In honor of Earth Day 2009, Tri Robinson, the senior pastor of the
Boise Vineyard and author of
Saving God’s Green Earth: Rediscovering the Church’s Responsibility to Environmental Stewardship, talked to PurposeDriven.com about how his church made its ministry green.
Jesus did not say much about caring for the earth. Why do you say that Christians have a responsibility to be environmental stewards?Jesus taught frequently about stewardship of the things given to us. He also taught about caring for the poor and the environment
is directly related to the poor and impacts them in ways people in more developed countries couldn’t even imagine.
The condition of the environment determines if people can grow food and drink clean water. When Jesus said, “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,” that takes on a whole different understanding when you’ve been to countries in Africa where 80 percent of infant mortality is from diarrheal diseases. The people who are being affected the most by climate change are the ones who live in the low-lying areas of places like Bangladesh. As Christians, we can’t ignore this problem, even though we don’t yet see the direct impact of it in our backyard.
How does Christian environmental stewardship differ (if at all) from traditional environmental stewardship?The action Christians can take isn’t much different, but the motive is. Christians do it because we’re commissioned to do it. Even if we don’t think that the little bit we do is going to have a huge impact, we do it out of obedience. Environmental stewardship is a biblical commission (see Genesis 9).
You’ve admitted you weren’t always an environmentalist—that a very specific incident changed your mind. What happened?In the 1960s, I very much cared for the environment, but put that value aside when I started following Christ and entered into full-time ministry. There was no expression of caring for the environment in the church at that time and I just kind of forgot about it. [But] because of our lifestyle living on a ranch in California, our kids cultivated a deep love for the outdoors.
Before the 2004 election, I was having a conversation about politics with my children, who were now young adults, and they told me how torn they were about the election, being forced to choose between two things they loved—pro-life platform versus pro-environment platform. That’s when I began to take a deeper look at what the Scripture says and examine why I personally had left this value. I realized that by denying this as an important value, I was pushing a huge segment of the population away from the faith. By deriding environmentalists and dismissing their work, we were pushing them away from the Gospel (see Romans 1:20).
What is your church, Vineyard Boise, doing to protect and save the earth?As a result of resurrecting this value with our church (caring for creation had actually been a long-time value in the church until the late 1800s), we started a ministry called “
Let’s Tend the Garden.” It takes a comprehensive approach: from engaging our people in conservation projects, to environmental education, to justice projects that impact the poor. We also have a one-acre naturally grown community garden that is managed by church volunteers that produced more than 13 tons of fresh produce last year. We, in turn, give this produce to the needy in our area through a farmer’s market we host at our benevolence center.
Photo: courtesy of Boise Vineyard Church
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