Prayers of gratitude and intercession

Colombia 

Now Israel, what does the Lord your God desire from you? … love him, serve him with all your heart and in all your life, and observe his commands… You see, What does it mean to worship God and to walk in his ways while keeping in mind that “the heavens and the earth and everything in it belong to God”? And what does this imply for us as a church in our present times?. (Deuteronomy 10:12-14, ISV)  

What does it mean to worship God and to walk in his ways while keeping in mind that “the heavens and the earth and everything in it belong to God”? And what does this imply for us as a church in our present times?

Since 2016, a small group from our Teusaquillo Mennonite congregation in Bogotá, Colombia, began to meet to study creation care. We were concerned about the environmental crises that we see in the country and in the world (frequent droughts or floods) and the serious impact this has – especially on less privileged communities where our brothers and sisters are also present.  

We began to share with each other what we knew about the climate crisis and its impact, and to study it in the light of  the Bible. 

We read together sections of books such as: Salvation Means Creation Healed by Howard A. Snyder, Earth Trek: Celebrating and Sustaining God’s Creation by Joanne Moyer, Creation: The Apple of God’s Eye by Justo Gonzalez, and the Call to Action of the Latin American Lausanne/WEA Creation Care Network. From this ad hoc study group, a “Creation Care Committee” emerged to promote this issue among the congregation. 

From the beginning, it was clear to us that we wanted to bring this issue to the whole congregation, not only in theory, but to put it into practice in our own lives. 

We were given the opportunity to lead a service: we chose songs, biblical texts and a teaching on the theme.  

A second action was to hire a seamstress from our congregation to make cloth bags for church members to carry their purchases. These bags carried the slogan: “Caring for creation, we follow Jesus Christ. Genesis 9:16: Re-evaluate, Reject, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.” 

The bags have a double purpose: to educate and to be a practical alternative to disposable plastic bags when shopping. Some bags were given as thank you gifts to people who served during the year in different ministries of the church, and others were sold to members of the congregation who requested them. 

The COVID-19 pandemic activated the YouTube broadcasting of our congregation’s Sunday services. It provided our creation care committee with a wonderful opportunity to continue offering information and practical suggestions to the congregation.  

For months, we prepared short videos (2-3 minutes), and presented them before the closing of each virtual service. We included topics such as: conscious consumption, care for water, minimizing and managing waste in our homes, deforestation and mining. 

We organized face-to-face workshops on healthy eating and on how to recycle. The latter workshop was done in collaboration with members of the congregation who make their living collecting recycling. We brought packaging, jars and wrappers and learned to distinguish which ones can be recycled and which ones cannot. While doing so, we also discovered how much unnecessary material we receive when shopping in supermarkets and stores.  

We also learned from our brothers and sisters who earn their living by recycling how hard and poorly paid this work is. Many recyclers live in precarious situations, though they themselves provide a fundamental service. 

So, we teach what congregation members can do at home, but in addition, we examine our practices as a congregation. 

For example, on Sundays at the end of the service, people have a coffee while they talk and greet each other. We asked ourselves: what cups should we use to serve the coffee? Styrofoam, paper or hard plastic? In the end, we opted for reusable hard plastic cups, acknowledging that this alternative does require the use of water and someone to wash them every time. We realize that there are no actions that are pure and free from environmental impact, and that there will always be pros and cons to choose from, but we try to make improvements each time.  

We recently carried out, as a group, a methodical and guided self-evaluation of the impact of our church building and our practices on the environment, which led us to identify several areas for improvement. We changed the lighting to LED bulbs and included water saving devices in our toilet tanks, among other changes. All of this is helping us to achieve greater congregational coherence. 

The Creation Care Committee has had its own challenges. Many times, work and family occupations make it difficult to maintain the consistency we would like, but this minimal structure has helped us sustain the theme in the congregation. 

The recognition and support received from the pastor and the leadership group of the church has also been key.  

Our emphasis has been largely on our personal and corporate practices to care for God’s heaven and earth. But we are also aware that much of the environmental damage and its solutions lie in policies and actions of companies and government, and social practices that go beyond the scope of our individual efforts. 

How can we influence social and business policies and practices toward greater environmental responsibility? 

How can we as a church show solidarity and help those who suffer most from resource scarcity or environmental deterioration?  

