Climate Change

Calling all pastors! Have you ever talked about creation care or climate change from the pulpit? We encourage you to participate in the Creation Care Preaching Challenge. Keep reading to learn more about the challenge, discover creation care resources, and learn how you can incorporate creation care and climate change into your preaching.

So where does creation care appear in the Bible?

Lent might well be the most challenging season in the Christian calendar. Advent is about anticipation of things to come. Christmas and Easter are both celebrations of good news. But Lent? Lent is a season of sacrifice.

What does the Bible say about climate change? The short and obvious answer is ‘nothing’ – in the way that it says nothing about a number of other 21st century issues.

The longer, and more important, response is that it says a great deal about the earth, about humans and society. This deeply biblical message is one that must infuse our thinking as we search for answers that are faithful to the challenge of humans impacting the climate of our planet.

There are at least two important biblical concepts that speak emphatically to the subject of climate change:

This month on Do Justice we are working to unlearn the Doctrine of Discovery together through our series "In 1492, Indigenous peoples discovered Columbus". Welcome to the series! To see other posts in the series and make sure you don't miss a post, visit this page.

I had escaped from the concrete jungle one August summer day to be connected with the land once again. Every summer, it is my tradition to harvest medicines for ceremonial and spiritual practices. Being Cree, two of those medicines are sage and sweetgrass. With every medicine I took from the land, I would place tobacco down & offer my prayers. With every prayer, I acknowledged Creator’s masterpiece all around me. With every acknowledgement, I was reminded that I am a mere strand in this web of life. There I was, in the thick of this web of life, in the midst of creation, on the prairies

I love to eat food, and the food I eat is intimately connected to the lives, the environments, and the well-being of people all around the world.

As an international development practitioner with World Renew, I work with staff who live in countries that are impacted by these extreme weather events. Time and time again I hear that it is climate change that is causing their communities many hardships.

“Climate change is a global problem with grave implications:
environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods;
it represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”

~ Pope Francis

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the historic Paris Agreement, the Canadian government is set to announce a national Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change.

This framework will determine how we, as a nation, respond to the climate crisis.

Three years ago, I retired from several decades of work in the corporate world. I became a bit circumspect, weighing my achievements and accomplishments against the goals, dreams and intentions I had had for my life. (Thank God for Grace!) I also started to think about what I wanted to focus on in the remaining years of my life. Pretty standard fare for a man of my age in my situation, I think.

August has arrived! If you’re a church leader, you may be looking for a curriculum for your small group, adult study classes, or youth group.

In the words of Pastor Christy Knetsch, whose congregation in Grand Rapids has recently used several of these curricula,

“The Christian Reformed Church is committed to equipping congregations. I am so glad that we have been able to utilize these resources so that we can ensure that not only the head, but heart and hands are empowered to promote justice in the square inches where God gives us influence.”