“Old Literature” is an occasional feature that highlights long-forgotten books, articles, speeches or poems that still speak to us today.  As it happens, there’s some new material that also deserves our attention.  Today, Tending to Eden by Scott Sabin, Director of Plant with Purpose (formerly Floresta).

Scott Sabin and I met about 7 years ago at a conference in Kenya.  He tells about that conference in his new book,Tending to Eden that was just released two weeks ago:

Edith and I took several pastors to a conference on creation care in Kenya.  I was one of the presenters, and in the course of my presentation I showed a slide of the devasted forests around Mt Kilimanjaro National Park.  Pastor Lyamuya approached me later and, with an embarassed smile, explained how convicting it was to see the photo from his own community.  “God entrusted it to us to take care of, and we aren’t doing our job.” Read more »

All done!

Three months of planning, writing, praying and creativity and now, a bit of rest before we get into 2010.

The first day of the new year of 2010, was spent driving back to Madison, WI from St. Louis, MO where we had spent the previous week with about 13,000 students and 3,000 other attendees both experiencing — and in some ways helping to shape — the future of missions in the US.
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No one comes to Urbana for fun. This is not a “winter break” vacation. Not by a long shot.

There are a couple of common threads that we have heard from each of the over 100 students we have talked to at our Urbana09 booth and the countless others that we have sat next to in the morning worship service, met in the lunch line or ridden with in the hotel elevator.

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From Urbana09 in St. Louis, Missouri, the question is raised … What are the challenges that students face (and we face) with this thing we call Environmental Missions or creation care?

We had the first of the “Environmental Track” seminars today and the students, through their questions and extremely outgoing personalities told us a lot about what they think, what they fear and what they expect.

Here’s the story in a nutshell.

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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.” Read more »

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

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