Posts in category: Shared Stories

In the Wet Tropics bioregion of far north Queensland, member Rowan Shee has propagated seedlings of native rainforest and coastal trees at his own property at Trinity Beach near Cairns. He has donated the plants to nature conservation projects at sites where the tree species are most suited, including a revegetation program on Thomatis Creek. This estuary, a distributary of the Barron River, is naturally becoming larger and the banks are migrating laterally. To halt the erosion process on privately-owned land, a Landcare organisation (Terrain NRM) instigated tree-planting to stabilise the riverbank. A local community organisation was then given charge of the project and Rowan has provided technical advice as well as many hours controlling voracious competing grass and other weeds. Working bees have seen enthusiastic volunteers of many ages planting additional seedlings beside Thomatis Creek.

This story was shared in the Summer 2020 A Rocha Australia ENews.

Fiona Pfennigwerth is a member and kindly supplied the watercolour header for our ENews editions. Here is a bit about her from her website  https://fionapfennigwerth.info/

“I am an Australian artist, based in Newcastle, whose work expresses my love for the natural world and my Christian faith. I love exploring the Australian bush and national parks; and I love depicting them naturalistically in watercolour. I love studying the Scriptures and responding to them visually.

Combining these loves with skills in layout and theological exploration has filled a large part of the last two decades, and flowed out into the production of my three illuminated books, which I self-published on the advice of Eugene Peterson. These books can be viewed here.

This story was shared in the Spring 2021 A Rocha Australia ENews.

Deb Mostert is a Queensland-based artist, and is involved in A Rocha activities around Brisbane. Deb is a contemporary visual artist and an avid bird watcher, with native Australian birds featuring in many of her artworks.

In 2022, Deb and her daughter Meg painted a shorebirds and mangroves mural on a fire water tank at the Environment Centre in Boondall Wetlands in Brisbane.

This mural was commissioned by Brisbane City Council for the 30-year anniversary RAMSAR celebrations. Below are some photos of this work in progress. To check out more of Deb’s work visit https://debmostertartist.com.au/

Recently my pastor took some long service leave, so I asked if I could preach from the Old Testament narrative of Esther. And in my preparation, I floundered. I mean I really floundered—I did so because of the ambiguities of the main protagonists in the story. So, for example:

• Does Esther, the Jewish orphan, willingly take part in the despot King Xerxes’  beauty pageant, or was she forced!? (see Esther 2)
• Is Mordecai’s defiance to the chief antagonist Haman in Esther 3, a petty family dispute carried over for several generations; or does he have more godly reasons to defy the king’s second in command!?

And yet it is the very ambiguities of Esther that make it so relevant to our age.

Is not my behavior as a Christian, ambiguous at times to what Christ has achieved for me on the Cross. At other times, it’s downright rebellious.

Is this not often my behavior to creation care. Oh, I may mouth belief to the cause—but ask me to go without a daily triple shot macchiato, that I might support creation care activities in Africa. Get real!

But as is the Bible as a whole, Esther has some redemptive and restorative messages for us living in the now, not yet, time; including that of Creation Care.

They include:

• We can feel drained, exhausted, and discouraged in making a stand for God and the care of His creation; but there are great examples of courage despite opposition in the Bible and Christian history. Both Esther and Mordecai have pivot points in their lives where God gives them the strength to stand for Him, despite the consequences.
• We need to keep in mind, as Mordecai declares to Esther regarding her role, that we are put on Earth ‘for a time such as this’, and that God can enable us (see Esther 4:15).
• Thus, though Creation Care activities can be opposed by the powerful forces of greed and ignorance, and what we do may feel insignificant, it doesn’t mean that God is not able to bless our work.
• We mustn’t neglect prayer, as this is implicit in the activities of God’s people in the book of Esther. An A Rocha member shared with me recently the difficult experience of arguing the case for habitat maintenance, with stakeholders for whom this is not a great concern. It struck me how much I need to pray for this person (and the stakeholders they’re engaged with!!).
• That we need to keep the endgame in mind. Esther ends with a celebration of their salvation from genocide; the festival of Purim, that is still celebrated today. We look forward to the new heavens and earth, where all will be redeemed, including God’s creation

Trusting that the Lord will bless you in your creation care activities, and that Esther might be an encouragement to you.

Rob Scriven, Wagga Wagga

Rob is married to Kate, has three adult children, and has retired in Wagga Wagga, NSW. He did an MSc at UNSW; and worked in the rangelands (Broken Hill and Hay) as a Soil Conservationist, including the management of ‘Protected Lands’ native vegetation. He was then Manager of Sustainable Landscapes (soil, land & vegetation investments on private land) for the Murrumbidgee Catchment Management Authority. He attends St Aidan’s Presbyterian Church.

This story was shared in the Winter 2021 A Rocha Australia ENews.

Recently, Victorian members helped remove weeds at Cassinia Environmental’s Glenarou property near Broadford, about an hour and a half north of Melbourne. Here is member Greg Gorfine’s reflection about the day:

Our task was to dig out the South African Weed Orchid (Disa bracteata), a highly invasive species that produces a huge number of seeds and compromises the growth of native plants such as lilies and other orchids.

Cool but sunny weather made for ideal conditions so we spread out across a sloping field and soon were meeting our ‘quotas’! It was hard work but an enjoyable day knowing that we were contributing to the rejuvenation of this piece of land.

This story was shared in the Spring 2021 A Rocha Australia ENews.

