by Tom Rowley, Executive Director of A Rocha USA

In cities and towns across the United States, Christian faith is hard at work—well beyond the stained glass and steeples. It may not be obvious. But it’s there. It’s there in healthcare, housing and education. It’s present in programs for the hungry, the addict and the abused. It’s even in the gym. And I’m not simply referring to the faith of the many Christians who work in these arenas, but to the institutional identities themselves. Indeed, faith has long been a driving force in the founding of organizations and services that enhance our communities--from Jesuit schools to Methodist hospitals, from pregnancy centers and food pantries to Habitat for Humanity and the YMCA.

Now imagine those services weren’t there, that faith was missing in action. Picture your community with gaping holes in this fabric of faith-driven works that fosters health and wholeness in society, blessing those who serve as much as those who are served.

Sadly, just such a gap exists in most communities today—one left by Christians ignoring and in some cases actively opposing the biblical mandate to care for the Earth, which God created and called "very good."

Both the excuses for and the results of our abdication are many. Political divisions, economic tradeoffs and differences over the cause and severity of challenges and the choice of solutions make environmental stewardship controversial for many believers. Bad theology that twists humanity’s dominion into a license to exploit and despoil only complicates matters. Excuses notwithstanding, anything but the most jaded reading of the Bible reveals that throughout Old Testament and New God’s people are instructed to lovingly steward ALL that God created.

And when we haven’t, care of creation has fallen to those whose motivations and methods are often at odds with what the Bible teaches. Earth care can become Earth worship. Humans can be seen as just another species at best, pests at worst. And in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges, despair becomes the order of the day.

Fortunately, things are changing.

Christians are starting to add the non-human portion of creation to our care list. We are going green--at least green-ish. We’re recycling and putting up clotheslines. We’re taking shorter showers, eating more locally grown food and putting fewer miles on the car and more on the bicycle (or Birkenstocks, for the really crunchy). We’ve even swapped Styrofoam for ceramic to hold our organic, shade-grown, fair-trade, fellowship-hall coffee. All to the good and to God’s glory. But is that enough? Is there anything more we as God’s stewards ought to be doing?

For some, the answers to those questions may well be “Yes, that’s enough. And no, I don’t need to do anything more.” Fair enough.

Others, in growing numbers, are carrying their care for creation out into their communities. Following the lead of those who earlier sought the “peace and prosperity of the city” by building hospitals and high schools, these followers of Jesus are now planting organic gardens that help both people and pollinators; cleaning and protecting streams, lakes and entire watersheds; planting trees; removing invasive species; running creation-care workshops; building nature trails and more. All to the good and to God’s glory.

Many of these efforts—I’m tempted to say the best of them—work with and help secular groups who also care for the creation albeit without knowing, much less worshipping, the Creator. And while that help is at times met with skepticism if not hostility, humility and hard work go a long way toward overcoming even the most strident objections.

What the creation groans for, and the unbelieving world needs to see from those who claim to love the Creator, is a little less talk and a lot more action. When we do that, when we go and preach the Gospel to all creation using, as St. Francis puts it, "words if necessary", we will begin at last to fill that gaping hole in our communities and in God’s wondrous yet beleaguered creation. And just as with healthcare and housing, feeding and teaching, and every other act of giving, those who serve will be blessed as much as those who are served.

by Peter Harris*

Well...dream on I suppose, but I’ve been packing boxes and it’s making me think. Miranda and I are moving on from this French village we’ve called home for the last thirteen years and with us will go two reasonably heavy cartons (ok I know it will cost carbon to haul them) of north American books on the environment and Christianity--nearly all of them published since we arrived here. That seems like progress.

We first started visiting the USA in 1996 and at the end of that trip came home with the first three of these books – by Cal DeWitt et al, Ginny Vroblesky, and Loren Wilkinson. In conversations with these authors, each told us that their environmental convictions were regarded by many of their Christian friends as dangerously political and probably a wanton distraction from true discipleship. Now, as I pack all these books by a far bigger cloud of witnesses to the idea that caring for creation is normal biblical Christianity, I am thinking a lot must have changed.

After many other trips to the States, we watched exactly ten years ago as A Rocha USA finally saw the light of day.  I am sure that some people viewed its birth as millennial madness even then. Growing the organisation has certainly taken persistence from its first enthusiasts. They found each other with some relief while continuing in office jobs, church work, farming, quiet desperation at suburban consumerism, butterfly gardening, environmental careers, community building and a whole host of other occupations. At the time, it seemed that most of them were largely misunderstood and their work disregarded by their fellow Christians – while their Christian faith was seen as just another toxin by their environmental friends. Ten years on, A Rocha USA now has a presence in quite a few places with creative initiatives blessing the people and places around them.

