By Sandra McCracken*

Photo: Betty McCracken

My father is a brilliant biology teacher, now retired. My mother is a thoughtful student of the Bible. They will have been married for 50 years this August. They have made records of their years of bird-watching in a worn Peterson Field Guide, plotting their dates and sightings together in the margins. They took me on nature walks as a child and we talked about the names of Missouri birds and trees and flowers.  

Maybe that’s one of the reasons that I love Maltbie Babcock's "This is My Father's World." I love the line “He shines in all that’s fair” because this poetry has given me license to make art about all aspects of life. I have been shaped by the same kind of experience that Babcock describes in being able to taste and hear and see the glory of God in the skies, the flowers, and the birds singing their melodies like hymns.  

In recent months, I’ve been reading John Muir's memoir and writing poetry and melodies about what it means to posture myself in such a way that is more mindful of my place in the world. Water. Electricity. Oil. Pesticides. Organic foods. As Muir wrote, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” We are all pulled and affected by our place and by each other. Our little choices do have consequences. And there is so much to consider — just reading labels at the grocery store can be a precarious business.

The more I learn, the more I find that unfortunately America has not had a stellar reputation for stewardship throughout history — logging, strip mining, and crop dusting, just to name a few problems. Nor has this been a pressing concern for most of the American church, whom you might think would be at the front lines ready to care for God’s creation. All too often, the topic of conservation quickly becomes political and we run to the safety of our pat answers. There have been some confusing lines drawn by both parties that do not add up to a consistent theology. The only way to get past these political blockades is to go up and over, elevating the conversation, speaking in nuances instead of sound bites, truly listening to each other, and looking for points of unity in spite of our differences. In fact, our diversity may be our best asset when it comes to seeking solutions for our environmental challenges.

One of the biggest hurdles for me personally in caring for the earth is that the problems feel so overwhelming. I cannot easily read National Geographic without feeling heavy-hearted about the realities of our condition, both within our own insatiably selfish hearts and in my sadness over the many species and habitats that we are losing along the way. And deeper still, if we are attentive to the words of Jesus and His care for the poor, the choices we make in the way of stewardship deeply cut into the survival of the people most desperate for these natural, sustaining resources. The poor are the first and hardest hit by these ecological losses and irregularities.  

Photo: Sandra McCracken

So with each passing day, I am becoming more attuned to the particular DNA I have from each of my parents — biology and theology — pushing me forward on the journey of conservation. I might be unqualified, but everybody has to start somewhere. Rather than burying my head in the sand like I am inclined to do, I have to lean into my discomfort. I’d rather deepen my longing, not assuage it. And I look to the great hope that all things will one day be restored and renewed. I want to honor and care for God’s creation not because of a marketing team pulling on my checkbook, but because of a doxological pull that tugs on my conscience.

As a songwriter by vocation, all of this comes out of me more as poetry than as politics. The wonder of the great outdoors creeps into the songs I write. My favorite time with my children is when we walk in the woods or explore the creek. We visited the Redwoods together in January and stood at the base of those 2,000-year-old trees in wonder. I can’t help myself from whistling back at the Towhee birds in Shelby Park. I am giddy when I hear or glimpse the Barred Owl that shares the beautiful old trees in our urban neighborhood. I wake the kids up some nights to see a particularly bright moon in the sky. And I will never get over the thrill of an airplane window seat view — seeing the horizon, the landscapes, the contours of the countryside, and the rivers carving spaces in between.  

Recently, I had the great pleasure of hearing Peter and Miranda Harris, the founding members of A Rocha, a global conservation organization. They shared the story of their journey from a humble small group in Liverpool, to the Alvor estuary in Portugal, and now it has become an international network of conservationists in 16 countries. I had never before heard anybody speak with their particular blend of hope, ethics, and spirituality. It was a rare and powerful combination. As I sat in the room that evening, it confirmed in my own spirit that I'm on some sort of old-yet-new journey through these themes. 

L to R: Jill Phillips, Sandra McCracken, Miranda and Peter Harris, and Jenna Henderson

Miranda wisely confessed, “We cannot save the world — that’s God’s business. If we stop being in-process, we’ve lost the battle.” Knowing that we cannot control the outcome is really the beginning of the path, not the end. It is a small but real thing that each of us can enter into this practice of conservation believing that we can be part of tangible renewal. For some, it might take the shape of educating or gardening. For others it might look like banking or engineering, a public office or scientific research. It takes all kinds to accomplish the greater good. And it matters for us to practice renewal. It matters because God loves what He made, and when you love someone, you are drawn to love what they love.

