[This is Part 2 of thoughts coming from my recent visit to the Philippines.  Part 1 is here.]

I’ve been working in the field of environmental stewardship for almost 10 years, and have been presenting the Our Father’s World seminar material in various forms for close to three.  We’ve been in half a dozen states and will be adding several more in the coming year.  The normal subtitle to the seminar is “Why Christians Should Care about the Environmental Crisis”.  It has always seemed to me that this is straight forward enough, given that that is what we’re talking about.  No one who has been to the seminar can or does question the reality:  There is a crisis, it’s real and it’s happening now. Read more »

My recent experience of presenting the Our Father’s World seminar material in Manila, Philippines, triggered the following thoughts…

There is a story – a parable, really – that I use at the end of my Our Father’s World seminar presentations.  It goes something like this:

Let’s pretend that we’re on a refugee ship of some kind.  We’re part of a Christian ministry, and we’re taking a ship load of refugees to a new land, where they can start their lives over again.  The ship is crowded, and we have a lot of work to do to care for the passengers and to keep things running smoothly during the three week voyage. Read more »

The Philippines recently experienced a major typhoon and massive flooding of the capital city, Manila.  Here’s a first hand report from Melba Padilla Maggay, who is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Asian and Church Culture (ISACC) the organization that will be hosting my visit to Manila at the beginning of November.  I’m posting this with her permission, and asking that you please both read it prayerfully and, particularly if you have connections to Filipinos, that you distribute it so others will understand what has happened.  The recovery will take a long time – keep these sisters and brothers in your prayers.

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