To be sure, there are still hot-button topics to argue about if arguing is your thing (it isn’t mine). But controversy and polemic have never been of great interest to people who at heart simply want to serve their communities and the living landscape around them. And when I went from east to west coasts of this great country earlier this year, I discovered that no one is in any doubt that Christians should care about God’s wonderful creation in practical ways. More than that, there was a real awareness that the USA environment, and the people who live in and from it, can only benefit if Christians really did care for the Earth as second nature and as part of their worship of their Creator Lord. For instance, so many farmers are believers and it would surely change the way they farmed. The same goes for town planners, financial decision-makers, homebuilders, gardeners, job seekers, politicians, preachers and pastors. Those who are Christians can either take their vision of how to live with God’s world off the corporate shelf, or they can be inspired by the Holy Spirit and scripture to become a shining reflection of how they understand God to be. He is, after all, the creative loving author of what John Stott reminded us is a wonderful “book of creation” that we need to read well if we are to love it at all.

It must be said that the road from being a mystery to becoming a Christ-like movement hasn’t been an easy one for the first ten years of A Rocha USA’s life. Forgive me talking about such an unBritish subject as money (these days that’s because we don’t have any – before, it was because we got embarrassed - either way, we tend to avoid the topic.) But A Rocha USA discovered that people give to what they care about; and so, with some astonishing and wonderful exceptions, few people gave much support to this emerging movement. Consequently, work began and had to end as funds ran out. There were very few people and so everyone who did get involved soon ended up turning their hand sometimes to work they didn’t feel much good at. Opportunities for field projects had to be shelved as people had to take other work to keep bread on the table or the family housed. It could be seen as frustrating. But I don’t believe it was, because the relationships in the young organisation were forged in a kind of stubborn fire. Furthermore the vision honed itself quite finely because the priorities were set firmly in a time of scarcity. Most of all, a deep conviction took hold of all those who stayed the course that this was good work, and a way of living that God cared about, and so we would see how He would provide for it in His ways and in His time.

All this matters not just in the USA.  American Christianity is a global export and I have much firsthand experience of how environmentally indifferent American Christianity can have devastating effects in the global south with its fragile tropical biotopes. But the opposite can also be true – if a new, creation-friendly believing takes hold in the USA and begins to spread around the world, it will be a true sign of hope for the Earth. So forgive me the carbon of putting those books in a van and taking them with me – they’ll remind me to pray and lift my head again as I unpack them.

*Founder and President of A Rocha International

This October marks A Rocha’s 10^th official anniversary in the USA. I say “official” because many a seed was sown long before that first board meeting October 16, 2000 in our living room in Arlington, Virginia. In his book, Kingfisher’s Fire, which I’ve been rereading of late, A Rocha Founder Peter Harris recalls some of that jet-lagged sowing—from meetings with kindred spirits like Au Sable Institute’s Cal Dewitt and A Rocha USA’s own future founder Ginny Vroblesky to debates with snarling critics like the man who declared, “The Reformation happened to stop people like you!”

Whether warm welcome or cold, however, Peter and his lovely wife Miranda kept coming back to the States, spurred on by the quixotic desire to tilt against American Christendom’s unholy exports of prosperity gospel and rampant consumerism that wreak havoc on people and planet alike by blessing and fueling “aspirations to the kind of wealth which can only be achieved by over-exploiting creation.” And with each return, they watered and weeded and waited, until at last those seeds began to sprout--A Rocha USA poked out.

To continue with the gardening metaphor, the 10 years since have seen yet more watering and weeding and waiting; a (budgetary) drought or two; and now, at last, the first fruits of harvest—projects in 8 communities across the nation with more on the way; education and training programs; and, most encouragingly, growing acceptance by the Church of the biblical mandate to care for the Earth.

In celebration of this milestone, A Rocha USA is having a party—a big party. In fact, we’re inviting 10,000 people to join in the celebration by becoming a fan of A Rocha. It’s simple. It’s quick. It’s free (though if you want to throw a couple of bucks in the hat by the door, who are we to object!) And it’s oh so clever: 10^th year, 10^th month, 10,000 fans. All you have to do is click here and “like” us on Facebook and then ask your friends, family and colleagues to do the same. And make sure to ask your crazy aunt that forwards every chain email to everyone in her address book.

Okay, I admit that it sounds a lot like high school; but just think what 10,000 people could do to help spread the word and build the movement to care for this amazing, yet increasingly damaged Earth! Community gardens planted. Streams cleaned. Forests protected. And more--much, much more. Here in the United States and around the world.

Just think.

And then act—please.

The Earth is hurting. Creation is groaning. We need all hands on deck.

So, please take a half a minute and help spread the word; help heal the planet.

As Peter Harris puts it, “No other context for A Rocha is changing faster than the USA one and maybe no other change is destined to have a greater impact on environmental conditions worldwide.”

Let’s do this.