At this invitation, we see that the earth is full of remarkable displays of God’s glory (Psalm 104). As we join together in earth-enjoyment, we come not just as individuals, but as a diverse family of people. This co-laboring to bring healing and wholeness is a simple call and yet a difficult one to abide.

This kind of unity is a challenge every day right under my own roof. In our family of four, from morning until night, we shift our weight back and forth to try our best to respond to the will and desires of each person. And therein is the conflict. My youngest child is three years old and she shows her will in full color. I, too, have a strong will, but a more grown-up version. The same goes for the other two. We each want things our own way. Sometimes we want to be left alone to have it our own way, but we need each other. We get frustrated. We want things to work but they don’t always work. And if Mick Jagger is right, that “you can’t always get what you want,” then could there be a higher objective for our desire?

The result of how we go about getting what we want extends out from individual families to neighborhoods, then cities, countries, and even out into the atmosphere surrounding our planet. Together we multiply our potential for sustainability, and together we multiply our potential for destruction. We react to each other with changing shades of conflict and complacency because we desire to have things our own way. Meanwhile, the honeybees in the clover fields, the fish in the ocean, and the polar bears on the ice caps go about their day-to-day lives. Their health and wholeness is directly and profoundly affected by how we work out our desires.  

Jonathan Edwards, the great intellectual and theologian, made the case that we have free will, but that at any given moment we are slaves to our greatest desire. And our desires will function to guide our behavior whether we acknowledge them or not. James K.A. Smith, philosophy professor and author, puts it this way in his bookDesiring the Kingdom: “Our love is aimed from the fulcrum of our desire — the habits that constitute our character, or core identity. And the way our love or desire gets aimed in specific directions is through practices that shape, mold, and direct our love.”

I confess that I am more than a little weary of my same old practices. I want to wake up and name my desires, to bring them out into the light. I want to see things as they are so that I can change and be changed. This is the beginning of care and conversation, whether it’s about protecting dolphins, or about the community garden, or about policy making on Capitol Hill.  

No matter your life station, there is still some small good to be done. Maybe we can’t change the world, but we can do something. This summer, as we celebrate my parents’ 50 years of marriage, I realize that they have built 50 years of good things, pouring themselves into their family. They taught me to love the things that they love, shaping my desire for beauty and biology, and now I am able to spend some of that inheritance on my own little ones. No one may notice whether or not you recycle that cup when nobody is looking, or if you ride your bike to work, or if you teach your young nephew the difference between maple and oak trees. But a few small habits aligned for the greater good can add up to a whole garden of hope. And hope, like an eager seed, points us to a day coming when God’s green earth will be made new. 

*Sandra McCracken is an independent singer-songwriter whose smart, soulful blend of folk and gospel is as progressive as it is timeless. In the past 13 years, McCracken has released seven studio albums and two duo EPs with her husband Derek Webb; most recently, she has teamed up with a side band, Rain for Roots, to record and produce an album of children's songs. She is a founding contributor of the Indelible Grace hymn project, and her re-tuned hymns are sung in congregations across the country. McCracken currently lives, writes, and records at her home in East Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, Derek Webb, and their two children.

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 Emiko Corey, Farm Manager of Santa Barbara A Rocha Five Loaves Farm

Rebecca Laughton writes “agriculture is sustainable when it is ecologically sound, economically viable, socially just, humane and adaptable, and is a dynamic concept which allows for the changing needs of an increasing global population.”[i] Sustainable agriculture is the alternative philosophy of farming that considers each member of the food system as well as the environment. The food system is characterized not just by the farmer, but also “researchers, input suppliers, farm workers, unions, farm advisors, processors, retailers, consumers and policymakers.”[ii] Sustainable agriculture is defined beyond methods of farming and looks at the big picture of justice within agriculture, including: consumer food security and safety, environmental health, economic viability of farms and social equity issues surrounding farm labor and processing conditions. As a farmer of the Santa Barbara A Rocha Five Loaves Farm, I seek sustainability because I believe this is how God calls me to be a good steward of the land and resources in which I farm.

