god is green
// December 9th, 2008 // church, creative, faith, leadership
Up until about a year ago, I had no desire to be “green” at all, honestly I thought it was just a trend. Then I listened to a series that Rob Bell did called God is Green and it totally rocked my world. My perspective changed, I began to realize the importance of respecting the earth God created for us.
Beck and I start making small adjustments like buying local produce, changing out our light bulbs, using biodegradable diapers (which is a big deal) and keeping lights off to save energy. Most everything that we’ve done have been small things that overtime will make a big difference.
All of this was stirred back up last week in a conversation I had with Chad and Shannon. Chad shared a couple of ideas with us that he had about the importance of taking care of our earth. He called it Environmental Stewardship, and I gotta say, I love that term. It’s from Tri Robinson, who defines it like this…
“Environmental Stewardship is the idea that we should care for, manage,
and nurture the creation we have been given.”
Chad reminded us of a line from In a Pit in which Batterson said…
“At the end of the day, success equals stewardship and stewardship
equals success. Stewardship is all-inclusive.“
Stewardship doesn’t end with finances, its all-inclusive, it carries over into every part of life. Everything we have is a gift from God, and its our responsibility to take care of the gifts given to us. We’ve got to realize that God values creation, every part of it. And whatever he values we should value, right?
Tri points out that one of God’s first commands to Adam was to “tend His garden.” He challenges Adam and Eve to be caretakers of the gift of creation.
In our conversation last week, Chad mentioned that it would be so cool for a church to begin making changes that would reflect this idea of Environmental Stewardship… and I totally agreed with him. It’s a stand we need to take, as a church. And its something that I feel so strongly about that I’m going to be more conscience about it at Bay.
I brought it up to Jeff today, so he went and did some checking and I was very excited to learn that the company we use (Jakprints) to do the bulk of our printing has already taken major steps in making printing “green” very easy. So all of our print pieces are now printed with Soy & Vegetable based Ink, most of them are on 100% recycled paper (with a every piece having a minimum of 30% recycled content), and the paper is chlorine & bleach free.
Let me challenge the church leaders out there all the way to the stay-at-home moms… there are small steps that we can all take – I’m not saying you become a fanatic, only that you start somewhere. Whether its recycling or buying a hybrid car, we can all do something.
Here a few resources to help you along the way.
Hey, Trey. Nice post. If I can be of any help to you, let me know. At the Boise Vineyard, I’m working to help other churches implement environmental stewardship initiatives by resourcing them. Drop me a line and I’ll be happy to help if you want it and share with you more of what we’ve done since Tri’s book was released. … jason.chatraw@vineyardboise.org