And we know you’ll be wanting to experience a lot more than just environmental topics.  So to help you plan your time, here are the environmental offerings for each day.  Full seminar descriptions are here. At this time, all environmental seminars are scheduled in the Marriott Union Station hotel.

Sunday, Dec 27:  [Urbana09 begins with the evening plenary session.]

Monday, Dec 28:

• 2 pm
  
  • “The Green Gospel: Christians Caring for Creation” - Laurie and Mark Russell [Grand Ballroom A-D, repeated at 4 pm]
• 4 pm
  
  • “The Green Gospel” [repeat from 2 pm]
  • “Creation Stewardship and Missions” [Grand Ballroom E]

Tuesday, Dec 29:

• 2 pm
  • “Creation Care and God’s Redemptive Plan” - Ed Brown [Grand Ballroom A-D, repeated on Thursday at 2 pm]
  • “Missions Meets Climate Change” - Lowell Bliss [Grand Ballroom E]
• 4 pm
  • “Creation Care on Your Campus” - Ben Lowe [Regency Ballroom, repeated Thursday at 4 pm]
  • “The Perfect Storm” - Lowell Bliss [Grand Ballroom A-D]

Wednesday, Dec 30

• No seminars today, but…
• 5:30 pm
  
  • Book Signing in the Urbana Bookstore with Ben Lowe (“Green Revolution” – the book of the Day today) and Ed Brown (“Our Father’s World”).
• Evening Plenary Session
  
  • Denise-Margaret Thompson on Environment as a critical issue in the world today.

Thursday, Dec 31 (LAST DAY!)

• 2 pm
  • “Creation Care and God’s Redemptive Plan” – Ed Brown [Grand Ballroom A-D, repeated from Tuesday at 2 pm]
  • “Organizing Communities for Environmental Justice” - Lisa Harper and Rachel Anderson [Grand Ballroom F]
• 4 pm
  • “Creation Care on your Campus” – Ben Lowe [Regency Ballroom, repeated from Tuesday at 4 pm]
  • “Mobilizing your Church for Creation Care” – Ed Brown [Grand Ballroom A-D]

( This post originally appeared on the Intervarsity Urbana site at this address: http://www.urbana.org/articles/green-mission. It was written by the Director of Care of Creation — Ed Brown)

Last October, Manila, Philippines was hit by two massive typhoons. According to some reports, 80% of the city experienced flooding, much of it severe. Homes were inundated to the top of the second floor that had never been flooded before. Over 1500 people lost their lives.

On the heels of these storms, an environmental seminar, “Hear the Call to Care for Creation” was held that had been planned almost a year earlier. From homes still damaged by flood waters, more than 70 people spent two days together seeking to understand what God might be saying through what was generally understood to be an environmental disaster.

“This is God’s timing,” said Alice Pineda, director of the sponsoring organization. “We are experiencing the results of sins against the environment, [and] it is time for the Philippine church to address this problem more intentionally and concretely.”

Sins against Creation

Many of the world’s ills – from poverty to political instability – arise from a rapidly intensifying environmental crisis, or to put it in theological terms: sins against God’s creation. Church leaders in the Philippines understood that their recent trials were not due to an ‘act of God’. Typhoons are not pleasant, but they are an indispensable part of God’s creation. However, God has also provided forests to absorb rainfall and wetlands to act as flood barriers when typhoons come.

With most of the forest removed (the Philippines has less than 16% of its original forest remaining), with wetlands replaced by culverts channeled through the middle of Manila, whose population is now more than 10 million, and the storms’ intensity aggravated by climate change, the consequences of accumulated ‘environmental sin’ are obvious.

The Philippines are not alone. Mudslides in Haiti, drought in Kenya, failing wells in India: all signs that environmental abuse increases human suffering. And it is not possible to alleviate that suffering without dealing with that underlying cause. We cannot truly ‘love our neighbor’ without addressing environmental issues.