We continue to ponder about this and seek ways to honour God and follow  God’s ways. 

—Written by the Creation Care Group of Iglesia Menonita de Teusaquillo, Bogotá, Colombia

Indonesia

I cannot forget the high tide flooding of 23-25 May 2022.

As pastor of GKMI Sidodadi in Semarang in Central Java province, Indonesia, I still recount the anxieties and panic of the community. Our church building is just 10 minutes’ walk from Tanjung Mas Seaport from where the  flood came.  

Seawater ran down so fast, hitting the pier embarkment and flooding the area. Our church and people’s settlements were flooded. The water level was as high as an adult’s hip. We were shocked, especially those who worked near the pier. 

The workers panicked when they saw the seawater suddenly rushing into the factory. None of the workers came out of the factory with their clothes dry. Some even needed the help of heavy vehicles. It was very chaotic. 

The breach of the water embankment (due to the great pressure and rising sea levels) inundated people’s settlements for three days.  

In the afternoon, the sea began to rise and inundate residents’ settlements and the seawater began to recede again at midnight before dawn. This tidal flood took place for three days. Electricity had to be turned off. People could not work during the flood.

Not a few people were forced to move their place of residence temporarily for health and safety reasons. 

Climate change culprit

According to the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), the cause of the tidal flood was the natural phenomenon of perigee, in which the earth is at the closest distance to the moon.

In recent years, the height of the sea level increased and the embankment at the port could not hold the water. It is also believed that the increase of the sea level was due to global warming.

The people of the port area knew that the coastal areas of northern Semarang and the neighbouring area of Sayung, Demak, are often hit hard by high tide floods. 

Many houses in the coastal area must be abandoned by the owners because the area – which was once comfortable to live in – has been inundated by seawater. 

This tidal flood disrupted the community’s activities. Daily activities were turned into activities on how to save family members and property. Many houses and household appliances suffered permanent damage. 

Today, we are grateful that the embankment was repaired so that the seawater cannot hit our homes. Community activities have returned to normal. The people, however, need to be vigilant because unexpected tidal floods can take place at any time. We are aware that the increasing volume and pressure of seawater amid global warming and climate change can destroy our neighbourhood again. 

Bearing one another’s burdens

During the high tide hit, 55 families of the GKMI congregation who live around the church suffered from the disaster. Some of them were forced to flee to another safe place. 

On the first and second day of the flood, these families could not have sufficient food because their houses were inundated by seawater. On the third day, the condition improved because they began to receive assistance from different groups and other GKMI congregations. 

Since my house was not inundated by seawater, I used it to cook food and distribute relief items to our congregation and surrounding communities affected by the disaster.  

We received daily needs items such as rice, eggs, noodles, cleaning supplies, mattresses. Our members packed and distributed these items to the 55 families and to other survivors in our community. 

It was heartwarming to see that our church members, although they experienced difficulties because of the flood, could help each other and the others across religious and ethnic boundaries. 

I believe that God wants us to serve one another with love in times of trouble. The apostle Paul says that we must “bear one another’s burdens” because in this way we shall “fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2-5). God’s power was shown to our congregation during the tidal flood. We not only serve our members but also those  in need.  

As I contemplate the natural disaster, I can see that the ministry of love invites us to bring about justice toward others. But I also know that the breach of the embankment shows that nature and our environment are not doing well.  

No matter how solid the embankment is built, one day it will not be able to contain the strong waves and sea pressures of which volumes continue to increase as a result of global climate change. 

Our earth is suffering. Human behaviour has caused ecological damage. In addition, our greed brings about exploitations on earth. As God’s people, we must remember that God gave humans the duty and responsibility to “work and care for” the earth and all that is in it. We must not destroy the earth’s riches. We must restore these. If nature is angry, humans will receive its consequences. 

—Basaria Dwi Febrina Sianturi serves at Gereja Kristen Muria Indonesia (GKMI) Sidodadi in northern Semarang,  Central Java, Indonesia. 

Canada

Early in January I took my kids to our local indoor ice rink to skate. The place was packed, and people were frustrated. All-tosoon we were shooed off the ice to make way for an afternoon hockey game. The one-hour public skate was clearly not enough to meet the community’s need. It wasn’t until we got home that we realized the rink was packed because nobody was able to skate outside.  

