Friends: please enjoy this conversation with environmental steward Leah Kostamo, who stewards the A Rocha Brooksdale Centre near Vancouver, British Columbia. I highly recommend her new book Planted (introduced by Eugene Peterson) as a funny, poignant, and exceptionally well-written little volume on faith and the land. -Paul
Paul: Please introduce yourself and your community to our readers. Perhaps A Rocha's name is a good place to start—does your name speak to your vision and values?
Leah: A Rocha certainly is a strange name for a Christian organization. It's a Portuguese word meaning "the rock." Rocha's first environmental Centre was located in Portugal at a place called Quinta da a rocha—"farm on the rock." "The Rock" seemed like a great name for a Christian conservation organization since it points to both Jesus, who is our Rock, and geology, which is literally one of the most fundamental scientific fields of study.
Furthermore, our name points to the Latin flavor of the organization; namely, the value we place on relationships. A Rocha Centres are places of scientific research, education, and organic gardening, but they are also places where people from all walks of life are accepted and embraced as family members. A Rocha is first and foremost about community.
I was pleased to see that Eugene Peterson wrote such a thoughtful foreword to Planted—the quintessential pastor, enthusing about your well-written story of community and creation. Can you tell me any stories about pastors who have intersected A Rocha in a particularly powerful or unusual way?
In our early years running the A Rocha Centre in British Columbia we had a steady stream of English pastors who came and stayed with us for a month or two as part of their sabbatical times. All of them seemed to relish the opportunity to get their hands dirty and do practical work. One pastor in particular spent hours chopping wood outside in sun, rain, heat, and cold. He said later that pastoral work is often so cerebral and hard to quantify that for him to do something physical that required muscle and effort helped reconnect him with the fact that he was an embodied soul—he himself is one of God's creatures.
Another pastor of a church on Vancouver Island has used our training in community gardening, planting a garden on their church property. He said that he had struggled to find ways for their church to bless their local neighborhood and build community, but now neighbors stand across the fence while congregants weed, water, and harvest and friendships are being built. The fact that all the produce is given away to the local foodbank has suddenly raised the church's reputation in the neighbors' eyes since they see how the church is tangibly blessing the local community.
Though forgotten in recent decades, care for creation is a deeply Christian value. What have we lost in losing our connection and concern to creation?
When we care for creation we are participating in the reconciling work of Jesus as he reconciles "all things" to himself.
I think the loss is Christological. One of the most astounding tenets of Christian theology is the incarnation—that God became part of his creation, thereby weaving together in one person the doctrines of redemption and creation. To reduce the incarnation to just a necessary stepping stone (even a necessary evil?) toward the cross is to minimize God's full embrace and experience of creation in the person of Jesus. Paul seems to indicate that Christ's incarnational and redemptive work includes creation (Colossians 1). Therefore when we care for creation we are participating in the reconciling work of Jesus as he reconciles "all things" to himself.
Do you use the term "stewardship" in your work? If so, what does that mean to you?
I think "stewardship" is a great term. We use it all the time because it implies that the earth belongs to someone other than ourselves—it belongs to God. "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it," says Psalm 24:1. If that is true then our job is to look after creation on God's behalf.
For many pastors from an Evangelical background, creation care is (at best) a lower priority than "saving souls." Any thoughts on that posture?
It is definitely easy to struggle with the importance of environmental work in light of the Great Commission. But when I look at Jesus' life it seems that saving souls was set within the bigger picture of ushering in the Kingdom of God. In his ministry Jesus seemed to be quite concerned about people's physical well being as evidenced by the fact that he healed people wherever he went. He also fed people. He seemed quite concerned that people be tangibly loved and not mistreated. Thus it's hard to just care about people's souls without caring about their physical lives and therefore their local environment, since the poorest in the world are so effected by changes to their environment. I think of so many living in Africa and Asia whose water is being poisoned by our e-waste, which we are exporting to poorer countries because we don't want this trash in our own soil. If we are truly to love our neighbors as ourselves, then we must be concerned about their water, air, and food supplies.
For church leaders or members who have not yet experienced a crisis of conscience in relation to the environment—what is one thing that they should consider or experience that might change their view?
I think everyone is motivated or convicted by different things. For me it was spending time outside in creation day after day with a trained ornithologist as a child that created a deep love of creation. For those who are motivated by biblical theology, N.T. Wright's book Surprised by Hope has some fantastic things to say about God's concern for all he has created and our role as stewards. For those whose hearts shift in response to poetry, Wendell Berry's new collection, This Day, will have you digging in the garden within hours of reading the first poem. Perhaps the most humble and helpful thing we can do is sit outside, as part of creation, and pray.
Paul Pastor is associate editor of Leadership Journal and PARSE.
