What is YOUR church doing for EARTH DAY 2008

[charl]

Meh. I would much rather have Christ and him crucified. I want to hear not about my service to the world or my mom but about him coming not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.

I hate it when churches give Jesus regular holidays. Why should he be the focus over the moms on Mother's Day, or fathers, or patriotism, blah blah blah. Now we want to give him one in April too? Well after all that work with Lent and Easter and that I guess Jesus does get a little tiring.

Oh wait no he doesn't.

[charl]

Oh and BTW;

Why not celebrate it and invite the community to join you?

Doesn't like Matthew 6 address this? You know sound no trumpet, stuff about left hands...or something.

[gman]

But, how specific does God get on creation care? Do we attach actions to him or assign biblical mandates to things where this is no such mandate. I think that is where my problem lies. Not that we don't care for creation, but that we go too far in the name of anything is good regardless of the outcome.

[charl]

What are we hoping to accomplish? Trying to win unbelievers with moralism rather than the gospel will only leave you with a whole bunch of pious hypocrites who love the earth and hate Jesus. Sinners need to be confronted with their sinfulness and God's holiness and the work of Christ as mediator. They need this more than they need to know how to recycle. Prioritize.

Christ and him crucified means Christ and him crucified. It is the feeding of the sheep the body and blood of Christ that they need to spiritually survive as they live by that truth in an unbelieving world. If Christians want to care for the earth as God's creation, great. But what does it matter what good deeds they are doing if their ministers are starving them of the gospel? Moralism triumphs yet again.

The Church does not exist to create ridiculous programs or speak to culture, it exists to feed the sheep. The Church serves Christians and Christians speak to culture. Too many churches and ministers are so bloody busy usurping the role of the individual Christian in society they don't even notice when their people perish for lack of knowledge.

I dunno it seems to me that passage condemns promoting your own piety regardless of how you do it. That isn't limited to look at me helping the poor but surely includes look at me helping the poor earth.

[charl]

So you are preaching about what we do for God-but it's not moralism. Okay. What do you think moralism is anyway? Cause from my definition...well that would be it. Textbook.

Like I said-we need to prioritize. I guess we should ask what is the role of the Church-what is unique about the Church? What do we have that no one else does? Creation care? It seems to me many unbelievers care for the creation so the answer is no. What does the Church then have? The good news that God stooped down and reconciled us to himself when we had each turned to our own way? That the Divine Word clothed himself in flesh and lived a perfect life on our behalf and died in our place? That by his death and resurrection he turned away the wrath of the father and crushed Satan, sin and death? That he sends his Spirit to apply this redemption to all that he has set his love on-love that comes completely from his own character and nothing in us? Love that we can not alter by our good or evil deeds?...I could go on. THAT is what we have. THAT is what the sheep need. His blood. His body.

Certainly Christians should live in the light of the gospel and it should affect all facets of life-but how can they do this unless the Church is actually giving the gospel to them? It is not the Church's job to redeem culture. God uses individual Christians to do this in their everyday lives-after empowering them by the preaching of the Word in the Church. And we need to be served the body and blood so we can then serve others. I'll say it again, the Church is for Christians and should not bypass individual Christians to reach the world.

For someone whose passion is the gospel you seem to like to discuss anything but. Even in your statement expressing your love of the gospel you immediately segue back into what you do for God because you love him. The Gospel is about what God has done for us in Christ-that is reconciled us to himself and declared us to be his sons. Certainly we then behave as sons. That is part but not the heart of the gospel. Christianity is so called because it is about Christ.

Apparently Jesus does get tiring for you. We can never exhaust the depths of God's Mercy in plumbing it. My church does not always preach the gospel. If I could find one that did, I would be there today. No one needs the gospel more than Christians. Crap are Lutherans really the only people who get this? Curse you revivalism.

No. Though your use of law, maybe.

Since the average age of my church is about 80, they won't be doing anything I don't think. And I would not appreciate the church that replaced Jesus with such. Even the pagans can do that.

