by Ashtyn Adams Psalm 23 (CEB) |
But there were two ingredients included in the mix that are not always present in such a group of artists – humility and affection. These modern-day psalmists came together and were able to be collaborative co-creators by leaving their egos at the door. Consequently, their interconnected kinship with each other and fellow members of Creation was keenly felt. Perhaps this is the first step for all of us in our own creative responses on behalf of creation justice. Creation is not only waiting for us. Creation believes in us and knows that we are capable of doing what it will take to mend, heal, and repair this farm called Earth. One way we can do that today is by supporting Creation Justice Ministries through a financial gift. Please join me as you are able. |
Contact:
Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade, Lexington Theological Seminary
- lschade@lextheo.edu • 610-420-6861
- allen@thebtscenter.org • 207-400-6262
- avery@creationjustice.org • 785-217-6784
Lexington, Ky. – Lexington Theological Seminary (LTS) has received a $1.25 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. for their project, “Compelling Preaching for a Climate-Changed World.” LTS will partner with The BTS Center and Creation Justice Ministries on the initiative that aims to equip preachers with training, resources, support networks, and research for addressing the urgency of the climate crisis and other environmental issues.
The effort is being funded through Lilly Endowment’s Compelling Preaching Initiative. The aim of the initiative is to foster and support preaching that better inspires, encourages, and guides people to come to know and love God and to live out their Christian faith more fully.
The Compelling Preaching for a Climate-Changed World initiative builds on a pilot project in 2022-23 called the EcoPreacher Cohort which engaged more than 100 participants in a year-long program of monthly gatherings equipping preachers for spiritual leadership during this time of climate and environmental crisis. The grant will allow for building and expanding this program over the next five years through sermon coaching groups, peer networks, workshops and webinars, and an online digital resource hub with text studies, preaching helps, and model sermons. The project will also include a research component studying clergy and congregations to better understand how preachers are responding to the challenges of a climate-changed world and how the skills and resources provided by the program can be utilized throughout the church.
Program Coordinator, Leah D. Schade, associate professor of preaching and worship at Lexington, notes, “Christian communities must claim our role in addressing the climate and environmental crisis, and preaching plays a critical part in this effort. This grant will allow us to inspire more robust engagement with preachers and congregations to effectively reach and benefit increasingly diverse audiences both within and beyond congregations.”
Lexington Theological Seminary is one of 142 organizations that are receiving grants through the Compelling Preaching Initiative. Reflecting the diversity of Christianity in the United States, the organizations are affiliated with mainline Protestant, evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox Christian and Pentecostal faith communities. Many of the organizations are rooted in Black church, Hispanic and Asian Christian traditions.
Allen Ewing-Merrill, executive director of The BTS Center, explains, “Preachers need to be equipped with skills, peer support, and resources to address the challenges and opportunities of our time. Our purpose in this project is not just to help clergy preach about climate change well; rather, our purpose is to help preachers preach well in a climate-changed world.”
Avery Davis Lamb, co-executive director of Creation Justice Ministries, notes, “One of the most urgent features of our changing world is the accelerating reality of climate change, manifested ever more concretely in the form of extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, warming temperatures, and rapidly rising levels of climate anxiety, especially among younger generations, all of which disproportionately impacts vulnerable and historically marginalized communities. So, our program is designed to be scalable and sustainably supported by a network of denominational, organizational, and theological education partners.”
Lexington Theological Seminary President Charisse Gillet adds, “As churches face a critical inflection point, we are excited to support this innovative program grounded in the belief that God is inviting Christian leaders to claim a renewed sense of vocation. Thanks to the Lilly Endowment, we will be able to equip and encourage faith leaders and congregations to step into the realities of an evolving church and a changing world with curiosity and faith; to ask big questions about what it means to be the church in a climate-changed world; and to embrace the call to preach the gospel in ways that nurture spiritual and ecological imagination.”
Those interested in applying for the next EcoPreacher Cohort can visit https://www.creationjustice.org/ecopreacher.html to learn more.
About Lilly Endowment Inc.