In our part of the world, it’s not uncommon for a park to have an outdoor ice sheet; for families to flood a part of their yard; or for frozen ponds to be a pressed into service as hockey rinks.  

This year, none of that has worked. It simply hasn’t been cold enough. Now we rely on refrigeration. 

When a river floods that doesn’t flood very often, when a forest burns hotter or more quickly than expected, when a storm brings more wind and rain than usual, when a drought doesn’t seem to end, when ponds don’t freeze, we ask, “Is this climate change?” And inevitably the meteorologists stumble and stammer and try to explain concepts that don’t fit into sound bites.  

The meteorologists know that people want a definitive answer, even though it’s not possible to attribute individual weather events to climate change. People want an answer because the want to muster more support for their politics. The story of climate change in Anglophone North America is a story of disagreement and partisanship.

Katharine Hayhoe, a Canadian climate scientist living in Texas, often explains the impact of climate change on the weather by saying that it’s like playing with unfair dice. In the board game of weather and life we’re now more likely to roll harmful numbers. 

The UK-based website Carbon Brief has a useful map that links severe weather events around the world with formal studies exploring the relationship of these events to climate change. Zoom in on North America and you’ll see references to the British Columbia floods of 2021, the rains from Tropical Storm Imelda in 2019, the Alberta wildfires of 2016, the many California wildfires in recent decades, the relatively recent reduction in the flow of the Colorado River, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and many, many other devastating weather events.  

When you put it all together it’s clear that the dice are not rolling like they once did. The weather in North America is more charged with extremes. We’re losing more than traditions like outdoor skating. 

A couple of years ago, I interviewed more than a dozen Christian leaders to find out what barriers were preventing their communities from doing more to care for God’s creation. A few said their community didn’t see the connection between caring for people and caring for their natural home. A few said that, with declining church participation, they didn’t have the energy or the resources to take on anything new. What almost all of them said, however, was that caring for creation was seen as a divisive political issue.  

Climate change is impacting our world, but many leaders are hesitant to get engaged. 

Part of the reason creation care, including responding to climate change, is so contentious is because many North Americans are still coming to terms with their history. A recent paper published in The Lancet Public Health posits that the Global North is responsible for 92% of the world’s excess CO2 emissions. It’s hard for us to know how to respond to such an indictment, and so we obfuscate, deny and fight back. 

Yet it is here, in the face of injustice and complacency, that our Anabaptist theology and practices presses us to engage.  

Anabaptists join other Christians in believing that the creation story implies that the role of human creatures is to care for and to preserve God’s creation. Our Anabaptist theology prompts us to be moved to action by the suffering caused by our nation’s wealth and runaway consumption.  

We pray too for a movement of God’s Spirit that will make plain the divisive tricks of the evil one and call our communities to repentance, to turn from harm-inducing greed to shalom-generating care.

—Anthony Siegrist is a former Mennonite pastor who now works for A Rocha Canada, which is part of a global family of Christian environmental organizations. 

This article grew from a conversation within MWC’s Creation Care Task Force regarding whether a solar how-to guide for churches that Mennonite Creation Care Network had produced for a US context would be appropriate for a global audience. 

How solar energy in the Global South improves lives 

Climate anxiety may be a new term coined in the Global North, but it is not a new experience for communities that depend on rain-fed subsistence farming. I first joined the adults in my family in worrying about the weather when I was 8 years old. 

In farming communities, talking about the weather is not small talk – it is everything. The weather is a major determinant for quality of life: it affects water, food and energy security. When a planting season comes late, there is anxiety. In my childhood, each day after 25 November was a harbinger of doom: the potential harvest for corn reduces significantly each day.  

In my early years, I was drawn into the complexities of drought and implications for the well being and survival of my relatives and their communities in rural Matabeleland. Other fears haunted my childhood as well. I feared the spread of genocidal killings and the traumatic speech from urban communities toward climate migrants. Waves of my relatives were displaced by both drought and death.  

All these things were inextricably intertwined.  

As a small child, I wanted to be powerful enough to be part of the solution to the complex problems I saw. Therefore, I studied rural and urban planning and have worked and done research in rural and urban development since 1996. I’ve thought a lot about what authentic sustainability and resilience would look like in my context. I believe these principles can be adapted to other regions as well.  

