Environmental Missions. In My Church?

As a church that is active in missions, you understand the connection between spreading the gospel as you work to improve quality of life.

You also probably know, as Jesus did, that it’s difficult to preach the gospel to people who are sick, have no housing or who don’t have clean water to drink.

Perhaps that’s why your church supports missionaries or even organizes mission trips to build decent housing, give needed medical care and provide Christian education as a critical part of spreading the word of Christ.

What you may not realize is that environmental issues such as the condition of farmland, water quality, air quality and erosion are problems that stand side-by-side with poor health, sub-standard housing and lack of food. They are all problems that effect the quality of people’s lives.

Like medical missions or building missions, the goal of environmental missions is to spread the gospel. Environmental Missions is your church sharing your God-given the resources and talents to spread the gospel while you help to improve the condition of people’s lives in areas of the world (including your back-yard) where the condition of the environment is effecting how people live.

EM provides a unique opportunity for your church to expand it’s missions projects and gain wider participation because:

• Unlike medical or engineering missions, most congregations are already well equipped with the skills and tools to do EM projects. Re-storing forests, farmland and watershed require physical labor and tools — items that are readily available.
• There is a both a local and foreign need for EM projects organized into both short-term and long-term missions.  Whether it is organizing a community garden and education (using your land at your church) or restoring a river-bank at a local park or helping farmers in a third-world country understand no-till farming methods, EM provides a wide range of project possibilities and a critical bridge between local and remote, short-term and long term missions.
• EM projects, tend to provide a continued “inter-generational” and long-term connection within your church as project are “owned” and developed over the years. These types of projects tend to build long-term relationships as you become “stewards” and “caretakers” of what you do.

As part of our mission to “mobilize the church to care for Creation”, at Care of Creation, we are prepared to help your church consider environmental missions as part of it’s  outreach. We do this through education, speaking engagements, organizing links with other mission agencies, and consultations.

If you are open to exploring this new, important type of missions, please contact us so that we can share our experiences and, perhaps, launch your church on some new ones. (We would love to participate in your next Missions Conference too!).

Additional Information:

• Expanding Participation in Environmental Missions through Creation Care >>
• Training for Environmental Missions >>
  • Our Father’s World Seminar
  • Consultation of Missions and Creation Care Leaders (2010)
  • Summer Institute of Environmental Missions (2011)