Coming Up: Following Christ 2008 Conference
November 6, 2008
Many people don’t realize that Intervarsity’s Following Christ 2008conference –coming up on December 27-31 in Chicago–is for just about everyone! You don’t have to be in an InterVarsity group, you just have to be active in or care about the world of the university and professions. Registration is happening now for this incredibly exciting conference.
The theme of the conference for 2008 is Human Flourishing–”what it truly is, what’s wrong when it’s absent, and how God is calling us to both model and multiply it.” The conference website has a great essay on the theme of human flourishing. Plenary speakers
include Anglican Bisoph N.T. Wright, Andy Crouch (author of the new book Culture Making), Francis Collins (former director of the Human Genome Project), Anne C. Bailey (historian of the African slave trade), and others.
Rusty Pritchard, editor of Creation Care magazine and National Outreach Director for the Evangelical Environmental Network, will lead the conference’s “God’s Green Kingdom” track, addressing the connections between theology, environment, and human societies. The track will also feature Steven Bouma-Prediger, one of the world’s leading scholars of theology, ethics, and the environment, and Scott Sabin, the executive director of Floresta, an evangelical development agency focusing on microenterprise and reforestation.
The conference’s other multi-disciplinary tracks include “The Promise of Shalom” and
“Doubting Jesus,” plus a host of tracks centered on more specific disciplines and professions. You can go ahead and download the 1.8 Mb conference brochure here
or visit the conference website for more information.
The Restoration of All Things
May 7, 2008
Greg Pitchford is a fisheries biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation. He lives in Chillicothe, Missouri with his wife Donna and daughters Abbey, Anna, and Rebecca.
This post originally appeared in Creation Care magazine, issue 35 (Spring 2008).
I recently lectured at a university about an ecological restoration project on a stream I am working on. It was not one of my better performances. I spoke about the elements of biological integrity (water quality, physical habitat, biotic interactions, flow regime, and energy sources) and how the stream was compromised in all five areas. I told them that any restoration efforts that did not address all five areas would not achieve a balanced, diverse community that reflected what was historically there. The longer I spoke, the more depressed I became. After the talk, though I was with some of the best and brightest of the next generation, I could sense frustration and cynicism. Read more
