever believed on Jesus. He was a man of peace, however, and assisted numerous Christian workers. He died when a mosquito, borne off the polluted waters of the Ganges River basin, bit him. Munnu-ji contracted cerebral malaria.

The basic idea was to combine the environment and missions in a way we don’t think anyone else is doing. On an organizational level, no mission organization in North America is openly both environmental and missional. It’s very similar to medical missions in its approach to the mission field. When you take out the word ‘medical’ and put in the ‘environmental,’ that’s what we are. We want to do practical things where we help people by sharing the Gospel, but we want to serve people and serve the church by helping to heal the land through various means.

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.

“Old Literature” is an occasional series pointing to works of the past, sometimes well known, sometimes not, that have embedded in them a clear creation care message.  [Check out previous posts in the series here.] C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books are perfect subjects for this series, and have long been on my mental list.  Before I got to him, though, Dean Ohlman at Wonder of Creation blog did the job for me, with a little Isaac Watts and John Newton thrown in for good measure.  Here is his meditation on Narnia – reposted by permission: