painting the steeple green

You may have heard, the environment is an issue. The consequences of the Industrial Revolution are being realized in periodical spikes in environmental awareness. In the 1970's air and water pollution became recognized as deeply troubling issues, in the 1990's recycling and the O-zone became more and more talked about, and now its the sustainability of how we power things, namely electricity sources and automobile powering.

The upside is the church is becoming aware of the obvious link between Genesis 1 (God's call for man to care for his creation...not rule) and environmental issues. Some churches, such as Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, Michigan have put the environment in its core structure of action for awhile, but whats more encouraging is a person like Mike Huckabee, who was criticized by some conservative "good ole boys" over his claim that the environment is an essential issue to evangelicals; citing Genesis 1.

If Christian music is any sign though, the church should be hip to copying this in about 7 years. In recent years churches have become more like entertainment companies with marketing departments. The 1990's saw booms in both industries in secular society and it was only a matter of time before the church got in bed with them. As Steve Stockman, Presbyterian pastor and U2 biographer pointed out, the church saw the hot trash of shopping malls and brought it into the sanctuaries. The irony is the U2 pop-mart and Zoo TV era was a deliberate Screwtape style mockery of the evils lights and sounds had perpetrated on distracting the human soul from spirituality, which churches copy for the "sake of relevance."

Here are three philosophies churches have invited into their company...

1. Batteries...any sizable church with a sound system uses a disgusting number of batteries to power its wireless microphones. Whats worse, there is a widespread argument that rechargeable batteries have too unpredictable a decay, and therefore would "interrupt the show" if they died, so many churches will discard 1 battery, per microphone, per service.

2. Paper...churches with somewhere in the range of 1,000 members can easily spend $10,000 a year simply on paper. From the bulletins, to mailings, to invite cards...and the more colorful and glossy...the less recyclable.

3. Electricity...computers of employees left on all night, lights turned on in entire buildings so people "feel welcome", night time signs, exterior flood lights, sound systems, all drain huge amounts of energy and are all able to be scaled back.

SO be responsible, ask the session or a staff member at your church what the paper budget is, ask how many batteries they throw away, ask if the staff is responsible about power usage.

Even these guys agreed on it...