[charl]

If the focus of your religion is what you do and not what Christ has done (and I mean practically as well of course) it's moralistic. Moralism is also about how you keep in God's good graces, how you try to please him and seek rewards from him. It is about you.

Who the heck said that Earth Day was pagan? I don't think it's pagan, just patently unimportant in the face of the Gospel.

Do you do this in every day life too? Every time someone says something you don't like you ask them to find another conversation? That must make redeeming the culture difficult. However I will not hijack anymore with such apparently irrelevant issues.

[gman]

You want ideas, and that is fine, but this is a public forum. The discussion may go in a different direction. You have a right not to participate if you don't care for the direction.
I ask why you raise the original question because I don't personally believe my church needs to do any more than it does. I find earth day to be a largely secular holiday or event predicated on environmental ideas that are under much scrutiny at best. I may be wrong or too simplistic on that.
The paper you presented, along with the creation care site, seem to endorse those ideas. The suggestion is that we should endorse any measures to deal with global warming, carbon pollution, greenhouse gas, etc., even if those problems turn out to not be problems, or the proposed measures are shown to be ineffective. You have every right to believe in that way, just own it. You seem to shy away when someone wants to pin you down on a particular belief or idea. Not everyone does so in order to label you as off the reservation and to dismiss what you say. Many do so to get to a deeper level of discussion.
I don't believe those issues, global warming, carbon pollution, greenhouse gas, etc. are much of a problem, and my church generally doesn't think so either, therefore they won't be doing much of anything for Earthday, except maybe reminding us of our responsibility to not personally trash our environment, and that we must unfortunately obey whatever laws are put in place even if we don't like them.

GMan

[Jonathan]

Whatever my church is doing for Earth Day, they're doing it now.

[corolla1]

...except maybe reminding us of our responsibility to not personally trash our environment

I don't plan on doing much more than that either. I don't know where you find me talking about greenhouse gases or global warming. You seem to being read that into what I wrote for my denom as a resource document. The service I'm planning won't even mention global warming, Gore, green house gases, or any other controversial topic. I'm sticking to Scripture, not the science of it.

As I said, we're also giving out trees.

My church is doing absolutely nothing on earth day. We concern ourselves with preaching the gospel and discipleship. We also emphasize expositional verse by verse teaching of the Bible and we don't speak on the environment at all. Also I see no difference between the Creation Care folks and the Sierra Club tree huggers. As I have said many times, they simply take the Sierra Club position and slap Jesus on it. Until that changes, I personally won't take it seriously either.

[gman]

I don't know where you find me talking about greenhouse gases or global warming. You seem to being read that into what I wrote for my denom as a resource document.

I thought I saw where your document pointed to the creation care sight, or the evangelical declaration. They seem to endorse the ideas I mentioned, from what I can see. You gave your endorsement of that organization back in another thread. If you personally believe those ideas, that is fine. I don't put too much stock in them, and am not afraid to say so. I personally would shy away from any affiliation with them, if they indeed embrace those things. I wouldn't want my church to align with them either. They seem to want to take things which are in doubt and make the bible fit, sort of like taking evolution or some other explanation of how we got here and trying to make the bible fit with it.
Yes, we're getting away from your original question. I'm just trying to get a feel for what your beliefs are regarding the environment since you have presented the resources that you have.

GMan

[charl]

I think this is germane:

I'm sure you all know by now that the Vatican is celebrating earth day by officially declaring not caring for the environment to be a sin.

[calicowriter]

Earth Day's Dirty Little Secret

by Ken Anderson, written April 2006:

On this, the 36th anniversary of Earth Day, it is only fitting to speak of one of its founders, Ira Einhorn.
You won’t find Ira Einhorn’s name listed in any of the Earth Day promotional literature, as the organizers have taken great pains to distance themselves from this man, at least since he became better known for composting his girlfriend in a trunk in his closet for a couple of years in the late 1970s.

