A Rocha USA Blog

By Robert Campbell*, Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church

I find myself listening to this interview with Peter Harris again and again. I sat in the room while it took place, but still I go back to it often. Those moments as a fly on the wall set something free in me and I make mental pilgrimages to them often. On one of those recent mental trips, while mowing my lawn, Peter Harris asked me a question (not literally, but you know what I mean):  “What does an A Rocha-shaped church look like?”. I waited and waited for the gloriously details of a church in the ditches of creation care, but he didn’t answer his own question. He left it up to others to live out and discover. Therefore, as a deliberate and dedicated lover of the local church, on that pilgrimage with a community of local people, I feel compelled to try and answer: What does an A Rocha shaped church look like?

An A Rocha-shaped church starts with a people in a particular place who are willing to do the hard stuff. They do it out of their holistic theology of Christ’s lordship over all of life, and with the leadership of a pastor who is also a real person living in that real place. I realize I am saying nothing new. New is not the point. Believing and acting are the point. Any definition of a local church must begin, with real people. People with actual names like Matt, Su, Ben and Serenity, who are not only fellow parishioners but also neighbors. When an A Rocha-shaped church prays, “Our Father,” these are the faces that come to mind. Those faces have stories to tell. The stories involve joys like marriages, babies being born and relationships being restored. They also include many human sorrows caused from death, brokenness and simple sin between people in their circles. That’s the way it is with real people in an A Rocha-shaped church. The actual people matter more than theoretical people who might attend one day if we run the right advertisement or offer the right program.

The real people are also dirt people. Maybe “dust” people is a better description. Whenever I use the word “dirt” in a sermon I am reminded by my geologist friend, Bonnie, that dirt is what you find on the floor. I am referring to “soil,” she says. I get it, and A Rocha friend Mark McReynolds tells me it’s not a “bird,” it’s a male Western Tanager. I am learning, slowly. The book of Genesis uses the word “dust” to describe the creation of mankind; we are dust and breath, body and Spirit. An A Rocha-shaped church will be made up of dust people. Dust people are not fake people living in a fake world, but a desperately practical people working it all out in the dirt of daily life. They are concerned with every step and every act for the good of the people they live with in the place where they live together. A dust person builds a fence around the yard and puts the unfinished side facing inward so their neighbors see the clean part. A dust person hears about A Rocha’s kestrel program in NW Washington and asks how it might benefit their grape-growing neighbors in California. My people are dust people and they are the real thing. They are Christian all the way down to the dirt.

What we believe comes out of our fingertips. This is always true. An A Rocha-shaped church is formed out of an A Rocha-shaped theology, a theology that includes the dirt. We believe that God is the owner of all things. Creation is His and His will is going to be accomplished in it. We believe that God has given us the responsibility to steward His creation towards His ends, which includes both people and place since it is impossible to separate them. We believe all of our daily actions on this planet we call home are acts of worship towards Jesus. We believe all this because Jesus Christ is the Lord of all of life, not just the so-called “spiritual” parts. Our working, playing and loving are all spiritual acts when done by faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross. While our culture relegates religion to the private sphere, the God of the Scriptures does no such thing. As believers, we know what we go about our daily lives under the smile of God because God is happy with Jesus and we belong to Jesus. Because that is firm and settled, we are free to just try the hard stuff to see if it makes a difference, and it will make a difference.

When questioned about what A Rocha should look like in particular place, Peter Harris is known to answer, “I don’t know, I don’t live there”. He is right, only the people living in place really know how people concerns and place concerns come together. In my place they come together between ranchers and environmentalists, both who love the land, but speak a very different language.

What is it in your place? An A Rocha-shaped church will explore the needs of their own place and be willing to just do the hard stuff because it needs to get done. Don’t know where to begin? Come and see what Marty and Emiko have going at the Santa Barbara A Rocha project site. Go see the great work Dave is doing with the watershed in NW Washington.You will be inspired, challenged, taught and encouraged. Then you can go home and try something.

Me? I’m that Pastor. I live here. I am effecting and affected by my people and my place. Their stories become part of my story and their circles become my circles. It is my responsibility to lead my congregation in learning to value each other and the place where we live. It is the charge of God to me to bless my people with a truly human spirituality that affirms the redemptive power of their daily lives outside of the church gathering. Today, I offer that blessing to you. If you are an ecologically oriented believer trying to find your way to bring people and place together, but not feeling the affirmation of your local church: you are doing a good work, the Lord bless you and keep you. If you are ecological worker, daily striving to do good without the ordination that the church gives to ministers or medical doctors: you are loving your neighbor well, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.

*Robert Campbell is Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church, an Evangelical Free Church on the Central Coast of California.