People, Trees, and Poverty: A Snapshot of Environmental Missions

By Lowell Bliss

With climate change and the environment making headlines on an almost-daily basis, followers of Christ can find themselves asking, “What’s my role in this? What’s my responsibility? And how does it relate to the Great Commission?”
People, Trees & Poverty shares a high-level overview, a snapshot, of what it looks like to reach the unreached through advocacy on environmental issues. However, this book does more than raise awareness and pluck your heartstrings. It concludes with a critical feature, listing additional resources, gatherings, and organizations to move the reader from concern to action.

Ebooks in the Snapshot Series aren’t traditional books. They are the one chapter that you need to read out of the huge book you never seem to get through. At approximately 7000 words they are twice the length of an in-depth magazine article. They are packed with links to resources for further inquiry in a Wikipedia style manner, and an appendix with vetted partners you can trust to read or connect with.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Carey Publishing
• Release date: Apr 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9780878080335

Book preview

Where Do the Nations Gather?

We have read that at the end of the Age they will gather at the throne of Jesus Christ—the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of all creation. He will provide justice for all who have been treated unfairly. He will destroy those who destroy the earth (Rev 11:18). I don’t exactly know how to interpret that verse, but it sounds ominous . . . and relevant, considering where I am standing.

I am standing outside a huge, white, tented complex, the size of five US football fields. It is reminiscent in my imagination of where the nations used to gather during the time of our great grandparents, namely at the World Fairs, which were celebrations of progress. At the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, workmen shoveled coal into twelve AC polyphase generators and the planet blazed to light. The nations marveled at the spectacle. I wonder if anyone turned around to look at the smokestacks, giving a thought to unintended consequences? Probably not. Otherwise I wouldn’t be where I am: here in Bonn, Germany, November, 2017.

There is a slight chill to the air, overcast, drizzly, but no snow. Soon the nations will gather in Pyeongchang, Korea for the Winter Olympics and even North Korea will show up. The nations do get together regularly for fun-and-games, but where I am standing, they get together for serious work. Here they do turn around and consider the smokestacks. The scientists here calculate consequences. The philosophers here redefine the concept of progress, too naively handed down to us from the World Fairs. The governmental leaders engage in a type of self-judgment, and the agreements which emerge declare that we refuse to be numbered among the destroyers of the earth. I’m at COP23, the latest round of UN sponsored climate summits. In our time, where is the one place the nations gather on an annual and serious basis? They gather at these COPs; they gather around the issue of climate change year after year. In 2018, they will gather in Katowice, Poland for COP 24. Since a molecule of carbon dioxide, the main driver of global warming, stays in the atmosphere for 100 years, you can bet that there will be a COP 25, 26, 27, 28 . . .

COP is an acronym which stands for Convention of the Parties. Parties are the nations who are participating in joint climate action. (Convention of the Parties