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…

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John Stott’s going-home-to-glory was announced yesterday.  I wrote the piece below last September, but the thoughts are just as valid if not more so now.  If you haven’t read Uncle John’s farewell message to all of us, please do so.  There’s a link at the bottom of the post.

There are few leaders in the Christian world greater than John Stott.  I first heard him preach at Urbana 1970 – forty years ago, when I was a senior in high school.  [You can read the actual talks here - I don't think the recordings are available on-line.]  I’ve followed his ministry career ever since, though almost always from a distance – we shook hands perhaps twice or three times, but my memory fades a bit at this point.  John is now at the end of his life, though he has not yet ended his service to the church and her Lord.  He has written one last book that is intended to be his farewell to those of us still here – and you need to read it.  Read more »

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?!

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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: Read more »

The word “ordeal” was what caught my attention first.  It was a news story about the Carnival Splendor, one of the largest cruise ships in the world, disabled off the coast of California early this week.  Ordeal?  Amid all that luxury?  This must be journalistic overstatement.

Little by little, the details started to emerge as the ship was towed back to San Diego, then came a flood of reports yesterday after the ship reached port.  Smoky corridors.  Blocked up toilets.  Stench filled hallways.  Interior rooms with no light or ventilation.  And two hour waits to be served hot dog salad and Spam.  (It is a strange footnote to this entire episode that the only thing the cruise line has disputed is that Spam was served to the passengers.  What’s the big deal about Spam among all of the other hardships?  But I digress…) Read more »

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. Read more »