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Sunday, August 16, 2009

My speech to prebytery

On Sunday morning I drag myself out of bed and ride my bike over to my local church. As I enter the solar panels on the roof glint in the sun and I can see a rainwater tank peeking around the side. I am greeted by a smiling face and handed a newssheet printed on recycled paper. I flick to the environmental tips and events section and scan the offerings. Then I move to a table to place some native flowers and a box of fruit from my garden on it for distribution. Next I grab a cup of Fairtrade coffee and sit in the sun to enjoy the building’s passive heating. In worship we sing thanks to God for the wonders of creation and, as it is September and we are doing the Season of Creation, we have an interesting sermon about the need to follow Biblical practices and values in our lives in order to reduce our environmental impact. When we share communion it is with tasty, fresh, home-made bread baked with organic flour and environmentally friendly grape. The gentle light of beeswax candles and sunlight illuminate the scene.

In our prayers for others our weekly endangered species prayer is for the endangered frogs we had a talk about at the youth meeting on Friday. We also thank God for the way he has blessed and added to our church through our environmental work.

After the service I pack up my copy of the Green Bible and join the communal lunch. Fresh, local, vegetarian food abounds and is shared with the homeless. After the meal I quickly make a couple of arrangements for the clothes, book and tool swap next week. Then I meet up with the church green group and we head out to Greenhills Camp and Conference Centre for a working bee. Our Canberra Christian Environmental Action group is going quite well, with our church teams and local conservation groups making quite a difference around Canberra by dedicating a few hours per week. It is a testament to the way the church has now taken leadership in the environmental arena.

Ok, so I’m dreaming. Yet I have not mentioned anything that is not possible, nor anything that could not, in theory, be started today. The church could, and I think should, become a leader in the future development of the environmental movement. Especially here in our presbytery where we have a highly educated population, with one of the highest incomes per capita in the country, and also one of the highest levels of awareness of environmental issues. These privileges come with a responsibility to lead the country in environmental efforts.

Church greening is a young and exciting movement. In the UK, and particularly the US it is rapidly taking off and gaining a lot of power as hundreds of churches and church leaders become engaged in environmental improvement projects and environmental certification schemes. Here in Australia, the movement is smaller, but already there are some really exciting stories coming from churches around the country. Currently a new church is being built in the grounds of an environmental education centre in Melbourne for a congregation who are so focused on the environment they chose their new minister for her ability to fit in with that philosophy. Another church in Melbourne, the Port Melbourne Uniting Church is running an eco-project including a community garden which provides food for their outreach programs to the local poor. They were the first church in Australia to achieve the Five Leaf Eco-Awards Basic Certificate and they have many more exciting plans for the future. Another example is St Luke’s Uniting Church in Geelong who achieved a 22% reduction in their energy use last year, and are planning to reduce this by a further 10% this year. In Sydney Project Green Church at Maroubra Junction Uniting Church have been running their exciting program for years and closer to home we have the community garden at O’Connor UC, some exciting greening work at the Greenhills Camp and Conference centre and of course, the solar panels recently installed here at Kippax, as well as many more. If you haven’t had a look at Kippax’s Solar Panels yet, make sure you do on your way out.

So how can you and your church get involved in the church greening movement in Canberra?

Well, there are several ways. Firstly, your church can become a part of the pilot program for the Five Leaf Eco-Awards. The awards are an ecumenical environmental change program for churches. We assist churches in caring for the environment and provide inspiration through our system of awards for environmental achievement. Currently the pilot is running in both Melbourne and Canberra and Kippax is one of the churches involved. The program has both a basic and advanced level and churches can choose their extent of participation. Award requirements include things like reducing energy use, conducting behaviour change campaigns, giving your congregation green resources and holding events and worship services around environmental themes. For more information talk to me at afternoon tea or visit our webpage at http://victas.uca.org.au/green-church/awards

If you are interested in the program you might also like to become a volunteer, just see me afterwards.

Two other projects I am working on establishing at the moment are an Environmental Prayer Group and a Canberra Environmental Action Group. The prayer group will involve monthly prayer meetings to invite God’s power into our environmental concerns around the world and to pray for the protection of God’s creatures.

