Creation care

Introduction.

Being a Christian organization involved in conservation, all our principles and goals are shaped and motivated by God. Creation Care as a department in Community conservation focuses on the protection, conservation, and proper handling of the creation. Creation care has two main parts, farming God’s way and the creation care sermon series. Farming God’s has been handled in a few of our stories before. So today, we are going to focus on the creation care sermon series.
Creation Care Sermons is a series of sermons designed to help Christians understand their God-given responsibility towards His creation. They are geared toward helping us appreciate God’s original design in creating and placing everything in specific places. Through this series, we teach God’s purpose for our lives and how we can achieve it.

How it is done and why it is done.

These teachings/sermons are made possible as a result of the partnership between A Rocha Kenya and local churches. For a whole series to be taught exhaustively, the Care of Creation team usually has to visit the church in question for at least four Sundays. Mostly, our focus is on the churches surrounding or near Dakatcha, one of the endangered natural forests we are so bent on helping conserve, more details here.
The series starts with enlightenment done on God’s original design and his intention for the Earth. This is before Genesis 3 when sin creeps in. Everything that God created was affected and ruined by sin, including the environment. But since we have been saved from the consequences of sin through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus, we have a responsibility towards His creation.
Genesis 1:18 outlines clearly the great responsibility given to man by God towards creation i.e subdue it and have dominion over all that he created. This is a great responsibility we always aim to bring to our recollection.
Genesis 2:15 speaks about this even louder. It clearly states that after God created man, He placed him in the garden of Eden and gave him the responsibility to ‘work it and keep it’.

Pastor Baraka, A Rocha staff In charge of Care of Creation and Farming God’s way during ministration.

Going forward.

Taking care of God’s creation is direct obedience to His word. Speaking and teaching about this helps us gear towards living in obedience to that word. Apart from being a sign of obedience to our God, creation care sermon series have had indirect but impactful outcomes. It has helped us create awareness among the people about the effects of not taking care of the environment that affects us all. Things like climate change, soil erosions and degradation et cetera are bad news for us all. Now that we get to educate the farmers through these teachings, they are able to get more from their lands(since they employ proper farming techniques) while taking care of the creation at the same time(reduced strain on the ground, reduced destruction because of informed farming techniques). The churches exposed to this program also have the potential of becoming conservation agents for Dakatcha.

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. This helps us to view the environment and even ourselves as God’s possession. Therefore we ought to handle the creation of God only as wise Stewards. Our responsibility towards the environment should also be driven by our love, love for one another, and love for God. When we handle what God has entrusted to us with wisdom, our neighbors and even future generations will be able to benefit from it. And that is the greatest act of love, doing things solely for the welfare of others.

A Rocha team in attendance, environmental education officers and the camera man.