The concept of sustainable agriculture has developed out of disappointments in modern industrial agriculture characterized by a centralization of power, control, and wealth, a value of competition and capitalism and an attitude of domination of nature to meet production goals.[iii] This has led to corporations instead of families running farmers, many consumer misunderstandings around the health and safety of food, exploitation of marginalized laborers and environmental degradation. Sustainable agriculture seeks to respond to these changes, bringing back some of the “old farm values” while being innovative it its call to make changes for the future generations of farmers.

Sustainable agriculture seeks to bring justice to the consumer.

Sustainable agriculture is committed to environmental justice.

At Five Loaves Farm we do not use pesticides, fungicides or synthetic fertilizers. These chemicals create a biological imbalance on the farm and contaminate ecological processes in the local watershed and surrounding wildlife areas. Our agricultural lands are understood as an ecosystem. I plant flowers that increase the amount of beneficial insects and pollinators. I add compost and plant cover crops to increase the microbiological activity and organic matter in the soil which increases soil overall health and fertility. I am careful with the amount of irrigation used so that excess nitrogen does not runoff and enter into local streams and eventually the ocean. We are in the process of planting a native hedgerow that will increase the amount of native pollinators on our site. In the future we would like to also build owl boxes and raptor perches to increase the amount of natural rodent predators we have on the farm. All of these practices are also in accordance with USDA organic farming standards.

Sustainable agriculture emphasizes the need to have economically viable farms.

Economic viability has three sources. First, it comes simply from making sufficient profits from the sale of produce. Next, it comes from a diversified farm that creates resiliency if there is crop loss. And lastly, it comes from the consumer holding a higher value for the work of the grower and the product produced. Many small farmers have begun selling at local Farmer’s Markets or through Community Supported Agriculture programs. The middleman is removed to increase profits and the consumer’s direct connection with the farmer increases the value people place in the profession. Those who are farming should be valued by the wages they are paid and appropriate respect for the job performed.

Sustainable agriculture engages in social justice.

In conventional agriculture, laborers are often treated as second-class citizens; given brutal working conditions with minimal pay. Sustainable agriculture seeks to address the needs of those employed on the farm, through fair wages, higher safety standards, adequate housing and year-round employment. For Five Loaves Farm, the primary way we take part in social justice is through community building. Our farm laborers, those who volunteer and intern at the farm are not simply completing a task, they are participating in the community built around the farm. Weekly we host volunteers and interns who participate in all aspects of the farm, planting, weeding and harvesting. Each volunteer is given a full experience of what farm labor is like. The challenge of the work instills a sense of respect for those who do these tasks all day.

The motivation behind sustainable agriculture is to “find a way to feed ourselves more in keeping with the logic of nature, to build a food system that looked more like an ecosystem that would draw its fertility and energy from the sun. To feed ourselves otherwise was ‘unsustainable,’ a word that’s been so abused that we’re apt to forget that what it very specifically means: Sooner of later it must collapse.”[v] As a sustainable agriculture farmer I seek sustainability for the consumer and those who receive our produce, for the environment, the soil I grow in and the surrounding ecologies, for the longevity of the farm and for all those who come to work on the farm. I believe that as farmers we can feed to world through sustainable farming practices and I ask that you join in the process of seeking sustainability within our food system.

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.

By John Humphreys

I subscribe to the BRILLIANT “Parasite of the Day” web page.

As the organizers put it – “The United Nations declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. In celebration of the enormous diversity of parasites and to highlight their importance, we created this blog, which showcased a species of parasite every day. Now that 2010 is over, we will continue to add more parasites from time to time.”

All the way through 2010, all of us subscribers were entertained, educated and disgusted in equal measure by the extraordinary variety of organisms which make their living off other creatures.
Some are more-or-less tolerable for the host: the mistletoe, which all of us love to kiss under, is not often lethal to the tree it grows on and the ubiquitous head louse is merely an irritation to us, although has school districts and parents up in arms when they see it.

Some are genuinely spectacular – like the largest flower in the world, sported by the rainforest parasite Rafflesia arnoldii. Others are actually parasitoids rather than parasites because, simply, they always kill their host – the newly discovered and very worrying “white nose syndrome”, a fungus that chokes hibernating bats, is a case in point.

Then there are the plutocrats of the parasite world – the hyperparasites, who parasitize parasites themselves. An example is the tiny wasp Caenacis inflexa, which attacks other wasps like Eurytoma rosae and Glyphomerus stigma…which themselves are parasitic on  the “gall wasp” Diplolepis rosae…the ecology of plant galls is endlessly fascinating.

