Creation Care As Vocation
June 19, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine.
Need evidence that increasing numbers of Christians are integrating environmental concerns into their lifestyles? Witness the number of young believers approaching Creation-care as a lifetime vocation—a career defined by a sense of mission and a calling from God. Meet Jason Duba, one young man lighting the way….
Q: How did you start doing environmental work at a Christian college?
I attended Whitworth College in Spokane, WA (which I loved), but one thing that disappointed me was the recycling program. Some buildings had no containers, the containers that existed weren’t clearly marked, and many students did not bother to separate recyclables from trash, just tossing it all in the dumpster. As a student senator, I joined together with some other dorm leaders and we started brainstorming an environmental club whose first goal would be to expand and enhance Whitworth’s recycling program.
Q: How did you go from being a campus leader to leading public activism around creation care and climate change?
Once I graduated, I moved into an intentional Christian community located in a poverty ridden part of Spokane where over 90 percent of students at the local elementary school were on the school meal program. I wanted to get involved with creation care so one morning I walked into a local environmental group and introduced myself to the outreach coordinator and began talking about how I might volunteer. As soon as I mentioned my Christian background he shared how he traced his roots as a conservationist to his Christian experience and his idea to connect people of faith with conservation groups and environmental efforts. From there we developed plans for a project we called the Faith and Environment Network (FEN). We applied to AmeriCorps to fund a position and I served an 11- month AmeriCorps term as the first coordinator for the Faith and Environment Network.
Q: What types of events did the Faith and Environment Network (FEN) sponsor?
First off we organized a public event to kick-off the group and invited Restoring Eden’s Peter Illyn to be the key-note speaker. Then in conjunction with an advisory board from faith and environmental communities I developed a congregational partnership plan. Through this plan FEN worked with local congregations on three different aspects of stewardship based on our mission statement: appreciating, understanding, and caring for God’s creation. First, to help congregations develop an appreciation for nature, we organized hikes and conservation service projects in a number of beautiful settings around Spokane. Second, to help congregation members understand some important environmental issues and how they could make a difference, we arranged for local experts to speak during adult Sunday school about green living, the Spokane River, and buying local food. Third, we forged connections with two free, professional auditing services, one for energy and one for waste, which helped congregational leaders improve the operation of their church buildings to demonstrate care for God’s creation.
Q: What are you doing now? I recently moved to New Haven, Connecticut where I have continued my passion in climate justice by working with the non-profit group Solar Youth. I lead two after-school programs in the inner-city neighborhood. We work with junior high and high school students, primarily Hispanic and African- American, about concepts like the ecosystem, water cycle, the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle), and climate change.
Last year I had an amazing experience with Restoring Eden lobbying Capitol Hill on climate change issues. So even more recently I decided to work part-time for Restoring Eden in their communications division focusing on outreach media.
If you’re interested to learn more about Jason’s lobbying experience, and want to see a short movie about it, go to www.restoringeden.org.
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