The Environmental Action Group will be a hands-on project working with other environmental groups to make a difference to God’s earth by planting trees, restoring streams, volunteering for parks and reserves and assisting in environmental campaigns. For example, something I would like us to be involved in is the projects going on at Goorooyaroo and Mulligan’s flat. These are reserves just above Gungahlin and a large predator proof fence has just been completed in Mulligan’s flat to allow for the reintroduction of the Brown Treecreeper and the Bettong, species previously common in Canberra but now locally extinct. If you are interested in being involved please let me know by emailing fiveleafecoawards@gmail.com

I would also like to encourage all your churches to work cooperatively on these issues. Learn from each other, share the environmental experience in your congregations and lend a hand to other congregations working on environmental projects. It might even help to set up a Canberra Church Greening Coalition or something similar to coordinate the exchange of resources and efforts to green the church in Canberra.

It is hard to imagine now, but in the early 18th century the notions of slavery as an abomination and fighting poverty as a Christian responsibility were simply unthinkable for the majority of the community. It was believed that the poor were poor by the will of God and the rich were favoured by God. This is in spite of Biblical mandates such as proverbs 31: 8-9 which had been handed down since around the fourth century BC. It is strange to think that humanity had so long ignored the intolerable, and even the church seemed happy with the situation, despite the encouragement of the Bible. It took the power of the Holy Spirit opening the eyes of a small group of people, led by William Wilberforce, and then an immense struggle over thirty years to open the eyes of the rest of the country to the will of God and to bring about the end of the British slave trade in 1807 and then finally, the dream they couldn’t even mention when they started, the emancipation of slaves in 1833, 26 years later and only 3 days before his death.

In a similar fashion, I believe God is now calling us to open our eyes to the passages of scripture and the leadings of the Holy Spirit that reveal God’s desire to take the emancipation further. Since the industrial revolution we have often forgotten God’s creation in our haste to achieve progress. And yet there are over a thousand verses that deal with Creation and how it relates to God and Man. We are called to be good stewards and neighbours to God’s creatures; revealing ourselves as children of God by redeeming creation and loving that which God has created and loved. In the past Christianity and the Bible have often been blamed for humanity’s belief that it can use and abuse the environment. However, this is not really fair. A Christian who leads a Biblical life will respect and care for the environment, and is also more likely to live a simple, humble life that relies upon God and not consumerism for satisfaction and meaning. Interpreted this way, there is no contradiction between Christian faith and environmentalism, and indeed our faith might be the key to saving the world. It is time to put the past behind us and move boldly into the future as a church that hears God’s call to remember God’s first gift to us, to treasure, preserve, restore and redeem creation and all of God’s creatures. I challenge you to go back to your churches and give them a rating between one and ten in terms of how environmentally friendly it is. If the score is not what you think it should be then sign up to the Five Leaf Eco-Awards and let’s work together to change the world. If your church has been working in this area, well done, and why not contact me to see if we can give you an award? Also, we are currently putting together a book of church greening stories and we would love to include yours.

So is your church switched on to creation care?

Thank you.

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Important Lessons from the Bible

Why Jesus came:
"that the world might be saved through him"
John 3:17

Who Jesus is going to use to save the world:
"For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God."
Romans 8:19

Our role on earth:
"The LORD God put the man in the Garden of Eden to take care of it and to look after it."
Genesis 2:15

The Five Pillars of A Christian Theology of Sustainability

1. God is the creator, sustainer and redeemer of creation.

2. Covenantal Stewardship (we have a covenant with God as stewards of the earth).

3. The creation-fall-redemption paradigm (God made a good world; human failure broke the relationships between god, man and creation; Christ provides hope for all creation).

4.Bodily resurrection(we will rise with bodies, not as spirits)

5.New Creation (a new Heaven and new Earth refers to a renewal and an earthing of heaven, not starting over).

Adapted from When Enough is Enough: A Christian Framework for Environmental Sustainability, Edited by R.J. Berry, Published by Inter-Varsity Press, 2007, Nottingham p43+