A God-centered Response

There’s another, just as compelling reason for making the environmental crisis a priority of Christian missions and ministry: As with most human problems, this crisis is rooted in sin. Ecological disaster is a result of human behavior that is selfish, prideful and greedy. A crisis that is caused by sin cannot be solved by science. A problem created by pride will not be corrected with policies.

The environmental crisis is the number one problem in the world for most people outside the church, but it is a crisis that cannot be solved without reference to God. As Paul says in Romans 9:14, ‘How can they call on the One they have not believed in?’ This is one crisis that will not and cannot be resolved without the leadership of the church. It is a sin problem, and there is only one answer to sin.

‘Environmental missions’ is, quite simply, an effort to connect the problem of the environmental crisis with the solution of God’s redemption. Further, it is an opportunity for people in the church who love God’s creation to connect that love with love for God and love for people.

Good Theology, Sound Science, an Integrated Plan

What might a God-centered response to the environmental crisis look like? First, it has to be rooted in good theology. That is, we need a solid biblical understanding of God’s redemptive plan that understands that God’s goal goes beyond human salvation to include all of creation (see Colossians 1:15-20 and Romans 8:18-24). Second, our response has to bring the best environmental and ecological science available to the task. God’s world is complex. We have learned to our regret that simple solutions which do not adequately understand how the world works can make things worse instead of better. And third, our response has to be integrated in every way – across geography, politics, disciplines and organizations. When a problem like deforestation in rural Kenya is driven by poverty in the slums of Nairobi, neither will be solved unless both can be resolved together.

A Call to this generation

If the church is to respond to this environmental crisis, we will need a massive mobilization of people like you: theologians who can articulate the Biblical call to full redemption to the worldwide church. Environmental scientists who can help us understand the problems and who can propose effective workable solutions. And yes, missionaries who can integrate and implement those solutions effectively through local church bodies around the world.

As one of the participants in the Manila seminar said, “My eyes have been opened to what we as God’s children have not done, but praise God we can still do!”

In Romans 12, Paul give us some excellent advice about what to do with our knowledge of God and His ways when we become Christ followers and when we listen to what the Holy Spirit tells us as we go about our daily lives.

Paul says that we are to “renew our minds” so that we can “test and approve what God’s will is”. In other words, Paul is telling us that as believers and followers of Christ, we have to start to think differently than we used to think if we are going to fulfill the purposes that God has for us.

Most of us can easily see how this applies (or should apply) to our daily lives. For example, most of us know that we need to think differently and renew our minds when it comes to loving our neighbor. We realize that anger, impatience and prejudice are examples of “unrenewed” ways of thinking and, although we would like to get it right all the time, we know that the right thing to do is to consistently and constantly try to put this “renewed mind” into practice as it applies to our daily lives.

Around us, we can see some evidence that results from “renewed thinking” – things like global and local missions, neighborhood food-banks, and neighborhood outreach are such examples. If you are working on changing your aggressive driving habits, if you are burdened to care more for your neighbors or you are convicted when facing dishonesty at work or cheating at school then you know what I mean by “renewed thinking”.

“But what about that jump from renewing your mind to a toothbrush. What’s the connection?” you’re saying.

OK, here goes.

The other day, my wife purchased two new toothbrushes (no … not the electric kind!). That in itself, is usually no big deal. However, these were toothbrushes that I had never seen before. In the package, each standard toothbrush was packaged with three replaceable heads. That’s right; the package came with one complete handle and three heads. When one wore out, you popped it off of the handle and popped in a new one. Change the head, keep the handle because the handle doesn’t wear out. It’s a small thing but a big illustration of how thinking differently can help us use God’s resources a bit more wisely.

I looked at these toothbrushes and it didn’t take me long to realize that someone who cared about the world we live in stretched their mind a bit and thought differently. It’s probably not too far from the truth to thing that sometime during the design of this product, someone said “Hey, what we have been doing just isn’t right. We need to do something different. We need to think about what we are making here and make it better”.