Of course, there are some genuinely terrifying creatures like the nightmare-inducing tongue-eating louse and the ghastly crab-controlling barnacle.

Now, many of these beasts…and plants…and fungi…have exquisitely exacting tastes. They may only target one single organism to live off. While this type of deal must have some advantages for the parasite, there is one enormous downside: your host dies out, you die out.

Which leads me to the tick, Ixodes neuquensis. It is only found on a gorgeous little opossum-like creature, the (confusingly named) ‘mountain monkey’ Dromiciops gliroides. This charming little thing lives in South America and its forest home is being torn down.
When it goes, when it is gone forever, and two things will happen.

Firstly, we will never see it alive again. Films don’t do the same for me, sorry. It will be gone, and nothing this side of the Second Coming can bring it back.

Secondly, a variety of living creatures dependent on it will join it in oblivion. Not just the tick and other parasites; this marsupial mammal is the only known way that a unique plant –Tristerix corymbosus, a type of mistletoe - can spread its seeds (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromiciops_gliroides and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristerix).

Ironically this mistletoe only parasitizes two cacti. So the whole ecosystem is teetering on the edge of oblivion. As I say ad nauseam, the only way for you and I to do anything about this is to help preserve the forest. And spread the word. Thanks for reading.

Cute, almost gone.

As Boomers (and Hulu fans) will remember, the Dragnet detective was famous for his deadpan, cut-to-the-chase approach: “Just the facts, ma’am.” Good for police work; not so much for prompting change—environmental or any other kind. To do that, we have to aim for the heart, not just the head.

Consider any number of modern maladies: obesity, HIV/AIDS, drug addiction, etc. All are “treatable” with facts: “A leads to B. Avoid A, you avoid B.” All are still rampant.

Or ponder the health of planet Earth. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’ Red List:

• Thirty-eight percent of known species are currently threatened with extinction.
• The current extinction rate is approximately 1,000 times faster than the “background” or natural rate.
• One species goes extinct every 20 minutes.

Care only about people? Consider these sobering statistics:

• Sixty percent of Earth’s “ecosystem services,” which process our wastes and provide us with air, water and food, are seriously degraded and cannot be maintained at this pace. (United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.)
• Some forty percent of deaths worldwide are caused by pollution of various types. (Cornell University)

If facts alone were enough to convince us--and by extension our institutions and societies--to change, surely these would do the trick. They haven’t.

Nor, I must add, has a clear understanding of what the Bible says on the subject. We now have countless books, sermons and seminars on creation care. The facts are in. The theology is settled. God really does care about God’s creation and told humankind to take care of it. And still we Christians argue, waffle and ignore.

Despite the failure of both science and theology to affect change, those of us in the conservation arena—both secular and faith-based—continue to act as if they will: “All we need is for people to understand!” At best, we are like rubes speaking louder and slower to force English on a Frenchman. At worst, we’re poster children for Einstein’s definition of insanity.  We keep talking at the head, when we should be speaking to the heart.

How do we do that? In a word: relationship.

Marketers, of course, know how to tug at our heartstrings. Photos of the starving child or the polar bear cub have their place, I suppose. But a true change of heart—one accompanied by lasting changes in attitude and behavior—requires more. It requires relationship. By inviting people into relationship--with those of us who care about the creation, with the creation itself, and especially with the Creator—we begin to speak to the heart (as opposed to merely pulling its strings). And the heart begins to listen. Someone may be uninterested in environmental protection, but an afternoon weeding and watering the community garden with a person who is both loving and passionate about growing things changes the conversation. I may know nothing of the mercury poisoning our rivers, but time on the water with a winsome and knowledgeable guide can't help but enlighten and inspire me to care. Relationships —more than facts, theology or anything else—change our hearts and then change our actions.

To Christians, this should come as no surprise. It is, after all, how God does it.

By Robert Campbell*, Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church

I hope you hear the irony intended in the title. I certainly do care about what is happening to our world. But, climate change is merely a symptom. The cause: a lack of care. To address the symptom, we must address its cause. We must begin again to care.

Gaining a distinctly Christian ecology will enable us to care. It will free us to live more consistently in our world...and it will be good both for us and for our world. And the effects of climate change will be reduced  as you and I are radically transformed in heart, mind and actions.

