Missional Creation Care
This edition of the Mission Round Table is offered as a contribution to the exploration of the place of creation care in mission. It interleaves missiological reflections with accounts of creation care ministry from different contexts in Asia and Africa. It includes OMF’s statement on the theological basis for creation care, which was developed by the Fellowship in 2013.
Guest Editor
David Gould, OMF Creation Care Advocate
David is OMF’s Creation Care Advocate; he is tasked with exploring the growing ecological challenges, their impacts on the peoples of East Asia, and appropriate missional responses from OMF. He worked as an architect in the UK before he and his wife Ruth joined OMF in 2002.
Contents
Creation Care in the Mission of CIM and OMF: People and Places
David Gould provides an overview of creation care in the mission of CIM/OMF and brief descriptions of some helpful recently-published English-language books on this theme.
OMF’s Theological Basis for Creation Care
This statement explores God’s purposes and concern for his creation. It does not attempt to address every question that can be raised, but rather seeks to foster caring for creation as part of what it means to live as obedient disciples of Christ.
Creation, Gospel, and Mission
Chris Wright reflects on the connections between creation, gospel, and mission, and some of its eschatological implications. He also comments on the statement in the Lausanne Cape Town Commitment that “creation care is … a gospel issue within the Lordship of Christ.” He shows that “ecological action now is both a creational responsibility from the Bible’s beginning, and also an eschatological sign of the Bible’s ending— and new beginning.”
From Creation to New Creation: Missions and the Natural World
Walter McConnell, the new International Coordinator for Mission Research at OMF, examines what the Bible says on the themes of creation, dominion, and new creation, and their application for missions. He calls the Christian reader to develop a good biblical theology of creation that explains how we are to relate to environmental and ecological issues.
Can We Serve the Earth without Worshipping it? Mission, Missions, and Monkeys in South Asia
Lowell Bliss, who has written a book entitled Environmental Missions: Planting Churches and Trees, recounts how his commitment to creation care grew out of his churchplanting ministry in South Asia. He explores the connections between creation care and worship of the Creator, and the interrelationships between five marks of mission, including creation care.
Church Planting and Creation Care Among the Mangyan in Mindoro, Philippines
Jocelyn Dino, a former journalist and current OMF missionary working in community development in the Philippines, tells the story of OMF’s engagement with integral mission among the Mangyan tribes of Mindoro in the Philippines. The fruit of this work has included liberation from spiritual bondage, the birth of a missional church movement, and transformation of the relationship of the Mangyan to their land.
Gospel, Land, Community: Creation Care in the Mission of God
Mike Griffiths uses biblical precedents to explore issues of place and land-use in the context of mission in communities elsewhere in Southeast Asia. He demonstrates that creation care goes beyond issues of personal practice, and extends to seeking God’s just rule to community life, changing the way people relate to God, each other, and to the land.
Alternative Technology and Mission
Joel Chaney and Gareth Selby give examples of how creation care ministry can extend beyond sustainable food production to include alternative technology, and how this has provided opportunities for evangelism.