From this, it was a small jump for me to realize the connection between thinking differently, renewing our minds and caring for God’s creation.

First of all, thinking differently is a good thing. In this case, it is an illustration of the first thing we are going to have to do if we are going to care for God’s creation. Thinking differently means that we have to look around us at all the habits we’ve acquired (for example, how we consume, how much we consume, how we treat the wilderness) and start to think differently about them. (And yes, it’s true that old habits die hard!) But thinking differently needs to go beyond that. See, the problem with thinking differently is that it can be a one- time action. For real change, we have to take this one time action, nurture it and grow it to make permanent changes in how we look at God’s creation. These permanent changes can only come through renewal – that is by “making new” our minds so that we act in new ways that are driven by what we believe and how we think about creation.

See, that’s why Paul didn’t tell us to “change what we do” but he told us to “renew” or “make new”. He wasn’t telling us to change our actions; he was telling us to act bigger – to renew our minds. What Paul was talking about is change that is permanent and long lasting. He was telling us that renewal has a major affect not only on us but on the world and the people around us.

It’s this permanent change that is the type of change each of us needs to deeply ponder and consider if we are going to eventually change how we care for the gift of creation that God created and gave us.

In a way, I am hopeful that the message of thinking differently about where we live is starting to get thorough to people. Small things like “environmentally kind” toothbrushes, “green” cleaning products, healthy, locally grown foods and paper coffee cups in themselves are not going to save this planet. They are, however making inroads into making restless that long suppressed part of the mind that says “resources are unlimited and I don’t have to care about the world around me”.

I am also confident that Christ followers can be real leaders in this area as they renew their minds and hearts. After all, from your minds and hearts come actions. And those actions — consistently living out what you believe – whether it is related to loving your neighbor or caring for creation – becomes a witness to those who don’t know God and the gift that he gave us in His son and His 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.

If you are living in the Western “2/3″ world (as opposed to the “third world”), you are probably blessed an abundance of choices. Within limits (some imposed by God, some financial, and some imposed by family requirements or tradition) you have the option to make choices about where to live, what college you attend, what kind of work you want to do and even how you want to serve God.

You even have the blessing of choice in the little things — like what you’re going to eat for breakfast tomorrow.

In our western lifestyle, we sometimes have so many choices that we “freeze up” and say ‘ HELP –  I don’t know what to do!’ (If you don’t believe me, look at the breakfast cereal isle in your local supermarket some time!) and sometimes, we throw up our hands and let someone else make the choice for us.

Hopefully, your goal (or your problem as some may see it), since you are a follower of Christ, is to use the wisdom of God to help you make the right choice. To do this, you have to know who God is so that you can best make the choice from the many options that He gives you

The question is, are you blessed by your opportunities to choose, do you see it as an opportunity to seek the wisdom of God and have you ever taken the time in prayer to thank God that He has blessed you with so many resources that you even have the opportunity to make choices?

On the other hand not everyone has choices.

In Kenya where Care of Creation does missions work, most rural residents, 80% of whom are Christians, are poor farmers living on land that they and their families have farmed for generations.

These farmers and their families live mostly at a subsistence level. They depend on each season’s harvest for their immediate food needs,they use wood from surrounding forests for cooking fuel, and they live with little or no cash income.

Rapidly increasing population levels, abusive farming techniques, unsustainable wood-gathering practices, land that produces yields of 10% or less than it did 30 years ago, combined with the need to feed twice as many people as there were 30 years ago have left these farmers struggling to survive.

Women (whose traditional job it is to gather firewood for cooking) who used to gather firewood nearby must now walk 10 to 15 kilometers to steal wood from protected government forests, an activity that can take more than 20 hours per week.

The harder these people work at farming or wood-gathering, the worse the situation grows. It’s a downward spiral. that keeps these farmers as virtual slaves, ‘trapped in place’ on their own land — unable to improve their lives or the lives of their families.

There are many things that contribute to this — political policies, corruption and environmental issues such ad drought. All of these combine to contribute to the struggle that Kenya is experiencing.

