The King’s Green Pad

I’m sitting in the Bugaboo Creek Steak House in Duluth, GA.  I’m back “home” in the good old U.S. of A., and on my first opportunity to go out to eat I’ve chosen a Canadian themed restaurant with a moose in the front lawn and a wooden Canadian Mountie by the door.  I’m writing this text in a booth underneath a giant stuffed beaver (that occasionally waves its mechanical tail) across from a neon sign advertising Moose Jaw Paddles while I have my own personal “Canadian Bible Study” (let the reader understand).  I guess I already miss Edmonton! After finishing my Arctic Salad I’ll return to Cross Pointe Church for the evening session of the conference I am attending.

I’m in Georgia for the first ever Flourish Conference – an event dedicated to advancing the Church into the environmental movement.  The first day consisted of four speakers- Rusty Pritchard, Leroy Barber, Scott Sabin and Joel Hunter with a short wrap-up by Andy Crouch.  Rusty, as President of Flourish, gave a great introduction to the conference and paved a humble road for Christians to follow as we engage in a discussion that for decades the Church has refused to make central.  Leroy gave a compelling account of what it is like to live in a place where “everything is in our backyard”.  He runs a poverty ministry called “Mission Year” in southern Atlanta that is attempting to transform a community in a location where much of the waste and of the city is deposited.  Scott Sabin is the executive director of Floresta USA.  He shared about the importance of planting trees to compensate for overusing the land, and to illustrate his point he demonstrated his non-profit’s work at the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  Finally, Joel Hunter shared about the ways Christians can make a difference in socio-political spheres.

Attendance here is much, much lower than it should be (though sadly not much lower than expected with this critical, though neglected, topic).  I am here because I want to listen to the best minds America has to offer discuss evangelical creation care.  But, I am also here hoping to recruit for King’s.  Leaders invited to this conference were encouraged to bring a student here FOR FREE, but so far I have not met a single potential student.  Of the 130 in attendance there are NO students???  When they could come for free!?!  More disappointing, though, has been the general tone toward creation care advanced by a majority of the speakers.  The first three apologized for being a Christian and an environmentalist.  The only exception was a short plug by staff from the Evangelical Environmental Network who acknowledged creation care as a major gateway to envangelism, disciplship and personal stewardship.  Otherwise, I did not hear a lot of positive enthusiasm about the movement – everything was shrouded in apology.  In fact, the first two speakers worked as hard as possible to rhetorically separate themselves from environmentalism.  Rusty confessed some of the history of judgmentalism he has experienced, and I guess this is understandable as his approach attempts to reconcile two groups (Christians and Environmentalists) who have histroically been at odds.  Yet, I am disappointed by this overall approach.  Christians are not and should not simply be pragmatically jumping onto the environmental bandwagon.  Creation care is at the heart of the Biblical account from Genesis 2:15 to Revelations 11:18 – it is a core value. No apologies are necessary!

For me, Joel Hunter saved day one of this conference – he made it worthwhile and took the conference to the 35,000 foot level, where I believe it belonged.  He passionately argued for creation care to be deeply integrated into the core discipleship mandate of the church.  The bad news according to Joel – this movement is going very slowly in the church in America.  “We should be meeting with multitudes, and you see who is here. However, the time is growing in its ripeness, so we should not be discouraged.”  He shared about the phenomenal potential Christians have to turn the tide, and he rooted it in the spiritual and political history of North America.  Thank you Joel! Before leaving for dinner, Andy Crouch came forward to serve as an integrator of the content of day 1.  Despite a slam on academics, and specifically sociologists (not fair Andy!) he offered some key questions to discuss over dinner.  I will share a couple of them here, as they are important queries.  I hope you will respond in your comments!

1) We are clearly uncomfortable with being called environmentalists.  What do we want to be called?  What do we want to be known for?

2) How would our lives and societies be different if we were only willing to have services that we were willing to have in our backyard?

3) Do we believe that the issues we are talking about here are necessary for spiritual maturity and how do we make this case to people who didn’t get it and didn’t come?

Tomorrow I’ll post about day two of the conference…

This post was authored by Michael Ferber, Assistant Professor of Geography and Director of Environmental Studies at The King’s University College in Edmonton, AB.