Thoughtful piece on climate science
December 12, 2009
Be sure to read Michael Gerson piece in the Washington Post today. It’s worth a read.
Creation Care and Urbana ‘09
December 11, 2009
By Lauren Marshall
Check out this article by Ed Brown on creation care as missions:
The site also offers suggestions for planning a creation care-focused schedule at Urbana ‘09.
Note: Urbana is a missions convention sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship that is held every three years. This year’s convention will be in St. Louis, Missouri from Monday, December 28 to Thursday, December 31. To register go to:
http://www.urbana09.org/register.urbana09.cfm
City of Sorrows (music by Fernando Ortega)
December 9, 2009
Check out this relatively new piece by Fernando Ortega. A free download of the song can be found here.
City of Sorrows
by Fernando Ortega
By the waters of Babylon
Still and deep
The sun rose at midnight
I was not asleep
I saw a man with a javelin
A carriage of steel
His eyes burned like sapphires
Wheels turning in wheels
I saw aluminum angels
Arrayed like a choir
Hailstones falling
Rivers of fire
By the waters of Babylon
I sank down in shame
Covered in ashes
I called out your name
Oh Jerusalem
City of thrones
The blood of your people
Still darkens the stones
City of sorrows
Spread on a hill
Bride of the prophets
They dream of you still
Kings in their armor
Swords in the sky
Storefronts of martyrs
Lined up to die
While in the streets of Jerusalem
Children in pain
Covered in ashes
I called out your name
Oh Jerusalem
City of thrones
The blood of your people
Still darkens the stones
City of sorrows
Spread on a hill
Bride of the prophets
They dream of you still
Oh Jerusalem
City of thrones
The blood of your people
Still darkens the stones
City of sorrows
Spread on a hill
Bride of the prophets
They dream of you still
If we lose the ship (part 2 of 2)
December 8, 2009
By Ed Brown
[This is Part 2 of thoughts coming from my recent visit to the Philippines. Part 1 is here.]
Manila Breakout
I’ve been working in the field of environmental stewardship for almost 10 years, and have been presenting the Our Father’s World seminar material in various forms for close to three. We’ve been in half a dozen states and will be adding several more in the coming year. The normal subtitle to the seminar is “Why Christians Should Care about the Environmental Crisis”. It has always seemed to me that this is straight forward enough, given that that is what we’re talking about. No one who has been to the seminar can or does question the reality: There is a crisis, it’s real and it’s happening now.
However, we have encountered several instances where our hosts have asked that we “tone down” the title just a bit. It appears that using the word “Crisis” makes people uncomfortable. Change the subtitle to “Why Christians Should Care about God’s Creation”, for example. It reminds me of a conversation with a close relative several years ago: “Ed, you are doing great work. I guess I agree with you. But you need to be careful not to sound to alarmist. You don’t want to scare people…”
Which brings me back to Mr. Smith and our parable of the ship that is taking on water. (Previous post) There are a number of ways the people in the meeting might react to his announcement: Can you tell us how bad it is? How much time do we have? What can we do to help you, and to prepare the passengers for whatever might happen? One or two might react with hysteria or panic – but I’d like to think that’s not too likely. These are leaders who have jobs that need to be done and who are responsible for many others on the ship.
Something I would not expect is that the people around the table would accuse Smith of being an alarmist. He clearly knows what he’s talking about, and look: His shoes and his pants are soaked up to his knees. If Smith says we’ve got a leak, and that this means we have a crisis on our hands, chances are pretty good that we do indeed have a crisis. Rather than waste time arguing about it, we need to decide what to do.
Which brings me to my recent trip to the Philippines. I presented the Our Father’s World seminar in Manila two weeks ago, the first time this material has been used in an overseas setting. As it happened, I arrived less than a month after the city had been inundated by Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng. According to some estimates, more than 80% of the city was flooded, including middle class neighborhoods that have never flooded before.
The President of ISACC, the organization sponsoring my visit, had to ride out the storm on her top floor, wondering the whole time whether that was high enough to allow her to survive. [Her moving account of the experience is available here.] Hundreds of people lost their lives. Opinion is unanimous that the massive damage was due to environmental degradation including deforestation, lake siltation, and the removal of wetlands as well as the unusual intensity of the storm which may or may not be tied to global climate change.
With this background, I wondered whether it was a good time for a seminar, though the event had been planned almost a year earlier. However, my hosts were insistent: “We need this message now more than ever,” they said, and the poster they designed expressed their feelings. “After Ondoy and Pepeng, Hear the call to Care for Creation.”
