Several weeks ago I noticed on my CNN breaking news a story about Southern Baptists and the environment. As I read the post I was pleased to see that Jonathan Merritt working with others has formed a group that basically says that as Christians we have a stewardship over the planet God has created.
You can go to baptistcreationcare.org and check it all out for yourselves. This is not an attempt to get into bed with Al Gore but to get our heads out of the sand on things that not only matter to people but to God.
As Southern Baptist we have lost our voice with the overwhelming majority of people in America because they think we care more about preserving our institution than we do about helping them. When Bono and Habitat for Humanity are doing a better job than we are in meeting the needs of real people we are in serious trouble.
This has nothing to do with a social gospel agenda so don’t even go there. Every generation has to find a way to contextualize the gospel within the culture of their day. Our passion is still to save people not the planet.
However, our neglect of the culture on any major subject of our day, the environment, aids, poverty, genocide and illiteracy will cause us to lose an opportunity for the gospel even to be heard. The culture is not our enemy it is simply the context in which we must do ministry if we want to impact people for eternity.