By Robert Campbell*, Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church

In focusing on what it means to be God’s people in the right place for the job of redemptive dominion,  I am not making a case for localism versus globalism–though I think there is a good case to be made for localism. Nor am I making a case for local church benefits–though there are many benefits of being part of a local church. And—sadly–growing numbers of people have abandoned the local church. They say that they are part of “the Church”,but are not part of a local church, which really has no meaning at all. Church, to be experienced, is always and only local. We actually have a theological term for someone claiming to be part of “the Church” but not the local church. We call it a “cop out.” God has put us in a place to be His people in that place. He has given us responsibility for that place.

God has always combined people and place. In Genesis 1 and 2 God creates man, male and female, and places them in a garden. The garden was a place, not an undefined wilderness. It was someplace with borders. He put them there to work it or to cultivate it. God put in the seeds and Adam and Eve were supposed to work to bring the flowers. There should be more glory in the garden because Adam and Eve were in it. The same is true for us. When we walk away from the place we are living, there should be more glory, more beauty, more good than when we arrived.

We see in Genesis 12 that God chooses Abraham and brings him to a place where Abraham and his descendents will be the sources of blessing to all the people of the world. People and place always go together.

In Psalm 104, the author sings about the greatness of God’s act of creation. God separates the waters in order to form a place. The psalmist describes the divine interconnection that happens between people and place. God channels the water to cause grass to grow, grass feeds the cows and man eats the cows. It becomes this happy, ingenious cycle of people and place as God intended. In the same Psalm, God waters the grapes, grapes become wine and wine makes man’s heart glad. God has always put people and place together.

At the end of the Bible, in Revelation chapter 21, God will create a new heaven and a new earth. That is, a new place for his people. God’s people are never without a place.

God has sent YOU to a people with the Gospel message AND to a place as stewards, acting toward that place as God would act. You can’t separate the two. You can not share gospel with your neighbor after peeing in his well. I know that sounds crude, but it will make sense in a subsequent posting.

*Robert Campbell is Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church, an Evangelical Free Church on the Central Coast of California. Part I, II, III, IV and V of this series of essays comes from remarks delivered at the A Rocha USA symposium in Santa Barbara, CA, October 8-10, 2009.

By Robert Campbell*, Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church

The church is a local gathering of believers. It’s a gathering of people defined both by their faith in Jesus and by the dirt they walk on. I think of that introduction to 1 Corinthians where Paul wrote, “To the church of God which is at Corinth.” Both the people and the place seem to matter.

Eugene Peterson writes about this gift of place in his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places:

“Everything that the creator God does in forming us as humans is done in place. It follows from this that since we are his creatures and can hardly escape the conditions of our making, for us everything that has to do with God is also in place. All living is local; this land, this neighborhood, these trees and streets and houses, this work, these people.

This may seem so obvious that it doesn’t need saying. But I have spent an adult lifetime with the assigned task of guiding men and women in living out the Christian faith where they raise their children and work for a living, go fishing and play golf, go to bed and eat their meals, and I know that cultivating a sense of place as the exclusive and irreplaceable setting for following Jesus is mighty difficult.”

It is very difficult. But we are a people that always have a place.

My family moved to Santa Margarita, California just over one year ago. Santa Margarita is a unique town because it is entirely land locked by a working cattle ranch. The “village reserve” houses about 1200 people and it multiplies as the circle widens all the way to San Luis Obispo with a population of 45,000. In 1889, the railroad decided to build a town at the southernmost end of the tracks along the coast. The train would travel south from San Francisco and stop in Santa Margarita where the stage coach took passengers over the Cuesta Pass to pick up the train again in San Luis Obispo headed for Los Angeles. In Santa Margarita I am learning much about the way place defines a people. I am also learning about the local church.

The strength of a church is in its local mission. We are sent to a particular people in a particular place. Santa Margarita Community Church started with a local mission 60 years ago when a group of ladies, including Grandma Hazel, decided that the children of the community needed a Sunday School. It began in Hazel’s living room, before the church on the hill that we still use today was built. It started as a local mission and it still is today.

Not surprisingly, local mission requires being in and part of the community: David and Ashlee being part of starting A Rocha in San Luis Obispo; Su serving on our local Advisory committee where she takes part in all the bureaucratic and environmental conversations as a Christian woman; Karin and others starting a community-wide clean-up day; Jeff and Lindsay running a fine local restaurant, buying the food they serve from local farms and dairies; many in the congregation participating in local Community Supported Agriculture. It’s just normal everyday participation that makes us a local church bringing people and place together. That is what we are trying to do because our greatest impact will always be with the people we live among, on the dirt we walk on every single day. The local church is God’s way of getting His people in the right place.

*Robert Campbell is Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church, an Evangelical Free Church on the Central Coast of California. Part I, II, III, IV and V of this series of essays comes from remarks delivered at the A Rocha USA symposium in Santa Barbara, CA, October 8-10, 2009.