Lilly Endowment Inc. is a private foundation created in 1937 by J.K. Lilly Sr. and his sons Eli and J.K. Jr. through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. While those gifts remain the financial bedrock of the Endowment, it is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. In keeping with the founders’ wishes, the Endowment supports the causes of community development, education and religion and maintains a special commitment to its hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana. A principal aim of the Endowment’s religion grantmaking is to deepen and enrich the lives of Christians in the United States, primarily by seeking out and supporting efforts that enhance the vitality of congregations and strengthen the pastoral and lay leadership of Christian communities. The Endowment also seeks to improve public understanding of diverse religious traditions by supporting fair and accurate portrayals of the role religion plays in the United States and across the globe.
About Lexington Theological Seminary
Lexington Theological Seminary is an accredited graduate theological institution of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Consistent with the Disciples’ historic commitment to Christian unity, the Seminary is intentionally ecumenical with students, faculty, staff and trustees of various denominations. The mission of Lexington Theological Seminary is to prepare faithful leaders for the church of Jesus Christ and, thus, to strengthen the church’s participation in God’s mission for the world.
About The BTS Center
The BTS Center is a 501(c)(3) private operating foundation in Portland, Maine, building on the legacy of the former Bangor Theological Seminary. Today BTS seeks to catalyze spiritual imagination, with enduring wisdom, for transformative faith leadership.
About Creation Justice Ministries
Creation Justice Ministries is a fiscally-sponsored project of Disciples Home Missions of the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ. With ecumenical roots in the National Council of Churches, CJM’s mission is to educate, equip and mobilize communions and denominations, congregations, and individuals to protect, restore, and rightly share God's creation.
Acts 4:32-35 (NRSV)
32 Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. 33 With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. 35 They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
At the heart of the liberative movement of the followers of “The Way,” as they were known at the time, was the affirmation of God as Creator of the good creation.
https://sojo.net/magazine/november-2023/good-news-about-money
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/jesus-started-a-movement-2022-11-14/
Isaiah 25:6-9 (CEB)
6 On this mountain,
the Lord of heavenly forces will prepare for all peoples
a rich feast, a feast of choice wines,
of select foods rich in flavor,
of choice wines well refined.
7 He will swallow up on this mountain the veil that is veiling all peoples,
the shroud enshrouding all nations.
8 He will swallow up death forever.
The Lord God will wipe tears from every face;
he will remove his people’s disgrace from off the whole earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
9 They will say on that day, “Look! This is our God,
for whom we have waited--
and he has saved us!
This is the Lord, for whom we have waited;
let’s be glad and rejoice in his salvation!”
God is neither aloof nor distanced from his creation, but wrapped up in the many layers of it, cozily familiar with the stuff of the land.
Jesus was often accused of being a glutton and a drunkard because the practices and images of feasting were so central to understanding the Kingdom of God.
Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
John 12:12-16 (NRSV)
12 The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord-- the King of Israel!" 14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: 15 "Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt!" 16 His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.
We must actively remember the kind of King we follow and dispel the myth that humanity is alienated from its material environment, that we can relate to God without it. Sin, as Williams defines it, is willed isolation
* Maria Skobtsova was a pioneer in the French resistance of WWII, working with refugees and destitutes, and courageously defending Jews. She was executed, taking the place of another woman, at the Ravensbruck concentration camp in 1945. Her martyrdom is widely recognized and she was canonized as a saint in the Orthodox Church in 2004.
Books:
Rowan Williams, Looking East in Winter: Contemporary Thought and the Eastern Christian Tradition (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2021).
Psalm 51:1-12 (NRSV)
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. 5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. 6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. 7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.
Zenger, Erich, Frank-Lothar Hossfeld, and Linda M. Maloney. “Psalm 51.” In Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51-100, edited by Klaus Baltzer, 11–25. 1517 Media, 2005. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvb6v84t.9.
Exodus 20:8-11 (NRSV)
8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work--you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
Our culture implores us to chase after unlimited growth, but the Sabbath calls us to find our place among creation
Mark 8:31-38 (NRSV)
31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." 34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."
Within the Church always remains the potential to one minute be Peter and the next Satan. This is no clearer than now, when the Church and the individuals who make up the body of the Church are neglecting the call to pick up their cross in the Anthropocene.
from Pepperdine University and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Divinity at Duke University.
About this Blog
This blog shares the activities of Creation Justice Ministries. We educate and equip Christians to protect, restore, and rightly share God's creation.
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