Beginning with your heart...As you believe that God is distinct from all of creation, bowing to His ownership of all things, you will actually honor the tree as a fellow creature, just for being a tree. As you honor the tree you will honor God whose goodness is reflected in a tree much more than in a cathedral, you will find your place in the world…and you will begin to reduce the effects of climate change (more on this in Part I).

Considering your mind...As you understand your role as a steward of God’s world, your actions will begin to bring good to the Earth…and we will reduce the effects of climate change (more on this in Part II).

Now, considering what kind of actions flow naturally from that heart and mind, the Scriptures teach,

The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed…Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. Gen. 2:8, 15

God, who our story begins with, had a purpose for us in creation. He intended for us to cultivate and keep the garden that He called “good.”  Our role is to take care of it and bring its good fruit on His behalf. God planned for us to act as He would act toward His world. If we believe that God owns all things and we are His stewards then we will use His world toward His ends. What is His end? That His world would reflect His goodness and that you and I would see that reflection and worship Him.

These beliefs enable a new kind of living that is built one brick at a time. But what kind of life is consistent with belief in God and is working towards God's end? Here are a few thoughts on living in God's world with both people and place for God's end.

Live like you are free

The heart that believes in God's ownership and that takes stewardship seriously is free to live in joy. God created the world out of the overflow of His happiness. Therefore our life in this world can be good and joyous because the Earth is good and joyous. You are free to live for the purpose of God within the boundaries of God in a world He created, in part, for your joy. You can now arrange the details positively without fear.

Starting anywhere other than with God will just leave us with the false religion of guilt and fear: "The world will end if you drive another mile!" As A Rocha's Dave Timmer has written so beautifully, "Environmental legalism is still legalism." He goes on to say,

Creation care is so much more than taking the reusable tote to the grocery store, changing light bulbs, or eating organic produce. It is so much more than even giving everything we own to the poor. It is following Jesus. Creation care is reaching to grasp what God is doing in the places where we live.

Beyond the “Green” Commandments

Worship results when we live in light of God's joyous freedom in our world rather than from the fear and despair that comes from the preaching of imminent doom. Believe God, not the doomsday prophets. The first thing we must do is to relax; we have the right starting point.

Live like this is home

Our community has an annual clean-up day every May. Just after the storms end, we head out to serve our older neighbors, paint the downtown benches and pull weeds in the Santa Margarita Demonstration Forest. As my family I and freed the magnificent native plants from the encroachment of invading grasses, I remembered something true and important. Since the fall of mankind in the original garden, the natural tendency of all things earthly is toward weeds and thorns. If we just let it go, the world would end up covered in Star Thistle and Kudzu. No, we have a part in these things! Humans are not unnatural. You belong here. The word "ecology" simply means the study of home. God's world is our home. Worship results when we live like we belong here, like this is home. First, relax because you have started with God and then commit to the place where you actually live.

Live like you have hope

I am not suggesting that the current state of the environment is not dire and in need of our attention. It is! I am suggesting that the pagan religious action of much of the secular environmental movement is not needed and probably not adequate for solving the problem. All environmental action is religious action. Every action happens within a story, defines a problem, banks its hope on some form of redemption and then establishes a set of actions consistent with that religious belief. A distinctly Christian ecology does so most adequately because it is true to the way things actually are.

When God created all things good, He also put into it a created purpose to bring about good and He intends that it will one day achieve that end in spite of the brokenness that we inflict on our world everyday. Right now, our world is not as it should be!

The manner of that redemption is what Christians call the “good news.” God Himself has entered into His created world in order to take the brokenness and wrong seriously and to put the pieces back together. I am suggesting that Jesus is the only true ecologist. He lived in light of God's story and assessed the problem rightly as being rooted in the heart of mankind. He sacrificed Himself in order to set things right by forgiving our true guilt, carrying away our real shame and removing the need for blame. In calling us to “follow Him,” we not only enable our people to find forgiveness, but live all of life under the Lordship of King Jesus, doing His will in our place.

Worship results when (1) we enjoy the freedom that comes from starting with God, (2) commit to the place we call home and (3) live in the hope that God's redemption in Jesus has restored us and then join Him in restoring the world, its people and its places. I call that a redemptive dominion, ruling as God would rule if He were here doing it Himself.

