Pastors, science teachers and environmental advocates convened for a weekend retreat at Laurelville in February. Creation Care: Stewards of the Earth, a program jointly sponsored by Mennonite Mutual Aid (MMA), the Church of the Brethren and Laurelville, aimed to encourage participants to persevere in the face of a culture that, in spite of warnings from the science community and pleas from the world’s marginalized peoples, has been slow to change its habits of consumption.

Keynote speakers included David Radcliff, who heads the New Community Project (NCP), and Luke Gascho, director at the Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College and a founding member of the Mennonite Creation Care Network.

Radcliff offered first-hand testimony of his work with NCP, an eco-justice collaborative that sponsors learning tours to threatened habitats and cultures. He highlighted indigenous people residing in the Alaskan Arctic as well as groups living in the equatorial rain forests, sharing images and stories of environmental degradation and its impact on these cultures.

“Thank God for communities who persevere,” Radcliff said. “They are in some ways canaries; helping us sense that perhaps danger is ahead.”

Radcliff’s zeal has caused some to label him as a “troublemaker” and an “environmental wacko”—“You know you’re in some kind of trouble when a Mennonite starts calling you names,” he remarked, sharing an anecdote of a response he received after a presentation in an Anabaptist community—but he nevertheless continues to share the urgency of the Church’s need to respond to environmental issues.

Gascho likewise communicated the imperative for the broader Church to respond to God’s call toward environmental stewardship. “Resurrection brings life to all things,” he told the gathering on Sunday morning, citing the Mennonite Confession of Faith. “The peace God intends for humanity and Creation was revealed most fully in Christ Jesus.”

At Merry Lea, Gascho and other Goshen College staff have established a valuable educational resource for the community, offering nature programs, study courses and hands-on learning opportunities.

Participants were glad for Gascho’s insight into the Mennonite Confession of Faith and its implicit creation care affirmations. “(The Confession statements) just didn’t jump out at me—even as a science teacher—the way they did during the weekend,” said Dan King, a bi-vocational minister and teacher, now pastor at Beech Mennonite Church (Louisville, Ohio). “I came away with an enriched perspective of how creation care is part of who we are and what we believe.”

Jocele Meyer (Fresno, Ohio) added, “Too often creation care and Christian living are separated.” Meyer served in Mennonite Central Committee’s Food & Hunger Concerns office and co-authored Earthkeepers, a book advocating for eco-justice. She described the weekend as a “booster shot” and drew hope from the cross section of generations represented.

Meyer also applauded Gascho and Radcliff’s respective efforts to educate others about the environment and the impacts of our consumer choices. “The more we know about something, the more we care about it,” she said.

Breakout sessions looked at engaging those who are skeptical about climate change, making environmentally conscious consumer and investing decisions, and passing creation care onto a new generation.

During one of the sessions, Wendy Chappell-Dick (Bluffton, Ohio) shared some of the environmental stewardship struggles she faces as a mother to teenage daughters living in a consumer culture. “We have to think about what we’re buying,” she said. “Every time we go shopping, we’re buying our own trash.”

Chappell-Dick has become rather creative in her efforts to reduce her children’s consumption habits, coupling a restricted clothing budget for purchases at retail stores with a virtually blank check for use at thrift shops. “Over time I think that will make a positive change; I hope the ecological message gets through,” she commented.

Carol Bowman, Church of the Brethren Coordinator of Stewardship Formation & Education, affirmed this sort of response. “We have the opportunity to instill values in children long before they enter school,” she said. Bowman presented a toolkit of resources, including children’s books and hands-on learning ideas, during an afternoon workshop entitled, “Will Our Children Care?”

The question loomed throughout the weekend—not just for future generations but also for those represented at the conference—as participants grappled with environmental threats and the implications they have for creation. Perhaps no one voiced a more hopeful response than did Radcliff in his closing benediction:

“May we be so moved by Jesus’ words,
Inspired by his example,
Hope-filled by his presence,
That we choose another way
Breaking into glad song
As we move along toward that day.”