My vision for Southern Africa has three interrelated elements: general access to off-the grid solutions like solar power; empowerment of women and girls as dignified agents in local peace and development spaces; and re-tooling and re-agrarianizing to mitigate negative impacts of outmigration from rural communities. 

In this article, I would like to show how these three issues are interrelated and what it would mean for rural communities in Zimbabwe if they could access solar panels and the skills to maintain these systems.  

In the United States, a middle-class church that goes solar has the satisfaction of knowing that they are keeping carbon out of the atmosphere. Once the panels are paid off, they may have more money for their ministries; but using renewable energy is not likely to change members’ standard of living or affect their opportunities for jobs and education. 

In Zimbabwe, nearly half the population does not have access to electricity.1 Yet with more than 320 days of sunshine annually, it is one obvious off-grid solution. Access to renewable energy can empower women, transform people’s lives, enable education, jumpstart development and heal the land.  

Solar power can help rural communities protect their local ecologies and watersheds. Solar panels are not perfect, but at this point, they are the cleanest, least destructive form of energy we know. A church powered by solar is a witness to God’s desire for shalom for all people. Lives are enriched by energy, produced at a lower environmental cost, on a scale that invites living within the limits of God’s free gifts.  

Solar is a women’s issue

In Southern Africa during the colonial period, workers, mostly men, were pulled in as labour for mining and paid urban work. The bush war and later, a tribal cleansing affecting the Midlands and western region of the country forced more men to flee for refuge in neighbouring countries. According to patriarchal cultural norms, women remained at home to hold that space and take care of its demands. 

In Zimbabwe, almost 70% of the population is rural and most of that population comprises women and girls. It then falls upon them to do the bulk of the work of food production, finding firewood, hauling water and foraging. All these tasks can take hours and require covering large distances. 

This makes energy transformation a women’s issue that requires women’s involvement.

Solar paves the way for education and development

When women and girls in rural communities can access energy, it frees up time for other tasks. With a pump and a borehole in place for clean, potable drinking water, other kinds of infrastructure development like irrigation become easier, too.

What might women and girls do with the additional time? It can be re-appropriated. Electric lighting can mean more time for study after the chores are done. Women and girls will also experience better health outcomes when smoky cookfires are replaced with clean energy. Access to energy can also attract teachers to rural schools that lacked energy and water. Access to energy also means improved functionality of healthcare centres.  

Solar reduces deforestation and carbon emissions

Women are part of deforestation for want of firewood for cooking. They need assistance to disconnect from unsustainable fuel sources.  

Rural electrification has been an ongoing strategic program of the Government of Zimbabwe since 2002; however it has not gone as fast as planned. Rampant deforestation looms large in both rural and urban areas. Off-grid solutions such as solar projects are a faster option for closing the energy gap that continues through overdependence on firewood for domestic use.  

Solar can heal the relationship between the land and its people

I believe we must accompany rural communities as they nurture their spaces, heal their soil, heal interpersonal and inter-group relationships and help people embrace one another and the land. I would love for our communities to keep thinking more about what we can do with locally available resources. The grass is not necessarily greener elsewhere; climate change is hitting the whole world. Off-grid solutions can reorient production and offer a path to innovating with what we have. 

Pathways to solar access 

Women must be part of the solution

Churches owe a lot to women’s participation. Government structures mostly have men at the helm and seem to marginalize women. However, grassroots programs depend a great deal on women’s agency as the bulk of the resident population.  

Giving women access to harnessing solar energy is a very direct way of rehumanizing and redignifying women and girls as equal, honoured partners in development. Power-with that has responsible access to means of production is likely to go a long way in connecting women to their local economy and its monetization.  

This power-with could receive a boost through barrier-crossing leadership that supports roles, participation, and visions of women and girls. Girls in school and out of school need to hear that we need them to be powerful and supported as they take their place producers, nurturers and consumers in local communities and beyond. 

Authentic, productive power should be available to women and girls as producers of market-worthy goods and services. I would love to see women and girls become solar engineers, creating tools, implements, and off-grid solutions. I want them to have the wherewithal to maintain a dam and waterworks; or to keep irrigation equipment running. They need to be equal partners in contributing to household livelihoods.  

