Care of Creation @ Urbana09

If you’re thinking about environmental missions either as a part-time or a full time career, it might be worth adding to your thinking, a bit about cities and how they play a part in the future condition of creation.

Just a quick glance at the world tells us that most societies seem to divide where people live into two areas. People either live in a city or they live in a rural area. That’s true (except for the ‘in-between’ place called the ‘burbs which, for the most part, are just young cities.)

What is also obvious if you look around is the impact that cities have on creation — which in turn has an huge impact on the quality of life for the people who live in them.

The basic thinking is that cities can’t be “country”. They are mutually exclusive. You can understand (not necessarily agree with) this thinking based on the fact that most cities are built by altering an area that was once a rural landscape into something that is “unnatural” (un ‘nature’ al). We push aside God’s creation and put something of our own in its place.We then pipe in pieces of creation (water, food and fuel) to replace what we pushed aside and pipe out the stuff we don’t want (trash and sewage).

For those who can pay what it costs to have access to those resources, all is well. For those who can’t pay or who are prevented from benefitting from these resources the city presents a whole host of ‘quality of life’ and justice problems.

There are many people today who are starting to challenge the notion of “it’s either city or rural”. They understand the benefits of people living close to one another but, as believers, can’t reconcile what cities do to the quality of life of those who are poor and can’t reconcile the effect that cities have on creation.

So what to do? There is a movement on now to seriously re-think how our cities are built. The view is that cities should and can be tightly integrated with the environment and the creation that was once pushed aside when the city was built. They believe that creation can be woven back into the fabric of the city and as this is done, the quality of life for all people living in the city will be improved.

Here are some examples of how this is being done.

Community Gardens

There are many cities around the US and the world who are starting to bring agriculture back from the “rural areas” into the cities. These cities are taking under-used or unused land, (there are also churches using their land), reviving it and planting gardens on it. The result of these efforts are that fresh food (at very reasonable prices) is brought back to families who need it. In some cases, the family consumes all it produces and in some cases, the enough is produced to re-sell at a community market. Related to this movement is the movement toward green roofs and the development of urban “open space” such as the recently opened Highline park in New York City.

These community gardens work to bring the neighborhood together as well as providing environmental education and appreciation opportunities to both the young and the old.

Re-Architecture That Imitates God’s Creation

Biomimicry is the practice of adopting what God has already perfected in Nature to buildings in cities. A good example of this is roofs that are shaped liked tropical leaves that collect and funnel water. Roofs like this allow drinking water to be collected and stored and have the benefit of reducing polluted runoff and collecting water for use in community gardens. Clean drinking water is critical to health and quality of life so building houses and buildings to adopt what God already invented makes a lot of sense.

Transportation Alternatives

Providing low cost and and non-polluting (or at least less polluting) transportation is critical to those who have to get from one place to another to work. Many cities are starting to push aside their ‘car-centric’ world and working to become more bicycle friendly. They are also encouraging people and providing training so that those with limited means can learn how to maintain their own bicycles. The reasoning is that getting to a job is as important as creating the job in the first place.

So… what does this all have to do with environmental missions? The point here is that in a lot of cases, environmental missions:

1. … does not need to be relegated to rural areas. The environment of our cities provides a whole host of opportunities for missions and for improving the quality of someones life.
2. … does not have to be overly complex and resource intensive. There is opportunity to work to repair creation through neighborhood projects such as community gardens, open space parks and restoring urban streams (a process called daylighting).
3. … can be an integral part of short-term or long-term missions and is a perfect way to build a “missions heart” in church youth groups or adults looking to help those in their own communities.

Think about it. Environmental missions that restores the land and people’s lives at the same time. Opportunities here in the USA and overseas.

What, then are we waiting for.