|
|
Environmental Missions Prayer Digest
October 2012 |
|
Greetings!
At the end of this month, a group of around sixty scientists, theologians, missionaries and creation care practitioners will be meeting in St. Ann, Jamaica for the Lausanne  Movement's Consultation on Creation Care and the Gospel. This will be an issues-based follow-up to the Congress on World Evangelization that produced the Cape Town Commitment. The three stated goals of the Consultation are:
- To come to an understanding of, and agreement on, how creation care is included in the gospel, God's plan of redemption through Jesus Christ.
- To lay the groundwork for a global creation care movement of scientists, theologians and practitioners that will foster similar national movements.
- To communicate the content of the consultation so that it becomes commonly accepted as part of the modern evangelical world view and understanding of mission.
Plenary speakers include John Houghton, Robert White, Jonathon Moo, David Bennett, and Paul Cook. Please pray that the Consultation might successfully extend the work of the Cape Town Commitment. In my opinion, the Lausanne Movement is the best possible vehicle for promoting environmental missions within the worldwide church.
I'll also be attending the Consultation, and so have a personal set of prayer requests at the bottom of this letter. Meanwhile, after having watched Life and Debt, the documentary film about third world debt in Jamaica, I vowed never to visit that country without first seeking to bless that country through generous prayer. Thank you for joining me this month in invoking God's great care of the people of the Greater Antillean Marine eco-region.
Links: Cape Town Commitment,
Consultation on Creation Care and the Gospel,
Life and Debt (DVD)
|
|
Trust a God of surprises
for recovery of the Jamaican coral reef
The People of the Greater Antillean Marine
(WWF Global 200: #236)
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature released a coral reef study last  month which included this summary paragraph, unfortunate for Jamaica. "Some Caribbean reef ecosystems are relatively intact compared to average conditions in the region. For example, many reefs in the Netherlands Antilles and Cayman Islands have 30% or more live coral cover, little macroalgae, and a moderate (albeit strongly depleted) abundance of fish. In contrast, reefs in Jamaica and the US Virgin Islands have well below 10% live coral cover, abundant macroalgae, and virtually no fish larger than a few cm."
Troubles for the Jamaican coral reef can be traced to Hurricane Allen (1980) but more significantly to a mysterious and cataclysmic die-off of sea urchins in 1983. Sea urchin keep algae build-up in check. With the urchin gone, and with other algae-eating species lost to overfishing, algae quickly covered 92 percent of Jamaica's reef, effectively killing the coral beneath. The Jamaican people, already struggling in a debt-strapped economy, depend on fishing and tourism. Healthy coral is important to their very livelihoods.
Our hope is in the Lord who loves the Jamaican people and who revels in the marine regions of his own creation, sustenance, and redemption! I recently read of a study which reinforced my worship of the Creator. Professor David Bellwood from Australia wanted to see how parrotfish would respond to a portion of reef that he had caused to become overtaxed with algae. Parrotfish graze on algae and, like the sea urchin, are credited with keeping algae in check. (Bellwood calls them "lawn mowers.") So when he removed the cages above the "dense macroalgae assays," he expected a feeding frenzy from the parrotfish, but nothing happened. Over the next few weeks however, the algae began to thin out. How was this possible since the scientists had not been able to identify any herbivore species eating on it? But then one day they caught a glimpse of a small black fish with a golden fringe, a pinnate batfish. Bellwood was surprised: "To begin with, batfish aren't supposed to eat algae. They are an invertebrate feeder, not an herbivore."
Here's how Andrew Zolli in his book Resilience summarizes Bellwood's findings:
Bellwood's research suggests that while the parrotfish act as lawnmowers for the reef, they can do so only when the reef is in the healthy, coral-dominated state. When the system has flipped and algae have taken over, they're no longer able to provide this function. And that's when the batfish--which normally doesn't eat algae--is "deployed" on the reef to correct the imbalance. One prevents a flip, the other reverses it (p. 56).
 Zolli uses quotation marks around the word "deployed," but why? We know who created the batfish, and therefore who deployed them. Bellwood calls batfish "a sleeping functional group: a species or group of species capable of performing a particular function role--but which do so only under exceptional circumstances" (p. 57). Maybe people who pray are like batfish. Let's hope so, for Jamaica's sake.
Please pray:
- Thank you Lord, for your trustworthy power and creativity. Just when we think things are bleak, you pull off a surprise. We hope in you.
- Please Lord, nurture the coral reef and the marine species which surround Jamaica.
- Please help Jamaica find not only generous debt relief from the good will of other nations, but please attend to their poverty.
- Oh Lord, strength the Jamaican church. (Operation World says that Jamaica "enjoys one of the world's highest number of churches per square mile, but the majority of self-proclaimed Christians in Jamaica neither attend church nor lead a Christian life." (p. 487).)
- Pray for the gospel preaching of networks like the Jamaican Council of Churches, Jamaican Association of Evangelicals, and the Jamaican Pentecostal Union.
Links: NY Times Article about Coral Reef Die-off and IUCN report,
Jamaican coral die-off and Bellwood study in Resilience by Andrew Zolli
Photos: divers (NOAA/Flikr.com), batfish (CW Ye/Flikr.com)
|
Thank you for praying!
I'm humbled to be invited to participate in Lausanne's Creation Care Consultation in Jamaica. I'm additionally asking God for two things from my participation there, and would appreciate you joining me in these prayers:
- That the terminology of "environmental missions" would be adopted to accompany the language of "creation care." The Lausanne Movement after all is a series of Congresses of "World Evangelization."
- I am scheduled to present a paper in one of the break out sessions. It's entitled: "A New Strategy of Hope based on the Inevitable Failure of Climate Change Mitigation." (You can read the paper yourself as "The Job 28 Plan" on the Eden Vigil website.) Please pray that the other consultants will ruthlessly apply God's wisdom to the paper, and even if apart from the paper, promote an evangelical response to climate change.
Thanks,
Lowell Bliss
Eden Vigil
Links: Contact the editors, Eden Vigil website, Donations to Eden Vigil
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
