The King’s Green Pad

I LOVED Flourish today and really appreciate the many relationships I’ve made through this conference.  The sub-text of Flourish is “Reviving Lives and Landscapes.”  I feel revived and inspired, and have surrendered much (maybe not yet all – see below) of the disappointment I expressed yesterday.

The first early (7:30 am MTN time!) speaker was Andy Crouch, who argued that Andrew Stanton was the most influential leader on creation care in the last couple of years.  Andrew was the team leader who put together the film Finding Nemo and Wall-E.  His talk was titled ‘What Wall-E got right.”  According to Andy, the movie told a great story, and we must use a good compelling story if we are to win people over to caring for creation.  Facts separated from a story do not move people to act.  Wall-E is also about people, and is about the most basic of human questions.  To be human is to cultivate, and in this point Andy drew heavily upon his book Culture Making.  To cultivate is to take care of what is already good in the world.  In ant-gnostic argument he asserted that Wall-e emphasized that bodies matter, and that bodies must have a world in which it lives.  Curiously, Andy argues that machines are are friends… that technology is not anathema.  Andy questions whether technology is not part of the human call to make the world better.  Controversially, Andy even argued that mining is a part of God’s will, which is why the gold and onyx existing outside of the Garden of Eden were mentioned.  Andrew Stanton conceived the movie in 1994, and it took 14 years to make.  Crouch argues that we usually over-estimate what we can do in a year and under-estimate what we can do over decades.  Finally, Wall-E is a movie about hope.  We must offer this hope – not a worldly hope – but a hope for a re-creation.

The second speaker was Ed Stetzer of Lifeway Research, who admitted he has never been a part of the creation care conversation.  This made me wonder why he was a speaker here in the first place, but I gave him a shot nonetheless.  His talk was focused almost entirely on social justice, an issue deeply and intricately tied to creation care, and Ed centered upon the pursuit of social justice and parenthetically creation care among young evangelicals, particularly those who are changing political loyalties.  Ed spent a significant amount of time differentiating current evangelical social justice movements from the (infamous) social gospel movement of the early twentieth century, which from an evangelical perspective undermined core doctrines of the Church.  He gave some stern theological warnings.  Sadly, Ed barely took a breath during his talk, and went through more statistics than are present in my dissertation – much more information than could be summarized here.  I will suffice to provide a key quote he used from a CRC scholar, whose name I did not I catch in the auctioneer-paced message – “This ( new emphasis on social justice and creation care) is not a liberalization of the evangelical church, it is a rounding out of the gospel.”

Jo Anne Lyon, the third morning speaker, worked with Ron Sider years ago and helped found the creation care movement.  She is a General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Church and helped to begin World Hope International. Last night Jo Anne stopped by my King’s booth and we had a wonderful conversation about creation care in Wesleyan thought.  She was also very impressed with the ENVS program at King’s.  Woo hoo!  I was thrilled to hear Jo Anne discuss from the podium the links between Wesleyan revivalism – my own roots – and social justice.  Knitting together themes of social justice and creation care, Jo Anne stated, “Creation and its people groan and wait as Christians debate cause and effect.”  She painted an ugly picture of the arguments voiced in the developed world while the consequences of our lack of action play out in the developing world.  Using examples from places like Haiti and Niger, Joanne provided poignant case studies calling us to love our neighbors and draw us as Christians to go to where we cannot return – to a place where God’s people and creation grows and does not diminish.

The fourth speaker, up right before lunch, was Tri Robinson, pastor of a Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Boise Idaho.  His church has some extraordinary examples integrating creation care and social justice ministries.  Tri is the author of Saving God’s Green Earth.  He believes with “all his heart” that creation care is deeply central to the Christian faith – yes, even the orthodox evangelical faith.  Tim gave credit to many of the pioneers who have been paving the road in creation care for decades – leaders like Jo Anne Lyon (Still no mention of Cal DeWitt!).  He recognized this is not a new movement, which was so refreshing.  Tim exclaimed, “It’s time to get the conversation out of this room!  It is the Biblical and the right thing to do.”  My favorite quote: “We must do to creation care what James Dobson did to family values.”  Amen Tim!!!  Dobson integrated Biblical Scripture and family values in a way that made it normal – he made it simple and it made sense.  It was convincing.  We can do this in a number of ways.  What do we need to do to make this normal and correct a false Biblical worldview about creation care?  It starts with a transformation of the heart. We must show that it is Biblical and right and makes sense through good, clear communication.  It must also be connected to the Kingdom of God.

I enjoyed lunch with the recruiter from Regent University’s School of Divinity and returned to the conference to be reunited with Matthew and Nancy Sleeth.  In the early afternoon we heard from Larry Schweiger of the National Wildlife Foundation, who brought some sobering slides and statistics concerning global warming and was the only person so far to acknowledge the work of Cal DeWitt.  Larry’s presentation was especially sobering in contrast to the premiere of “Our Father’s World.”  I CANNOT WAIT for this short film to be released – it is extraordinary.  I also participated in a very interesting theological workshop led by Nancy Sleeth.  Whenever I have a chance to hear Matthew or Nancy I take the opportunity, primarily because I deeply respect their parenting and their testimony of walking the talk of creation care.

In the late afternoon Chris Seay rocked – and started off on the right track with the centraility of creation care to the core gospel message.  He is an interesting and engaging speaker – a great way to end the day!  Chris testifies that what we need is an act of the Spirit – that we would experience a divine moment and see the world differently.  He wants to see us befuddled and alarmed and interpret the world in a different way.  He almost sounded like Cal DeWitt or our own John Wood or even Harry Fernhout when he expressed that the creation needs to experience the Shalom of God through believers.  Through Exodus chapter 1 Chris expressed his hope that we just don’t develop good environmental habits, but that we exit the empire.  Amen!

I’ve decided to skip the evening sessions presented by LEED architects in order to visit some old friends from seminary in southern Atlanta.  So, my day 2 summary is that Flourish has been a wonderful event, but I still feel it is, in reality, a small regional conference attempting to reach skeptical Southern Baptist pastors in the U.S. South.  There is still a day left, but at this point I do not see it as the national interdenominational conference I was expecting.  Perhaps this was due to my own naivity.  After only a year among Canadian believers I have forgotten how far behind the creation care curve churches here in the Bible belt really are.  Don’t get me wrong – I am glad they are in the curve!  They are starting to get it down here, but there is so far to go.  I came expecting a tree of a conference, and found a sapling.  Yet, it is a strong plant and has the potential to truly flourish – to revive lives and landscapes.  I pray this movement will.

The contrast of conversations at this conference with my new home at King’s in Edmonton leaves me enthusiastic about the place of primacy creation care has at The King’s University College.  There are very few actual pastors here.  The Flourish conference was advertized as the first conference for pastors on creation care, but last year King’s hosted a CC conference with a room full of actual pastors.  King’s is not apologetic about their love for the creation and responsibility for creation care, and have not been from the university’s inception.  The nearly twenty year old environmental studies program encapsulates these priorities.  Flourish could learn a tremendous amount from King’s.  This likely sounds arrogant, but since I am new to King’s I believe I can make this statement without any attempt to take credit – it predates me by decades.  So, in addition to feeling a bit revived, I also feel even more called to the work the Lord has brought me to at King’s.  We have the opportunity to take a leadership role internationally in this movement.  Let’s do it!

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.