Churches and schools are part of the solution 

Churches have had long staying power at the grassroots level. If the solarization of churches can begin, this would strengthen the work of women’s clubs, saving and lending groups and other important communal efforts that meet in the safe spaces of church structures.  

Other community facilities would make good partners as well. Local schools, including Bible schools and seminaries can function more sustainably by producing their own food. This would diversify income sources, reduce tuition and increase staff retention in the long run. Solarization can run concurrently with intense reforestation and other watershed healing interventions. 

Networks for support 

Vibrant networks that share information, share stories from their contexts, and strike partnerships that can help communities access resources for harnessing solar energy are an essential point of organizing for sustainability. Through regional representatives and global connections, MWC offers those bridges and conduits for support. 

I am interested in birthing such a collaboration between Anabaptist agencies as part of the strategic means for sustaining holistic creation care across the African continent. Anabaptist churches, schools, agencies, and their adjacent communities are free to contact me at okuhlen@icloud.com for movement building toward improved gospelling with creation care at heart.

‚Äî‚ÄØSibonokuhle Ncube, from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, is a member of Mennonite World Conference’s Creation Care Task Force and co-regional director of Mennonite Mission Network in Africa and Europe.  

1 Figures from 2019, www.macrotrends.net/ countries/ZWE/zimbabwe/electricity-accessstatistics 

Remove far from me falsehood and lying;  give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that I need, or I shall be full, and deny you, and say, “Who is the Lord?”  or I shall be poor, and steal, and profane the name of my God. (Proverbs 30:8-9, NRSV)

As I began to write these words, Cyclone Freddy was wreaking havoc in Malawi and Mozambique. As I thought about our congregations there, I was reminded of the words I heard from a participant in our last Assembly: “Creation care is a topic of interest to the churches in the north. We are more interested in spiritual matters.” With that phrase, a leader from one of our churches stated his disagreement with how Mennonite World Conference included creation care as an essential theme in the 2022 global Assembly. 

Given the reality of climate change and the crises caused by it in recent years, such a statement surprised me. Climate issues have become another issue of political polarization in our societies. Amid fear and guilt, arguing about facts and fake news, is it possible to find hope and healing for a divided world? Can we speak of our call to care for creation as a profoundly spiritual issue that goes beyond the current climate crisis? 

Following the teachings of the Scripture, the spiritual disciplines of simple living and contentment have been a part of Anabaptist spirituality for many years. We can recall here the biblical ideas of

• living with what is necessary (cf. Luke 11:3),
• stopping work to rest (cf. Exodus 20:10),
• avoiding accumulation (cf. Luke 12:15-21),
• not stressing about economic needs (cf. Luke 12:22-31) and
• practicing generosity (cf. Luke 18:22-25).

These biblical teachings and others have shaped the Christian disciplines of simple living and contentment for centuries. These disciplines go directly against the values of a society that wastes and consumes excessively, that encourages the search for happiness in material things, and that encourages the egocentric accumulation of wealth as a means to achieve security. The climate crisis that today threatens to destroy our planet is primarily the result of our voracious appetite that consumes without being satisfied and does not spare the consequences of a life that always needs more in its vain search for satisfaction, identity and affirmation. 

In our Anabaptist tradition, how we live our everyday life is a profoundly spiritual issue. The decisions we make about our lifestyle are deeply spiritual. Talking about how they affect the environment, taking into account the divine invitation to care for and administrate creation (cf. Genesis 2:15) is not only spiritual; it is an urgent imperative in the face of the growing climatic calamities that affect the most vulnerable communities in the world, where, by the way, most of our local congregations are located today. 

These are some reasons why Mennonite World Conference established a global, multicultural task force (Creation Care Task Force) to lead our Communion on this issue. That is why this issue of Courier discusses topics related to the care of creation from different cultural and theological perspectives. That is why we celebrate the creation of resources and initiatives such as those shown in the video Transmission Latin America, where churches from various places share how their faith impacts their relationship with nature. 

I pray that our global community grows in creation care and that my life may develop more and more of the disciplines of simple living and contentment because, as Gandhi said, we need to “live simply so others may simply live.” 

— César García, MWC general secretary, originally from Colombia, lives in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.