The difference between this audience and the many I’ve stood in front of throughout the US was dramatic. Presenting environmental seminars in evangelical churches in the US is an uphill battle. American participants tend to feel that a five-hour seminar is long, and attendance is always a struggle. By contrast, the Filipinos expanded the format to two full days (about 16 hours total) and some 75 people attended. It is of passing interest that although foreigners (read missionaries) were included in the targeted publicity list, the audience was 95% Filipino.
They listened eagerly, and asked intelligent questions. This material includes theological teaching that is deep and profound in its implications for our understanding of the gospel. I was impressed by how quickly and completely these brothers and sisters grasped not only the essence of what I was teaching but its far reaching implications for the church. The climate change segment was of great interest, and there were no arguments about the reality of global warming, no cautions about alarmism.
We had time for an hour long breakout session to discuss ways to respond to the call to care for creation under a three part Tagalog slogan: Pagsisihan! (Repent!) Pagyamanin! (Restore!) Paghandaan! (Prepare!). The reports that came back from these groups were substantial and comprehensive, leaving me with confidence that this seminar was only the start of what many of us hope will be a significant movement toward creation care among the evangelical community in the Philippines.
Why such a difference between this group and most of those I’ve presented to in the US?
The answer is simple. Their feet were wet. They didn’t have to be persuaded that the environmental crisis is real, and they were listening as if this crisis was happening to them – because it is.
For us In the US, the environmental crisis feels like the HIV/Aids crisis in Africa. It is something sad, but it’s happening to someone else.
Except that it isn’t.
[Want to bring the Our Father’s World seminar to your church? Find details on how to contact us here! Bookings are now being made for the Fall of 2010 and Winter/Spring 2011.]
Ed Brown is Director of Care of Creation, an organization dedicated to ‘mobilizing the church to respond to the environmental crisis.’ Read more at careofcreation.net and Ed’s blog at ourfathersworld.org.
If we lose the ship? (part 1 of 2)
December 7, 2009
by Ed Brown
My recent experience of presenting the Our Father’s World seminar material in Manila, Philippines, triggered the following thoughts…
There is a story – a parable, really – that I use at the end of my Our Father’s World seminar presentations. It goes something like this:
Let’s pretend that we’re on a refugee ship of some kind. We’re part of a Christian ministry, and we’re taking a ship load of refugees to a new land, where they can start their lives over again. The ship is crowded, and we have a lot of work to do to care for the passengers and to keep things running smoothly during the three week voyage.
We have organized ourselves in to work-teams: Food service, sanitation, medical, children, and so on. And to we are in the habit of holding a meeting every morning in the Captain’s conference room to coordinate activities and to minimize confusion. These meetings are usually pretty routine (Sanitation: “We have two bathrooms out of order today, so please let people know…”; Medical: “Vaccination of under-5’s this afternoon on Deck B…”) but one day we have a new person in the circle.
The Captain introduces him: “This is Mr. Smith, our ship’s engineer. He has something that you will all need to listen to.” And Mr. Smith makes his announcement: “We started to take on water during the night. As of now, we do not know what is causing the leak, but we do know that it is bad enough that if we can’t get it fixed, we will not make it to port.”
Remember – I’m telling this story to a live seminar audience. I usually stop at this point and say something like this: “Okay, let’s hit the pause button. How does Mr. Smith’s announcement change the conversation around the table?”
The answer that is expected is this: It changes nothing, but it changes everything. All of the normal activities of the work-teams have to go on. People still need to eat. Bathrooms still need to be cleaned and repaired. Sick people need to be cared for. But there is now a bigger, overriding concern – the ship is in danger of sinking. If the leak isn’t found and fixed, nothing else will matter.
This is obviously a parable: The ship represents the church, or a church. The work teams represent all of the many different kinds of ministries that churches participate in, from soup kitchens to prison ministry to youth programming. And the leak in the ship represents the environmental crisis.
The point of the parable (in case you haven’t got it yet) is really quite simple: Creation care is different from every other ministry a church (your church) might be involved in, because when the environment is destroyed, other ministries diminish.
Hurricane damage in Haiti
Case in point: Haiti. Most of Haiti’s problems, and they are many, arise from an environment that has been damaged beyond the point of recovery. Population growth has led to massive deforestation, agricultural decline, incredible poverty, relocation from rural areas to the city, and political unrest and general violence. Haiti used to be a common destination for summer ministry teams from the US. Not so much anymore – it’s too dangerous. ‘Normal ministry’ has had to be suspended because the environment has been destroyed. If we lose the ship, nothing else matters.
That is how I usually tell this story, and how the talk usually ends. However, it occurred to me recently that it is possible to imagine another response to Mr. Smith’s report of a leak in the ship. And that is the subject of our next post. Stay tuned.
Ed Brown is Director of Care of Creation, an organization dedicated to ‘mobilizing the church to respond to the environmental crisis.’ Read more at careofcreation.net and Ed’s blog at ourfathersworld.org.
