Caring For Creation (The Evangelicals Guide To Climate Change And A Healthy Environment) Order Printed Copy

Author: Paul Douglas & Mitch Hescox
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About the Book

"Caring for Creation" is a comprehensive guide for evangelical Christians on climate change and environmental stewardship. The authors, Paul Douglas and Mitch Hescox, discuss the importance of caring for the environment from a biblical perspective and offer practical solutions for individuals and communities to take action and make a positive impact on the health of the planet. They highlight the connection between faith, science, and environmental conservation, urging readers to be responsible stewards of God's creation for the sake of future generations.

John Wesley

John Wesley, (born June 17, 1703, Epworth, Lincolnshire, England—died March 2, 1791, London), Anglican clergyman, evangelist, and founder, with his brother Charles, of the Methodist movement in the Church of England. John Wesley was the second son of Samuel, a former Nonconformist (dissenter from the Church of England) and rector at Epworth, and Susanna Wesley. After six years of education at the Charterhouse, London, he entered Christ Church, Oxford University, in 1720. Graduating in 1724, he resolved to become ordained a priest; in 1725 he was made a deacon by the bishop of Oxford and the following year was elected a fellow of Lincoln College. After assisting his father at Epworth and Wroot, he was ordained a priest on September 22, 1728. Recalled to Oxford in October 1729 to fulfill the residential requirements of his fellowship, John joined his brother Charles, Robert Kirkham, and William Morgan in a religious study group that was derisively called the “Methodists” because of their emphasis on methodical study and devotion. Taking over the leadership of the group from Charles, John helped the group to grow in numbers. The “Methodists,” also called the Holy Club, were known for their frequent communion services and for fasting two days a week. From 1730 on, the group added social services to their activities, visiting Oxford prisoners, teaching them to read, paying their debts, and attempting to find employment for them. The Methodists also extended their activities to workhouses and poor people, distributing food, clothes, medicine, and books and also running a school. When the Wesleys left the Holy Club in 1735, the group disintegrated. Following his father’s death in April 1735, John was persuaded by an Oxford friend, John Burton, and Col. James Oglethorpe, governor of the colony of Georgia in North America, to oversee the spiritual lives of the colonists and to missionize the Native Americans as an agent for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Accompanied by Charles, who was ordained for this mission, John was introduced to some Moravian emigrants who appeared to him to possess the spiritual peace for which he had been searching. The mission to the indigenous peoples proved abortive, nor did Wesley succeed with most of his flock. He served them faithfully, but his stiff high churchmanship antagonized them. He had a naive attachment to Sophia Hopkey, niece of the chief magistrate of Savannah, who married another man, and Wesley unwisely courted criticism by repelling her from Holy Communion. In December 1737 he fled from Georgia; misunderstandings and persecution stemming from the Sophia Hopkey episode forced him to go back to England. In London John met a Moravian, Peter Böhler, who convinced him that what he needed was simply faith, and he also discovered Martin Luther’s commentary on the Letter of Paul to the Galatians, which emphasized the scriptural doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. On May 24, 1738, in Aldersgate Street, London, during a meeting composed largely of Moravians under the auspices of the Church of England, Wesley’s intellectual conviction was transformed into a personal experience while Luther’s preface to the commentary to the Letter of Paul to the Romans was being read. From this point onward, at the age of 35, Wesley viewed his mission in life as one of proclaiming the good news of salvation by faith, which he did whenever a pulpit was offered him. The congregations of the Church of England, however, soon closed their doors to him because of his enthusiasm. He then went to religious societies, trying to inject new spiritual vigour into them, particularly by introducing “bands” similar to those of the Moravians—i.e., small groups within each society that were confined to members of the same sex and marital status who were prepared to share intimate details of their lives with each other and to receive mutual rebukes. For such groups Wesley drew up Rules of the Band Societies in December 1738. For a year he worked through existing church societies, but resistance to his methods increased. In 1739 George Whitefield, who later became an important preacher of the Great Awakening in Great Britain and North America, persuaded Wesley to go to the unchurched masses. Wesley gathered converts into societies for continuing fellowship and spiritual growth, and he was asked by a London group to become their leader. Soon other such groups were formed in London, Bristol, and elsewhere. To avoid the scandal of unworthy members, Wesley published, in 1743, Rules for the Methodist societies. To promote new societies he became a widely travelled itinerant preacher. Because most ordained clergymen did not favour his approach, Wesley was compelled to seek the services of dedicated laymen, who also became itinerant preachers and helped administer the Methodist societies. Many of Wesley’s preachers had gone to the American colonies, but after the American Revolution most returned to England. Because the bishop of London would not ordain some of his preachers to serve in the United States, Wesley controversially took it upon himself, in 1784, to do so. In the same year he pointed out that his societies operated independently of any control by the Church of England. Toward the end of his life, Wesley became an honoured figure in the British Isles.