Much prayer is needed to overcome the first two (politics and corruption) and we, as Christian brothers and sisters have to believe that prayer can address these issues.

The last issue, environmental, is something that the Kenyan farmer can address provided they have knowledge and resources (two things that Christians in the Western world have) that is combined with Godly wisdom.

Here’s Where Environmental Missions Comes In

Environmental Missions is key to the work that we are doing in Kenya. It’s goal is to help the Kenyan farmer get choices and live a better life by addressing the environmental issues that trap them in place.

Care of Creation’s project in Kenya seeks to address the environmental issues of under producing land and destruction of forests by Proclaiming God’s Vision: communicating a biblical vision of caring for God’s creation; by Planting God’s Trees, teaching and assisting in tree planting in church yards, school yards, and shambas (farm yards); and by Farming God’s Way, training local farmers in innovative creation-honoring agricultural techniques that have been shown to increase yields by 200% to 700%.

Our goal is to help the Kenyan farmer escape the trap so that they have choices. And with choices, these farmers are able to feed their family, participate in their government and pursue a Godly life.

Additional Verses To Study:

• It’s Gods purpose to give us an abundant, full life: Jn 10:10, Jer 29:11
• All the things that God wants to give us: Mat 6:33, Mat 6:25-31
• God intended us to have food from the garden as part of his creation plan: Gen 1:29
• Caring about those who are trapped is part of the Christian life: Prov 21:13

Environmental Missions? Whose Idea Was This Anyhow?

See, it goes like this. If you’re being called to missions, you’re signing up for two things. First, you’re signing up to spread the gospel to those who may not have ever heard it and second, you’re signing up to help others live a life that honors God.

That sounds like a pretty simple task list but in reality, it’s not.

See, in this fallen world, there’s lots of things that make it really difficult to get the gospel into people’s hearts.

Sometimes it’s just hard to get there to be face-to-face with them. Sometimes, it’s hard to gain their trust as a friend and sometimes, circumstances like their living conditions, poverty and disease get in the way of people hearing and accepting the gospel message.

People and organizations who do Medical Missions have understood this for a long time. They understand that the connection between  life conditions and delivering the gospel is a strong one. They know that people can and will be much more receptive to the gospel when they have at least some hope of being physically healthy and they also know that as God originally planned it, men and women were not supposed to live in a constant struggle against poverty and disease.

That’s why, if you are a medical missionary, you probably see your first task in delivering the gospel as relieving day-to-day human suffering and helping to put the world back to the way it was when God made it.

Ok, that makes some sense.

But, if relieving suffering is part of delivering the gospel, where do the environment and environmental missions come in?

Well here’s a fact (and one you probably already know) — when the environment that people live in is destroyed or degraded, when people can’t feed themselves because the soil on their farms has eroded and washed down the hillside or when people suffer from drought or air and water pollution, they’re not living the lives that God intended them to live; and because of this, getting the gospel to them is going to be really, really hard.

After all, when you can’t feed your family (or yourself for that matter), is your mind and soul going to be in a condition to hear God’s word? Probably not.

That’s the basic premise of EM (Environmental Missions) – improving peoples lives and delivering the gospel as part of improving the environment that they live in. All in all, it’s about helping people care for creation and the land that they live on and helping put this earth back to the way God originally meant it to be.

Sure EM is a new concept and you can count on one hand the other people you have met that really get it. But that has no reflection on how important it is as part of delivering the Gospel.

See, EM is important because we humans, who were charged with caring for God’s creation have stretched God’s creation to the limit. If you don’t believe this take a look across the globe and you’ll see that in every country, in every contenent there are people groups suffering because of  the condition of the environment they live in.

Drought, soil erosion, air-pollution, flooding and starvation … they’re all clear evidence of how the environment has reacted to the way we have treated it.

And all these things are things standing in the way of you delivering the gospel to those who desperately need to hear it — and need to hear it before we yell “Hello World” and there’s no one there to answer us back.