Creation Care as a Major Means of Mission

Mission is a word often used, but it is not easy to find a concise definition of it, let alone one on which everyone can agree. Mission has many elements.

Defining Mission

Decades ago, the Anglican Consultative Council identified five strands to mission which have since gained wide acceptance:

To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
To respond to human need by living service
To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation
To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

(Bonds of Affection-1984 ACC-6:49; Mission in a Broken World -1990 ACC:10)

The language of the Mission-Shaped Church Report reflects this definition, stating that:

“The mission of God as redeemer, through Christ, in the Spirit, is to restore and reconcile the fallen creation (Colossians 1.20). God’s missionary purposes are cosmic in scope, concerned with the restoration of all things, the establishment of shalom, the renewal of creation and the coming of the kingdom, as well as the redemption of fallen humanity and the building of the Church” (2004: 85).

It seems that the concept of mission is too rich to be reduced to a simple description. It is, in essence, finding out what God is doing and joining in. Mission is, and always has been, in the heart of God.

Good News for the Whole Creation

It was entirely appropriate that this attempt to define mission was broad in scope because Jesus signified there is Good News to be proclaimed not only to humans but indeed to the entire created order. In Mark 16:15, he commanded his followers:

“Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” (ESV, emphasis mine)

The nature of that Good News is fundamentally the same for both people and nature, namely the hope and assurance that they will remain in existence (material continuity) and be set free from all that currently blights and limits them (redemption, restoration and renewal). It is a message that Paul unpacks cogently in Romans 8:18-25, and which finds expression in Isaiah 65:17-25, Ezekiel 47:1-12, Colossians 1:15-20, and Revelation 21-22.

The Lausanne Movement’s Recognition

The breadth of this commission has been recognised in recent years by the Lausanne Movement. Its Cape Town Commitment (2011) stated:

“Integral mission means discerning, proclaiming, and living out, the biblical truth that the gospel is God’s good news, through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, for individual persons, and for society, and for creation. All three are broken and suffering because of sin; all three are included in the redeeming love and mission of God; all three must be part of the comprehensive mission of God’s people.”

This was followed by their ground-breaking Jamaica Consultation in 2012, where delegates agreed that

“environmental issues represent one of the greatest opportunities to demonstrate the love of Christ and plant churches in our generation”.

They encouraged the church to promote “environmental missions” as a new category within mission work.

Shalom: A Bigger Goal

According to Edward Brown (2008: 156-160), the biblical goal of shalom is bigger than the truncated view of mission as just a simple message of salvation for human beings. In countries where mission has been carried out for over a century, environmental degradation is reaching the point of endangering much of what has already been accomplished. Moreover, we are commanded to love our brothers and sisters, which increasingly means helping them to cope with degraded environments. The opportunities for this are both global and local.

Fishing Where They Are

How does all of this translate into our backyard? A friend I occasionally used to fish with would climb into his waders and boots, gather up his gear, sit on the tailgate of his truck and scan the river for 15 minutes or more, looking for rising fish.

“No use fishing where they ain’t,” he would say.

Sometimes we fish for souls where they ain’t, but they are certainly present when you get involved in environmental projects.

Citizens of the kingdom of God yearn for shalom, but non-Christians often yearn for it too, and sometimes work so tirelessly for this that they put Christians to shame. Creation care furnishes an immediate point of mutual interest, shared vision, identification and commonality. It also provides a context in which to forge meaningful relationships as a prelude to evangelistic influence. For this reason, Christian environmentalism is currently the fastest growing missional enterprise in the global church.

In microcosm, if a local church engages in a practical environmental project, it raises the question among the neighbouring people, “Why are they doing this?” It gives opportunities for them to find out that their ecology is based on the gospel and their gospel is centred on the Lord Jesus Christ. As the life and light of Christ is gradually expressed through us, others are drawn to him.

Ultimacy, Not Just Priority

Chris Wright astutely sums up the strong link between environmental stewardship and evangelism as he brings to conclusion a section on holistic mission in his book, The Mission of God:

The language of the ‘priority of evangelism’ implies that the only proper starting point must always be evangelistic proclamation. Priority means it is the most important, most urgent, thing to be done first, and everything else must take second, third, or fourth place. But the difficulty with this is that (1) it is not always possible or desirable in the immediate situation, and (2) it does not even reflect the actual practice of Jesus. Rather, almost any starting point can be appropriate, depending possibly on what is the most pressing or obvious need. We can enter the circle of missional response at any point on the circle of human need. But ultimately we must not rest content until we have included within our missional response the wholeness of God’s missional response to the human predicament – and that of course includes the good news of Christ, the cross and resurrection, the forgiveness of sin, the gift of eternal life that is offered to men and women through our witness to the gospel and the hope of God’s new creation. That is why I speak of ultimacy rather than primacy. Mission may not always begin with evangelism. But mission that does not ultimately include declaring the Word and the name of Christ, the call to repentance, and faith and obedience has not completed its task. It is defective mission, not holistic mission (2018: 318-319).

So, yes, let’s affirm it. ‘Almost any starting point can be appropriate … we can enter the circle of missional response at any point on the circle of human need’. Any of these issues will do fine. They reflect areas of serious ‘human need’. Concern for them must not diminish. Combating environmental degradation just happens to be one that is extremely timely, relevant and cogent today.

But what do you do about ultimacy? As one belonging to Jesus, how do you know you’ve arrived, not just started? If you tend to be known as a single-issue person (or, even if you are able to hold multiple issues), you may be placing more hope in the changes you long to see than those changes are able to deliver. Unless you move further into the circle and ultimately see the importance of people having a transforming encounter with Jesus Christ, you will never be quite radical enough in your approach.

Participating in God’s Mission

God’s mission is to reclaim the world–and that includes the created order–and God’s people have a designated role to play in that mission. God’s people are the product of the missio Dei, the mission of God; we are called to participate with God and be partners in his mission. This challenges any understanding of mission which is understood in terms of ‘come to church and join us’ but rather requires us to share with God in being concerned for all in our communities and finding ways to go to them on their terms.

A New Frontier

Creation stewardship as a means and mode of mission is a new frontier, wide open for exploration, and filled with opportunities as numerous as they are exciting. This is a mission field ripe for the harvest.

If every congregation in New Zealand actively engaged in caring for the non-human creation as a witness to, and means of reaching out to, the human creation, and also as a way of increasing the wellbeing of both, the beneficial results would be barely imaginable!

Sources

Brown, Edward 2008 Our Father’s World: Mobilising the Church to Care for Creation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press).

Lausanne Movement 2010 The Cape Town Commitment: A Confession of Faith and A Call To Action (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2011) 2012 Creation Care and the Gospel: Jamaica Call to Action — https://www.lausanne.org › content › statement › creation-care-call-to-action. Accessed 3 February 2013.

The Archbishop’s Council of the Anglican Church 2004 Mission-Shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context (London: Church House Publishing).

Wright, Chris 2018 The Mission of God: Unlocking The Bible’s Grand Narrative (Westmount, IL: InterVarsity Press).

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

How would you define mission?
How do you respond to the idea that God’s redemptive purposes include both the human and the non-human creation?
What constitutes “good news” for people? What constitutes “good news” for nature?
What do you think of Chris Wright’s assertion that “We can enter the circle of missional response at any point on the circle of human need”? Why is creation care an appropriate starting point today?
How can God’s mission to both people and nature be integrated and complementary?
How would your life (and/or your church’s life) need to change in order to “proclaim the gospel to the whole creation”? What do you see as your personal role in this?

A Major Modern Means of Mission