Groaning and Flourishing: Gathered by Our Creator's Care

Over Christmas I went bird watching near my parents house in Arkansas. Driving to a Wildlife Management Area I passed Lake Conway where nearly 7,000 barrels of oil spilled from an ExxonMobil tar-sands pipeline. The site in the lake nearest the spill still had containment buoys eight months after the accident. There was a man in a air boat and hazmat suit testing the water with hundreds of ducks and gulls and cormorants were feeding in the water nearby. Since then there have been other spills. Most recently West Virginia's waters were poisoned by the ironically named, "Freedom Industries." The damage done is beyond calculation and it will take years to know the full effects. These examples are just to name some of the ways in which creation is groaning in pain and eager longing for God's Kingdom to arrive against the empires of death and greed. The church is called to so much more than green teams and bulletin recycling. We are called to seek the flourishing of creation as we welcome the Resurrection into the whole of the world.

This July the Ekklesia Project will be gathering to discern together how the church can respond to the ecological crisis. While we celebrate small steps like church gardens and green energy we know too that God is calling us to live out our lives in a radically alternative kingdom that goes beyond simple sustainability. Our aim in this gathering is to go far deeper than most of the conversation on "greening" the church. We want this to be a time of struggle, confession, and ultimately our hope in Christ and his triumphant reign.

Our plenary speakers this summer are Norman Wirzba, Ched Myers, and Philip Bess. Bill McKibben will also be contributing with a video presentation recorded specifically for the gathering. Norman Wirzba will give us his deep insights into the nature of creation, Ched Myers will be presenting on how we can respond to the ecological crisis by doing "watershed discipleship," and Philip Bess, an architecture professor at Notre Dame, will call us to a pre-industrial vision of cities as places to organize common life toward human and ecological flourishing. A new feature at the gathering this year will be a documentary film festival. Instead of simply imaging how the church can care for creation we are inviting Christian communities from around the country to share what they are doing through film.