Replies

Below is a delicious report I take great pleasure in posting. (You'll no doubt be interested in my next two posts beneath this one regarding one of the speakers at this conference, Joel Hunter of Northland Church, Longwood, Florida, also) :)

On The Scene: Flourish Report from Day #1
These posts were authored by Michael Ferber, Assistant Professor of Geography and Director of Environmental Studies at The King’s University College in Edmonton, AB.

".....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…" Posted: May 13th, 2009

Comments [excerpted]:

Comment from Michael - Time May 15, 2009 at 10:56 am

"Considering 1), aside from just residual discomfort with the larger movement, there may be a good reason to dislike being called ‘environmentalists’: it reinforces the perception that the natural order is simply our ‘environment,’ the surrounding circumstances we live in, and may even suggest a fundamental division between ‘us’ and ‘our’ environment. Creation care may sound hokey, but at least it acknowledges we are part of creation like everything else.

As for 2), I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel there is likely a reason the people of God throughout the Old and New Testament worship in buildings. Certainly the early church deemphasizes how ’sacred’ the building has to be - they appear perfectly happy to meet in houses - but they don’t exit altogether. It’s also revealing how the New Jerusalem in Revelation is not described as a garden, but a garden-city. Clearly the Bible resists any pure ‘back-to-nature’ ethos.

Yet I agree, much of our construction, maintenance, and use of buildings is sinful, if not practically idolatrous. 3 is tough. I certainly believe caring for creation is a virtue; clearly others do not. [[[ WHAT is this delusional guy smoking??]]] I would suggest, though, that the first step is not to attack on this issue (if you don’t recycle your salvation may be in doubt!) but to ‘cultivate’ the desire to worship God rightly in every area of life and the willingness to re-assess how that is to be done. Then dialogue is possible.

The article below is posted at Joel Hunter's "Northland Church" blog HERE

Creation-Care Movement Needs Pastors By Bob Allen Wednesday, May 13, 2009

DULUTH, Ga. (Associated Baptist Press) A member of President Obama’s advisory council on faith-based partnerships says pastors are key to winning the hearts and minds of evangelicals when it comes to caring for the environment.

Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland Church in Lakewood, Fla., said May 13 at a conference promoting “creation care” that it is important to get pastors “equipped and empowered in order to care about this issue.”

Hunter, author of A New Kind of Conservative, said pastors care passionately about people and about serving Christ, but many are insecure about losing their jobs.

“A lot of pastors feel like they are two bad sermons from, ‘Do you want fries with that?’” Hunter told evangelical leaders meeting May 13-15 at Cross Pointe Church in Duluth, Ga. “So we stay away from controversial subjects unless we see them as necessary for spiritual maturity for our people and unless we know facts.”

Hunter said pastors need to know enough about the science of climate change to be able to “explain to those who will inevitably come back as they should with skepticism on any subject.”

He said pastors also need a support community like Flourish, the sponsor of the gathering as well as a new collaboration for integrating creation care into the ministry of the local church, to call if they get “beat up” for speaking their mind.

Hunter said there is both good news and bad news for supporters of creation care.

“The bad news is that this movement honestly is going very slowly in the church,” he said. “By now we would have hoped to be meeting with multitudes, and you see what’s here. There’s a gathering of leaders.”

Despite that, Hunter said “the time is growing in its ripeness from several aspects,” so environmentally conscious evangelicals should not be discouraged.

Along with new technologies that allow humans to cultivate the earth in new ways, Hunter said “there is a ripeness in the church” in form of an expanding moral agenda.

“There is now an unstoppable expansion of what it means to be an evangelical Christian,” he said. “We are no longer going to be stuck on one or two major issues.” Hunter added that evangelicals must not abandon concern for the unborn in order to embrace a broader agenda. “Frankly, if you cannot protect a baby in its mother’s womb, that is the paradigm of all vulnerable life,” he said. “If we don’t continue to lift that up as central, then woe be unto us.” But Hunter said evangelicals need to understand “that ‘pro-life’ means a whole lot of things.” “It’s not just inside the womb, it’s outside the womb,” he said. “Life outside the womb is just as important as life inside the womb to God.”

Hunter said evangelicals have “an unprecedented platform in this country to speak to power on behalf of those who have no power.”

“You must know that those in power are listening to evangelical Christians in a way they have never listened before,” said Hunter, one of a quartet of preachers identified as praying with candidate Obama before his election as president.

He said the nation’s leaders are listening “if for no other reason because of our sheer number,” but also “because of our activism that has turned from being narrow, negative and combative to being constructive and helpful.”

“All of politics runs not on those who can argue the loudest not even those who can present the best arguments – but runs on those who are willing to offer solutions,” he said. “Politicians are like everybody else. If you’ve got something that can help me, I want to see it, and especially this particular administration, although all administrations have been like that.”

With that kind of clout, Hunter warned that evangelicals “need to not lose our way.”

“Power does funny things to people,” he said. “Attention does very funny things to people and all of a sudden we begin to think that it’s the justice of our cause rather than the Creator, the sovereign God who put us there, and the principles of Scripture that are more important than anything we can come up with.”

Hunter said Christians “need to attach everything we do to Scripture” and “have to be sure that we can be steadfast in knowing the facts and not merely be more clever with our opinions.”

“There’s a lot of politicization, a lot of polarization, there’s a lot of people who profit from polarization in our society today,” he said. “We cannot be drawn into that.” [[[ Is this guy REALLY that naive? ]]]

Hunter said the best way to build awareness about environmental stewardship is telling stories about vulnerable people most hurt by neglect for the earth.

“People are not moved by syllogistic certainty,” he said. “They are not moved by philosophy. They are moved when they see somebody they can help.”

Jonathan Merritt, manager of the Flourish conference and national spokesman for the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative, introduced Hunter at the event.

“Dr. Hunter taught me that you can be a conservative who unashamedly defends the sanctity of human life, that you can believe traditional orthodox Christian views about some of the most pressing issues of our day and at the [same] time care passionately about God’s creation,” Merritt said, “that those things are not mutually exclusive.”