Over the next few days I will be posting my comments and thoughts about the different issues raised at the 2007 LTTG Environmental Stewardship Conference. You can also read Don Bosch’s comments and summary at The Evangelical Ecologist. Or you can watch the main conference sessions online at LetsTendTheGarden.org. Audio files of the workshops will be posted online in a few weeks.
Prologue – Wednesday, Sept 19th
To help folks save money, the Church had offered to let some conference attendees camp out behind the buildings.
Em and I decided to save ourselves some drive time and camp out with everyone – besides, it would be fun to meet and hang out with all the ‘cool campers’.
By the time I got off work and made it to the church, Peter Illyn (Restoring Eden) had already set up two tents and was working on the third. Working with him were a few other campers from Texas and Montana. They were setting up tents for a bunch of folks who would not arrive until 1 am Thursday (guess who got to go pick them up at the airport?).
[@more@]Day One
The day started off pretty rocky with me oversleeping an hour (Em got up two hours before). To make things worse, I was suppose to wake Peter Illyn up so he could get ready to MC the conference with Jason Chatraw (grrrrrr)…
Luckily there was coffee available (coffee was to become my life blood for the next few days) and some breakfast (provided and cooked by some of the campers). Touching base with Em (the brains of the conference), I started work…
The first session started on time with some wonderful worship and a brief intro by Tri. While we beat last year’s numbers, we were still lower then what we had hoped. To be exact, we had about 70 people during the day with about 150 in the evenings.
Ken Wilson (Senior Pastor at the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan) spoke about "The Evangelical Awakening to Environmental Concern: A Pastor's Perspective”. The one thing that stood out to me the most was how he compared the current Church’s awaking to environmental issues (ie.
climate change) to how the Church in the 1800’s awoke to slavery. In both cases, the majority of believers tended to keep the status quo and not rock the boat.
In the 1800’s this was done by taking certain verse in the Bible and using them to approve of slavery. This was their way of justify their inaction to the horrible trade in human lives. It was only as a few brave souls stood up and took a stand that the Church enlarge begin to take notice of what was happening around them.
In the same way, Christians today justifying their apathy about climate change and other environmental issues by saying the earth is going to burn anyway (ie. using a few verse to justify their inaction). It is going to take a few brave Believers to bring the Church out of it’s slumber and realize that it needs to take a stand.
I’m NOT talking about politics – I’m talking about a moral issue that affects every living creature and organisms on the planet. Climate change is one of the biggest issues facing our world today – and the Church needs to pull it’s head out of the sand and start talking about it!!
Praise the Lord that there are some who are talking about – and doing something about it! As you read this blog, you will learn a little more about these folks and about the emerging movement of Believers who are passionate about both saving souls AND caring for the environment.
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