God, Make Us Bold About Jesus

It’s been said that the content of a prayer shapes the one who prays it, because we tend to pray what we love, and what we love makes us who we are. And this is not only true of individuals, but of churches too. Like when the early church once prayed, Now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus. (Acts 4:29–30) Of all the things they might have prayed — and of all things churches should pray at various times — the fledging church in the early pages of Acts wanted God to give them boldness: “Grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness.” We as twenty-first-century pastors and churches can learn from this first-century prayer, but to do so, we need to first go back one chapter. Words Filled with Jesus The apostles Peter and John were walking to the temple one afternoon when they encountered a lame man. He had been lame from birth. The man was doing what he was always doing: asking for money from people passing by. But on this particular day, something unexpected happened. The man passing by responded, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” (Acts 3:6). In an instant, the man was healed. He leapt up and began to walk. He entered the temple “walking, leaping, and praising God” (Acts 3:8). The scene drew a crowd, so Peter did what Peter was always doing. He preached. His sermon was full of crystal-clear witness to the person and purpose of Jesus. He is the Holy and Righteous One (verse 14), the Author of Life and the one whom God has raised from the dead (verse 15). Jesus is the reason, the only reason, why the lame man was healed (verse 17). Then Peter proceeds to show that the Hebrew Scriptures had long foretold Jesus, from Moses in Deuteronomy and God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis, to all the prophets “from Samuel and those who came after him” (Acts 3:24). It has always been about Jesus, and people’s response, now, must unequivocally be to repent (Acts 3:19, 26). New World Breaking In These Jewish leaders were “greatly annoyed because [Peter and John] were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (Acts 4:2). The problem wasn’t only that Peter and John were witnessing to Jesus’s own resurrection, but that they were saying Jesus’s resurrection has led to the inbreaking of the resurrection age. As Alan Thompson writes, “In the context of Acts 3–4, Jesus’s resurrection anticipates the general resurrection at the end of the age and makes available now, for all those who place their faith in him, the blessings of the ‘last days’” (The Acts of the Risen Lord Jesus, 79). That, in fact, was what the healing of the lame man was declaring. The new creation had invaded the old. “Jesus is the climax of all of God’s saving purposes, and we cannot ignore this without eternal consequences.” In the resurrection of Jesus, everything has changed. He is the climax of all of God’s saving purposes, and we cannot ignore this without eternal consequences. This message ruffled the feathers of the Jewish leaders, and so they arrested Peter and John and put them on trial for all that happened that day. “By what power or by what name did you do this?” they demanded (Acts 4:7). Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, and again with a crystal-clear witness, says the lame man was healed because of Jesus. Jesus is the Messiah who was crucified and raised, and who was foretold in the Hebrew Scriptures. Specifically, Peter says that Jesus is the stone mentioned in Psalm 118:22, the stone that would be rejected by the builders but then become the cornerstone. The stakes could not be higher. Only in Jesus could one be saved (Acts 4:12). Outdone by Fishermen The Jewish leaders were astonished. They could not reconcile Peter and John’s boldness with the fact that they were “uneducated, common men” (Acts 4:13). These were neither teachers nor even pupils, but fishermen. Fishermen. That agitated the Jewish leaders all the more. These unskilled regular Joes, as it were, had been teaching the people! And now they ventured to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures before these skilled Jewish interpreters, telling them who Jesus was, according to the Scriptures, and who they were, according to the Scriptures. These Jewish leaders saw their “boldness” (Acts 4:13), but this wasn’t merely a reference to their emotional tone. Peter and John’s