My early evangelical faith, which stressed the importance of saving souls and social action, led me to train as a nurse/midwife. In 1985 I joined a Christian medical team assisting Cambodians in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border. In 1988 I moved to Cambodia to work with World Vision in a Mother and Child Health program. Later I established a local NGO, Chrysalis, which used improvisational drama to assist disadvantaged people to find value in their life. It was through this work that I discovered the Arts to be an effective tool for assisting people to discover a transformative way of being and doing. In 2007 I left Cambodia with my husband and three young children and moved to live in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia. I soon became aware that this area was experiencing the dire effects of the 2001- 2009 millennium drought. I was deeply saddened to see the natural environment around our home slowly dying. Despite the fact my evangelical faith did not advocate Creation care, I felt a responsibility to care for it. On reflection, I maintain that some of this desire came from my father, who was both a farmer and passionate conservationist in the United Kingdom; and some came from a God-given, but dormant, desire to care for his creation.

Our home was adjacent to some bushland, an environment that was heavily infested with weeds. I started trying to remove some. It was hard work as the invasive grasses have a habit of rapidly multiplying. One day while I was removing one particularly large clump, I discovered hiding underneath it was a small indigenous bush. It had a mass of dainty yellow flowers (being a Pricky Guinea-flower, Hibbertia exutiacies). At that moment, the following thoughts came to my mind: These invasive grasses represent the destructive practices that have occurred in Australia since Europeans arrived. As a result, God’s creation has been oppressed, invaded and destroyed. It is struggling to survive but God hasn’t given up on it because he loves it and will continue to sustain it, just like this little Prickly Guinea-flower.

I felt at that moment God was asking me to speak out and act against this injustice, but also that he had entrusted me with a responsibility to pass on this vital message to evangelical Christians. This, I realized, would not be an easy task, as I considered my inadequate understanding of the biblical reasons for Creation care. I needed to examine the pillars on which my evangelical faith was based, as well as think through the biblical, moral and ethical reasons as to why Christians are to care for God’s creation.

Amongst the many things I studied, I came to realize, as Paul explains in Romans 8: 18- 26, that we are not saved from the world of creation but saved for the world of creation, and in Genesis 2:15 we are called to be God’s “pro-creators, his stewards, his vice-regents for his creation.” Secondly, I was keen to find others who shared my newfound conviction. I was disappointed to be unable to find any in the local evangelical churches, nor could I find an Australian Christian organisation involved in Creation care.

After an extensive internet search, I discovered A Rocha, an international Christian organisation with amazing conservation projects in over 20 countries around the world. I loved their diversity and their values: Christian, Conservation, Community, Cross-cultural and Co-operation. But it was not until 2016 that A Rocha Australia came into existence and I became one of their directors. I also discovered evangelicals involved in the Global Lausanne Movement who were actively promoting Creation care.

I was invited to be part of their 2012 Consultation on Creation Care and Gospel, that led to two primary conclusions:

• Creation care is indeed a ‘gospel issue within the lordship of Christ’, and

• We are faced with a crisis that is pressing, urgent, and that must be resolved in our generation.

From this they produced a Call to Action, and invited Christians and Christian organizations everywhere to signify their agreement with and commitment to its call. I was eager to encourage my evangelical friends to become involved in A Rocha, but soon discovered some of them did not want to spend time looking after the environment and were not ready to adopt the call to a simpler lifestyle, that requires us to live lightly on this earth.

I later realized that this was not because they did not want to get their hands dirty, but more because of their underlying beliefs. They believed, as I had done, that it was more important to tell people about Jesus’ love and message of salvation, as well as help the poor and needy.

I agree that these aspects are central to the Christian faith, but I also believe that caring for our neighbour must extend to caring for God’s creation.

Since that time, I’ve discovered that there are a growing number of theologians writing scholarly books on the Scriptural reasons for creation care, for example, Dave Bookless, Douglas Moo & Jonathan Moo and Steven Bouma-Prediger. But my question remained: How do I help those who remain ambivalent, confused, or resistant? This dilemma is succinctly voiced by Olafur Eliasson, in his 2016 book Why Art has the Power to Change the World,

“[o]ne of the great challenges today is that we often feel untouched by the problems of others and by global issues like climate change, even when we could easily do something to help. We do not feel strongly enough that we are part of a global community, part of a larger we. Giving people access to data most often leaves them feeling overwhelmed and disconnected, not empowered and poised for action.”

I concluded that it was unlikely many of my friends would have an ecological “conversion experience” like mine, nor would they have the opportunity to follow my example by taking time out for formal study, and nor would providing them with appropriate biblical passages necessarily change them.

This led me on a journey to explore alternative ways to transformative change.

My experience in Cambodia with the NGO Chrysalis reminded me of how the arts can act as a catalyst for transformation. As Eliasson writes,

“[a]rt does not show people what to do, yet engaging with a good work of art can connect you to your senses, body, and mind. It can make the world felt. And this felt feeling may spur thinking, engagement, and even action.”

This exploration led me to consider the following question: Could the transformative role I saw the creative arts have in the lives of the disadvantaged people in Cambodian be transferable? Could it assist in changing the attitudes and practices among evangelical Christians towards Creation care?

This led me to enrol in a Doctor of Ministry so I could explore in practical ways to address this question. I developed the following research question: What features of an arts-based experiential workshop are most likely to lead to a transformative wholistic awareness of creation care for Christians to more fully integrate their faith with creation care?

The results of my research demonstrated that my research question had been answered. I have now successfully passed my Doctor of Ministry, but the journey hasn’t ended! It’s time to find a church/parachurch group in which to trial the workshop template.

I live with my husband in Aldinga Beach, south of Adelaide and enjoy helping others of all ages to experience caring for creation, including at the Hart Road wetlands!

– Sally Shaw

This story was shared in the Summer 2020/21 A Rocha Australia ENews.