Stewardship sermons don't always have to be about money.
Beginning this Sunday, I’m going to preach a three-week series on “Caring For God’s Green Earth.” Care for the environment has been a politicized issue, and it has often been framed in terms of worshipping the earth. So why preach on this topic?
Christopher Wright provides the answer: “The church in its mission must bear witness to the great biblical claim that the earth is the Lord’s . . . and must care for the earth as an act of love and obedience to its Creator and Redeemer” [The Mission of God, 417-418].
If you plan to preach on the issue of creation care, the place to start is chapter twelve, “Mission and God’s Earth,” in Christopher Wright’s book, The Mission of God. To round out your biblical and theological understanding, read Douglas J. Moo’s article, “Nature in the New Creation: New Testament Eschatology and the Environment.” It was originally published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society [49 (2006) 449-88]. If you ‘google’ it, you can access it on Wheaton College’s web-site.
Here are some helpful books on the topic:
- For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care by Steven Bouma-Prediger (Baker Academic)
- Earth-Wise: A Biblical Response to Environmental Issues, Calvin B. DeWitt (Faith Alive)
- Saving God’s Green Earth, Tri Robinson (Ampelon Publishing)
- Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition (Acton Institute)
I’ll be thinking and preaching on this topic for the next three weeks, so I’d be interested in your questions and thoughts. Let me wrap this up today with another quote from Wright: “God is the earth’s landlord and we are God’s tenants . . . As in any landlord-tenant relationship, God holds us accountable to himself for how we treat his property” [The Mission of God, 397].
Posted by Steve Mathewson at 10:02 AM on September 12, 2008