Earth Day organizers and publicists don’t want to have anything to do with Ira these days. Since he was convicted of murder, he hasn’t been very useful to them. But that wasn’t always the case. In 1970, during the first Earth Day event, which was televised throughout the globe, Ira Einhorn was on stage as master of ceremonies.
A friend and contemporary of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and acquaintance of authors Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, Timothy Leary, Alvin Toffler, and Isaac Asimov, Einhorn held the floor for a half hour, during the first Earth Day celebration, in Philadelphia, kissing Edmund Muskie on the lips before surrendering the microphone to the Senator from Maine. There is no evidence that Muskie rejected his advances, or that anyone associated with the event had ever voiced any disagreement with Einhorn’s place as a key organizer until after his arrest for the murder of Holly Maddux.
Ira Einhorn knew all of the right people. Executives from Sun Oil and AT&T showered him with support, financial and otherwise. Ira Einhorn was the man who could make Earth Day happen as, it seems, he did, denials notwithstanding.
Due in large part to his influence, Einhorn escaped punishment for his crime for a quarter of a century.
After bludgeoning his girlfriend of five years to death, fracturing her skull in a dozen places, Ira stuffed her body into a trunk, which he packed into a closet where it remained until discovered by the police nearly two years later.
When Holly Maddux disappeared in the fall of 1977, Einhorn was named as a suspect by the girl’s parents, who knew that Einhorn had threatened their daughter with violence. Yet, after briefly questioning him, while the body of his murdered girlfriend lie decomposing in a trunk stored in a closet of his apartment, police accepted his denial of any knowledge of her whereabouts.
When she failed to reappear, the murdered girl’s parents hired an investigator who very quickly came up with sufficient evidence for a warrant to search Einhorn’s apartment. A downstairs neighbor told of a liquid leaking from Einhorn’s apartment into the kitchen below, describing it as being dark in color and smelling of putrefaction. He also testified to hearing a scream, as well as “several sharp thudsâ€

[calicowriter]

A rather pointless tale when there's an expression about throwing a baby out with the bathwater...

Let's not lose sight of the overwhelming abundance of Scripture that says we should care for the earth. But if you don't like the term "earth day" call it "Creation care Sunday" - just be prepared to deal with the evolution creation debate.

And yes, the RC church now calls pollution a sin - they also say we should pray and read the Bible - those crazy catholics! What will they think of next? Maybe we should stop reading our Bibles and end prayer because nothing good comes from Rome.

I wholeheartedly agree that caring for the earth and living simply are godly attributes. I just thought the article was interesting and something that a lot of folks might not know.

As for your crack about the Catholic Church, you ought to do some research. On any Sunday, the Catholic mass includes 3 readings from Scripture -- one from the Old Testament, one from one of the Epistles, and one from one of the gospels. The responsorials are directly from the Psalms. Most Protestant services I have attended have had little if any, Scripture included. Most take a verse or two and expound on them for 30 minutes. Although I agree that a person in love with our Lord will read and be exposed to Scripture more often than on Sundays, for those who don't, they'll hear more of the Bible at a Catholic Church.

Again, not pointing any fingers, just an interesting caveat.

[charl]

And yes, the RC church now calls pollution a sin - they also say we should pray and read the Bible - those crazy catholics! What will they think of next? Maybe we should stop reading our Bibles and end prayer because nothing good comes from Rome.

WTF? Please show where any such negative thing was said about Rome in this thread except by you.

You could also not celebrate earth day at all since it glorifies not creation but the efforts of man. It seems that most of us are going that route.

[executioner]

Our Church(Baptist) and my family is not doing anything special for this Eath Day concept. We as Christians should do everything possible on a daily basis to perserve the quality of Earth. I don't believe the Earth Day concept has a place on the pulpit of a church; I'm sorry but alot of their views are humanistic in nature.

Another note on this matter is our church like me believes that this kind of thing Earth Day, Pro Life Day and other organizations have a place but not on the pulpit. These things are someyhing that should NEVER take the place of the Gospel.