As leaders of the environmental movement are despairing that there is little hope for the future of our world, A Rocha, a national faith-based creation-care organization, saw a need to fill.
A Rocha Canada’s annual Good Seed Sunday took place on April 21. The initiative partners with churches to help them deliver services centred around creation care and initiate creation-care projects in their neighbourhoods.
“We think that engaging with people, sharing our story, providing a hopeful [environmental] perspective in the community is missional,” says Luke Wilson, the communications director for A Rocha.
The resources include a church service package with sermon notes, Bible verses, suggested songs, and liturgy and worship outlines. Also available are Bible study and small group materials, ideas for action projects, resources for living more simply, online community resources to connect churches using social media, a resource library and daily devotionals.
This year, A Rocha hoped to have 150 churches involved in Good Seed Sunday. It surpassed its goal, however, as 500 churches from across Canada and the United States participated with varying levels of involvement, according to Wilson.
“We’re really just trying to spark a campaign around getting people across North America to take a Sunday and have that as a creation-care or earth-keeping Sunday,” he says. “It’s starting to trend and we want to encourage that trend.”
A Rocha sparked the trend through social media, which is how Elizabeth Sawatzky learned more about Good Seed Sunday. Sawatzky, 29, and her congregation, First United Mennonite Church in Vancouver, participated in the campaign.
The church’s April 21 service involved creation-themed songs and Bible verses, and a spiritual reflection on hiking the West Coast Trail by Mike and Melissa Bartel-Sawatzky that was followed by a congregation-wide sharing time about creation care.
“I was encouraged to see so many people of various generations share how the Good Seed Sunday theme impacted them,” Sawatzky says. She thinks the campaign is important in understanding the connection between the use of fossil fuels and the harm done to local communities when energy is extracted.
“People all around the world are tied to creation, and so we cannot show careless disregard for the earth,” she says. “Instead, to show love and respect to our brothers and sisters, we must learn to be responsible with the world’s food, water and natural resources.”
A Rocha was reliant on social media to inform people about the Good Seed Sunday campaign. Sawatzky initially heard about First United Mennonite’s plan to use the Good Seed Sunday theme through the church, but followed A Rocha on Twitter to get regular updates.
A Rocha’s Facebook page, regularly updated with announcements and links to new resources, has almost 400 likes. The organization also blogs using Tumblr, updates videos through Vimeo, and had an Instagram photo contest. Sawatzky won the contest by taking a photo on her cell phone of cherry trees in blossom as she walked to the bus stop in East Vancouver.
A Rocha partnered with Paradigm Ministries to put on the campaign. Key people in the Christian creation-care movement, including Eugene Peterson and the late John Stott, have contributed their voices to A Rocha’s campaign.
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