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These are shocking facts, but what do they have to do with missions?
Everything, because they’re largely the result of failed stewardship over the physical world, says Jim Ball, executive director of the Wynnewood, Pa.-based Evangelical Environmental Network. The purpose of EEN is to declare the lordship of Christ over what God made and proclaimed in Genesis as “good.”
EEN (creationcare.org) was formed in 1994 by then-World Vision head Robert Seiple and Ron Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action. It is supported by individual believers, evangelical leaders and 23 partnering Christian organizations—including World Relief, World Vision and MAP International—who recognize that many environmental problems are fundamentally spiritual problems.
“Creation Care is a biblical approach to caring for all God’s creation,” Ball said. And that includes people. Those burdened for world mission and providing a Christian witness—feeding the hungry, clothing the poor and treating the sick—should also want cleaner air and water. “Not only do dirty air and dirty water impact human health, they impact growing of food,” he said. “And if your water has feces and pesticides in it, you’re facing a double whammy.”
EEN has created a list of target areas it seeks to address, including water degradation; land degradation, such as topsoil erosion; deforestation; species extinction; global toxification; the alteration of atmosphere; and human and cultural degradation.
Ball says that much of EEN’s work is educating people, a process of helping them understand how vital the issue is for the entire world.
EEN’s November 2002 public education campaign, “What Would Jesus Drive,” garnered attention in the United States and abroad. WWJDrive was a television spot (now posted on EEN’s Web site) that ran in four states and aimed to get people to think about how their vehicles strain God’s creation. The cam-paign’s results surpassed EEN’s wildest dreams when journalists picked up the story. WWJDrive was featured on CNN Headline News, spots on other major US television networks and the BBC, and in 1,900 news articles in newspapers around the world—including those in Kenya, South Africa, South Korea, Australia and Europe.
Despite WWJDrive’s media success, Ball says that EEN isn’t expecting a wave of evangelicals running out to buy economy cars. “We’re planting seeds in people’s minds, and not everybody will take the message to heart,” he said. Still, Ball has high hopes. “I want every Christian to ask what Jesus would drive when purchasing their next vehicle.”
Almost 500 prominent evangelicals have signed EEN’s declaration “On the care of creation” since 1994—including theologian and author J.I. Packer, Christianity Today executive editor David Neff, Center for World Mission president Ralph Winter, Youth for Christ president Roger Cross, Youth With A Mission president Loren Cunningham and Wheaton College president Duane Litfin.
Ball, an American Baptist pastor and former university professor, began his own spiritual journey toward creation care in 1990 when a fellow believer challenged him to read the Bible in light of caring for God’s creation. “I said it was a bunch of baloney —[but] once I started doing that [reading], I realized it’s very clear in Scripture.” Verses that Ball found key to his own understanding of the issue are Colossians 1:15-20. Not only is Christ firstborn over all creation, but also by him all things were created—that includes all things on earth. All things were created by him and for him.
“How can we harm what Christ has died to reconcile us to? We’ve got to stop creating pollution and start being part of Christ’s reconciliation,” Ball said.
Four years after Ball discovered creation care, he wrote a doctoral dissertation focusing on how evangelicals have responded to the ecological crisis. His years of research on global warming resulted in a primer for Christians on the subject. Published by Evangelicals for Social Action in 1998, the book’s title is Planting a Tree This Afternoon: Global Warming, Public Theology, and Public Policy. Before becoming EEN executive director in 2000, Ball worked as the climate change policy coordinator for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, DC.
Ball says that creation care is a growing international movement among evan-gelicals, evidenced by EEN-affiliated Christian environmental groups that are active around the world. The
Wisconsin-based Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies works in India and Kenya. Target Earth, based in California, focuses on the intersection of environmental degradation and poverty, especially in areas where people make $1 a day or less.
The need for creation care is most urgently felt by the poor in countries with high rates of death and misery because of unclean living conditions—and they’re dying without Jesus.
“What is the heart of Jesus’ commandments? Love the Lord with all your heart, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself,” Ball said. “It’s all interrelated in Jesus’ teaching. Whenever you’re doing an activity that is harmful to people, it violates the heart of his ethical teaching…It also works against his reconciling activity on the cross.”
Still, many evangelicals hesitate to support a cause that is widely perceived as a domain for left-wing radicals. But creation care, Ball said, is “not an environmental thing or some fad. It’s rooted in Scripture and our relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.” Is there reason for optimism in light of the seemingly insurmountable woes plaguing creation?
“I always like to end with hope,” Ball said. “We have the solutions to deal with the most basic pollution problems. Now we need to pray for the will to do it.”
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ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOIDS
Air pollution: The average car in the US travels 10 percent more than a car in the UK, about 50 percent more than one in Germany, and almost 200 percent more than a car in Japan. The US is home to one-quarter of all cars in the world. The burning of fossil fuels has driven atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to their highest levels in 420,000 years.
Climate Change: The earth’s atmosphere is warming at the fastest rate in recorded history. Communities are threatened by climate change as seas rise, storms become more intense, and episodes of drought and flooding increase.
Disease: People in Africa and Southeast Asia, many of whom lack access to clean water, adequate nutrition or proper healthcare, account for 75 percent of global deaths from infectious diseases.
Forests: The world has lost nearly half of its forested area in the past 8,000 years, the majority of which occurred in the 20th century.
Fresh Water Species: At least 20 percent of all freshwater species globally are extinct or at risk. The figure is twice as high in North America.
Oceans: Eleven of the world’s 15 most important fisheries and 70 percent of commercial fish species are now fully exploited or overexploited.