A call to act as distinctly Christian ecologists

These truths force us to act. We cannot wash our hands of it. We must act in light of God's redemption in Jesus. That is the role of the local church and A Rocha serves as a support in the Church's call to action.

As a local church Pastor, I believe that the local church should care about conservation because it (the church) is God's way of getting his people in the right place for the job of redemptive dominion. The church is a local gathering of believers. It's a gathering of people defined by their faith in Jesus and the dirt they walk on. We are a people that always have a place. We are concerned with the real people and places that we are sent to. Local is always personal. When we act locally, we put ourselves in a position to suffer from our decisions. When we act locally, we act freely and with hope in the place we call home. When we act locally, we love our neighbors.

My local church lives in a place called Santa Margarita, California. Our ecology works out there, with the people that live there with us. We buy breakfast from Carrie. We buy tea from Carol, wine from the Arnold Family, a fine dinner from Jeff and Lindsay Jackson (whose daughter went to school with my son), gas from Chris, Chris and Brandon, and beer from Chris over at Dunbar Brewing. These are particular people in a particular place. This is the kind of impact that a local church can have that no one else can have because God has placed us. (I have developed these thoughts further on another A Rocha USA blog post) My main point here is that, for the average person, to act as a distinctly Christian ecologist involves simply making our daily decisions in a way that results in worship.

A Rocha serves the local church in a unique way by guiding us to remember that people are always placed and to bring those called to the vocation of science, agriculture etc. to serve the rest of us in the local church for the purpose of worship. And just like the local church, the work of A Rocha is placed.

•  A Rocha is working to restore and protect a watershed in northwest Washington.
  
•  A Rocha is working with food distribution programs in Santa Barbara, CA to give food grown at the Five Loaves Farm to low-income families.
•  A Rocha is restoring and protecting headwaters of the Frio river in the hill country of Texas.
•  A Rocha is partnering with the local church and Land Conservancy in San Luis Obispo, California to educate children about the place where they live.

In all of these places, A Rocha is just a gathering of believers like you, who belong to local churches. Those believers have developed a distinctly Christian ecology and are living in the light of God's story in a particular place with a particular people...and that daily, immediate action is limiting the symptoms of climate change.

 *Robert Campbell is Pastor of Santa Margarita Community Church, an Evangelical Free Church on the Central Coast of California. Part I, II and III of this series of essays comes from remarks delivered in the SLO A Rocha "Christian Ecology Series", March, April and May 2011 (TBA).

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going… and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives is today expressed in consumptive terms…we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.

Over the continuing objections of some, American Christendom seems to be getting the idea that it’s a good idea to care for the planet upon which we live. As such, the question seems no longer to be “Should Christians care?,” but rather “WHY should Christians care?”.

And to that question are many answers.

• The environment is in crisis.
• We depend upon the environment for food, water and air.
• The poor suffer disproportionately from environmental degradation.
• We want our children’s children to enjoy what we ourselves have to enjoy.

All legitimate. All insufficient--even if taken together.

For Christians, the primary reason for caring for that which God created is simply because God created it and our doing so brings Him glory (and He told us to!). At least, I would argue, that should be the reason.

In his delightful book, Our Father’s World, my friend Ed Brown puts it this way

My biggest reason for caring for God’s creation has nothing to do with the extent or the severity of the crisis, the number of people affected or even the ultimate future of the human race. It has to do with one simple fact: I know the God who made it all.  And I love him. If I can place a high price on things that have little or no intrinsic value simply because they were made by one of my children, how much more ought I to value and care for this amazing world God made, this world that is precious because he made it and that represents an excellence and beauty far beyond anything that any of us could begin to comprehend, let alone make on our own.

We care about God’s creation, because we love God and live our lives to glorify Him. It is a part of our worshipful response to Him. Yes, caring for creation helps address the crises we face. Yes, it helps protect our own wellbeing and, particularly, the wellbeing of the poor. And yes, it helps preserve the joys of nature for our grandkids. But all of those, important as they are, are secondary.

One final thought (for now) on this subject. As with all worshipful responses to the God whom we love, caring for creation is not merely a matter of doing something because we are commanded--whether praising, praying, or tithing. There is that. We are commanded to care and consequences follow when we do not—pain, poverty, discord and more. But just as surely, other consequences follow when we do—joy chief among them. So it isn’t just that we have to care for creation. We GET to care for creation. Praising God all the way.