Bishop Ward is joined by Rev. Jarrod Davis, chair of the Conference Creation Care Team to discuss all the ways the NC Conference is engaging in creation care.
Learn more about and register for the Redeeming Creation Conference.
Bishop Ward:
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ. Sunday is the Festival of God’s Creation. Jarrod Davis is the leader of our Creation Care team here in the North Carolina Annual Conference. He has some wonderful things to share.
Jarrod:
Thank you, Bishop and it’s good to be here with all of you as we approach this Earth Day in a celebration of God’s creation. The Bible is clear that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it and we are merely caretakers, stewards of what God has entrusted to us. Unfortunately, for a lot of our history, we have not been very good stewards and so we are heeding God’s call to improve, to become better stewards and I’m proud of the work that’s being done by the North Carolina Annual Conference. I’m proud of the leadership of our Bishop in guiding us into this and in pointing the way for us forward and I encourage all of you to get involved. Now, this may seem like a monumental task but I promise you that we on the Creation Care Team are working on finding ways to help you as followers of Jesus Christ to become better stewards. I’ll share just three ways that we are doing that.
The first is this book, Drawdown. Drawdown they self-describe as “the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming” and this is a book, this is a program, this is a resource that this Creation Care Team has made available. We have several copies around the Conference that we encourage you to get ahold of. Contact the Media Center or contact your DS for your copy.
We also have re-launched the “Green Church Initiative.” This is a tool that is available to all churches within the North Carolina Conference to guide you in how you can become a greener church and to be recognized as a green church by the Conference.
Finally, we have an event coming up on May 15, the Redeeming Creation Conference. We’re featuring keynote speaker Dr. Jerusha Neal, as well as Dr. Ellen Davis. Both will be speaking on creation care from a theological perspective, but not just the theology behind it but also how it can be applied within our church. We’ll also have a panel to discuss the strange disconnect that we often find between faith and science. We’ll have a couple of speakers from the Rural Advancement Foundation International, sharing with us their work on justice and equity and how that pertains to our use of land.
So we’ve got all of these things going on. These are great opportunities for you, and of course, we always have more coming up. I hope you’ll participate. I hope that you will do your part in being a greener follower of Jesus Christ.
Bishop Ward:
Thank you, Jarrod. We’re so grateful for the leadership of our Creation Care Team. April has been designated by the state of North Carolina as a time to clean up our highways and roadways. Oh the litter, the litter. So I hope you will join Mike and me in doing this as you walk and organize a clean-up team during this month of April as we celebrate God’s creation. I look forward to seeing you in May at the “Redeeming Creation” event.
May Christ be with you and may we give thanks to God for “all creatures great and small, all things bright and beautiful” and praise the God who made them all.