boldness wasn’t mainly about their zeal or behavior — it was about what they had to say. This kind of boldness is repeatedly connected to speech in Acts, so much so that another way to render “boldness” in many passages would be “to speak freely or openly.” That’s what Peter and John had done. They had spoken clearly, freely, openly, boldly about Jesus from the Hebrew Scriptures — and they had done so under intense intimidation. As they watched this unfold, even the Jewish leaders began to connect some dots. “They recognized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). So how did these untrained fishermen learn to interpret the Scriptures like that? How could they speak so confidently about the meaning of Scripture when they had never been taught? Well, because they had been taught — by Jesus himself. They had been with Jesus, and so they were unusually bold. They spoke of Jesus clearly, both of his person and work, on the grounds of what the Scriptures say, even when it might have cost them their lives. Voices Lifted Together This is the boldness the church pleads for in Acts 4:29–30. The Jewish leaders had warned and threatened Peter and John to stop talking about Jesus, but eventually they had to release the men from custody. Peter and John went straight to their friends to report what happened. These friends of Peter and John, the nascent church in Jerusalem, “lifted their voices together to God” (Acts 4:24). Their corporate prayer was as rich with the Old Testament’s witness to Jesus as Peter’s sermon was. They knew the person of Jesus. They knew why he had come. And they knew how unpopular this message would be. And what did they pray? They did not pray for articulate positions on the current cultural issues, nor for increased dialogue with those of other faiths, nor for the ability to refute this or that ism, nor for the development of a particularly Christian philosophy or culture (all things we might pray for at certain times in the church). None of these are part of the church’s prayer in Acts 4. Rather, they prayed for boldness to speak the word of God. They asked God to give them the kind of speech Peter and John had modeled — to testify clearly about who Jesus is from the word of God, no matter the cost, as the new creation continues to invade the old. Do our churches ever pray like this today? Do we lack a similar heart? A similar perspective? Or both? And yet our cities need our boldness every bit as much as Jerusalem did in Peter and John’s day. They need the crystal-clear witness of who Jesus is and what he has come to do. Praying for Revival What if the church of Jesus Christ, in all her local manifestations, was marked by a singular passion to know Jesus and make him known? This is the true priority of the church in every age and culture. “The best, most important thing we ever have to say is what we have to say about Jesus.” We are all about Jesus, and the best, most important thing we ever have to say is what we have to say about him. Our failures to live up to this calling are reminders of our need for revival — of our need to plead with God for boldness. Like the early church, may our heart continually beat to testify to Jesus’s glory and to what he demands of the world. Church, this is who we are. Recover it, as needed, and live it out — even though it’s the last thing our society wants to hear from us. Our society wants the church to be “helpful” on society’s terms — what J.I. Packer called the “new gospel,” a substitute for the biblical gospel, in his introduction to Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. Whereas the chief aim of the biblical gospel is to teach people to worship God, Packer explains, the concern of the substitute only wants to make people feel better. The subject of the biblical gospel is God and his ways; the subject of the substitute is man and the help God offers him. The market demands the substitute, and those who refuse to cater to it are at the risk of being considered irrelevant or worse. Against that mounting pressure, we should pray that we would speak clearly, freely, openly, boldly about Jesus from the Bible, no matter the cost. Would this not be the sign of revival? Would God not answer our prayers like he did for that first church? When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. (Acts 4:31) Article by Jonathan Parnell Pastor, Minneapolis, Minnesota