A Rocha USA Blog

By Robert Campbell*

I am a Christian man. I am a believer and a lover of the Gospel of Jesus. I believe that the eternal God, self-sufficient and happy in Himself, became a man in Jesus to die in my place, to save me from my sin, to restore me to the life that God intended and to bring me into restored relationship with Himself. That is where I begin all things. That is where I start all that I am and all that I do.

And when I look at the mission that God has called me to as a redeemed man, and I look at the mission of A Rocha, I see just how well the two fit together.

God calls me, and all of us, to be involved in a redemptive dominion in our world. When He first created Adam and Eve, He put them in a garden “to work it”, and He gave them dominion. That is, He put them—and us–there to act as His representatives, to act as God would act towards God’s creation. He didn’t give it to us for our own ends, but put us there to act on His behalf. And that dominion becomes redemptive as the story goes on when we see that God will glorify Himself, not just through creation which reflects His glory, not just through man and woman who reflect His glory, but through redeeming fallen men and women by His own sacrificial death and through restoring the groaning creation. So, as a Christian, I now take part in a redemptive dominion because of the sacrifice of Jesus, which includes both the people God created and the place God created.

My particular roles in carrying out this redemptive dominion are as a father and a husband and as a local church pastor. It is in the last role, pastor, that I write here.

I remember learning to love the local church while in seminary. Each year, during commencement, the first-and second-year students would become a tremendous choir – singing to the graduates, launching them out into ministry. We would sing “A Mighty Fortress is our God”, as well as a hymn I had never heard before: “I Love Thy Church, O God.” It goes…

I love thy church, O God

I prize her heav’nly ways,

Her sweet communion, solemn vows,

Her hymns of love and praise.

And indeed I did I learn to love the church.

Actually I learned to love a facsimile – a theory of the church.

When I got out into the real world I found out…they lied! The local church is dirtier, it is uglier and it is messier than you ever get out of the classes, the textbooks or the hymnals. And yet, as a pastor of a local church, I am learning to love the real local church–one in particular, Santa Margarita Community Church in Santa Margarita, California. Those are the people I walk with and that is the dirt I walk on.

And as a local church pastor, I believe that the local church—ours and every other–should care about and actively engage in the conservation of God’s Earth.

Why?

Because the local church is God’s way of getting his people in the right place for the job of redemptive dominion. More on that in my next few posts.