DULUTH, Ga. (ABP) -- A former president of the Southern Baptist Convention confessed to a group of Christian environmentalists that he is a recent convert to the concept of creation care.

"We ought to motivate every follower of Christ in the church to be at the forefront -- to be in the engine room, not in the caboose -- of creation care," James Merritt, senior pastor at Cross Pointe Church in Duluth, Ga., said May 15 during the closing session of a national pastor's conference on creation care.

James Merritt preaches on creation care.

Merritt's sermon at the three-day Flourish conference held at his suburban Atlanta mega-church marked the first time in more than 30 years of ministry that he ever preached about the topic of Christians' responsibility to care for God's creation.

"I have read books on the environment from both sides of the spectrum, but it's just never been on my radar screen," Merritt said. He credited his awakening on the issue to his son Jonathan, who taught him both the how and why of recycling and energy conservation.

Merritt acknowledged the degree to which human activity contributes to climate change is "a very hot topic" on which many evangelicals disagree.

"I refuse to be sucked into either extreme," Merritt said. "I call it the Al Gore crowd and the know-more crowd."

"You've got one side and they are the Chicken Littles, and the sky is falling and the world's not going to be here in five years if we don't do something, and you may lean toward that perspective," he said.

"On the other hand, I'm certainly not with the crowd that says, 'Hey, we don't have a problem in this world. Everything is fine ecologically. Everything is fine environmentally. I don't know what all the hubbub is about.'"

Merritt said Christians don't have to join either extreme in order to embrace a "theology of ecology" that both celebrates and preserves the earth.

"It is inconceivable to me for someone to say on the one hand 'I want to honor the Creator' and yet at the same time not have a desire to take care of the creation," he said.

Merritt pointed out that in Genesis God gave to Adam and Eve the job of creation care. "That ought to lay to rest what the world's oldest profession known to man really is," he quipped. "It's landscaping."

Merritt added he is "not a scientist," but as a theologian and a pastor he marvels at the delicate balance that exists in nature.

"It amazes me, when you study the atmosphere, to see how God so meticulously made this thin blanket of gases, designed in such a way to keep it just warm enough without burning up and then just cool enough to be comfortable without freezing to death," he said.

"It's literally like a greenhouse, and I didn't know this for a long time," Merritt said. "Certain gases trap the sun's energy. They change this climate whereby it can sustain human life and animal life."

Without that "atmospheric bubble," Merritt said, people could not live. "I don't know if you know this or not, but the average temperature on earth -- year round, when you take all the temperatures around the world and average them -- is 60 degrees Fahrenheit," he said. "Scientists now know that if it were much colder life would be impossible, if it were much hotter life would be impossible."

While many in his audience were veterans of the creation care movement, Merritt said most people in churches, like him, really haven't given much thought to the issue.

"The average person who sits in the average chair in church, they haven't even done Creation Care 101," he said. "Most of them, they can't tell recycling from revival…. They really don't understand a lot of the issues."

Merritt said as much as possible, "without substituting the creation for the creator and acting in a responsible way that is best for the most people possible, we ought to do everything we can to keep our air, our water, our natural resources as clean as possible."

Merritt said that can be as simple as not throwing garbage into a stream, picking up trash in a public place or recycling. "I tell you most of our people don't even know the ABCs of this stuff," he said.

Merritt said he is "on a journey" in thinking about creation care. "I am really new to all of this, but I realize probably like many of you that there was a time when I didn't really think it was a big deal," he said.

"You don't think about those things until you finally wake up and you go all the way back to Genesis and you say, 'You know what, this is my Father's world. It doesn't belong to me. And I'm going to give an account to God for how I manage my time. I'm going to give an account to God for how I manage my use of the money that he gave me. I' going to give an account to God for how I used my family. I am going to give an account to God as a dad, as a husband, as a son, as a Christian, as a pastor, and I'm going to give an account to God for the way I treated the world that he created and gave me to live.'"

Merritt closed with a story of how angry he felt years ago when his home was burglarized. "When I walked into that house, I felt raped," he said. "I felt violated. This was my house. He had no right not only to come into my house, he had no right to trash my house."

"Here's my question," he continued. "How much more do you think God feels when we rape and we pillage and we trash this world he gave us that he said we were to tend and we were to care for? You cannot glorify the Creator at the same time you heap contempt on the creation. It's impossible."

Merritt said Christians believe that Jesus Christ is not only Lord of the church but of all creation. "If that is true, then every follower of Christ, whatever happens in this creation anywhere at any time must be of interest to us both spiritually and biblically," he said. "Otherwise you really don't understand the theology of ecology."

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This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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Researcher: Young evangelicals shun 'conservative' label, embrace 'justice' (5/14)

Obama adviser says creation-care movement needs pastors (5/13)

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