Hope for Creation: Missional Responses to Environmental and Human Calamities
Ebook
Can the Desert Be Green?
Our world is in peril. Environmental degradation, human suffering, and relentless calamities confront us daily, painting a picture of a planet in distress. Amid this daunting reality, how can God’s people respond effectively? This critical question beckons for a thoughtful and proactive response that intertwines faith and ecology with tangible action in our increasingly fragile world.
Hope for Creation offers a unique blend of theological insight and practical application. It gathers perspectives from theologians and practitioners, each giving a comprehensive understanding of creation care. The contributors not only diagnose environmental and humanitarian issues but also propose actionable solutions rooted in biblical foundations and contemporary experiences.
This book is a call to action for Christians and mission leaders worldwide, urging active participation in restoring and preserving our planet. It equips church leaders, missionaries, and believers with the knowledge and tools to make a meaningful impact. By embracing this mission, readers contribute to a sustainable, hopeful future, joining a transformative journey towards environmental and human healing.
Preface
Section A. Bible and Theology
Chapter 1 God’s Word to a Nation in Denial and Rebellion: Jeremiah 1
Chapter 2 God’s Word in a Culture of Delusion and False Security: Jeremiah 7
Chapter 3 God’s Word of Global Judgment and Salvation: Isaiah 24–25
Chapter 4 Toward a Biblical Theology of Calamity
Chapter 5 Biblical Foundations for Creation Care
Section B: History and Culture
Chapter 6 Learning from the Past and Finding Hope for the Future
Chapter 7 Indigenous Epistemologies: Connecting with Christ and Creation
Chapter 8 Creation Care: The Gospel’s Third Dimension
Chapter 9 Environmental and Human Calamities in Korea and Implications for Mission
Section C. Economics, Sufficiency, Justice, Perceptions of Christian Leaders
and Missionaries
Chapter 10 Climate Crisis and Stewardship: A Christian Economist’s Perspective
Chapter 11 A Critical Analysis on the Transformation of Korean Missionaries’ Epistemological
Beliefs on Environmental and Human Calamities
Chapter 12 Who Will Feed the World in the Twenty-First Century? Lessons and Questions
from a Brief Comparison of China’s, India’s, and Africa’s Food Systems
and Food Sovereignty
Chapter 13 Gold Mining in the Southwest of Burkina Faso and Christian Mission:
The Great Commission and Structural Evil
Section D. Local and Regional Responses to Climate Change and its Effects,
Historical and Current
Chapter 14 Partnership with God in Restoring Creation: A Story of Hope
Chapter 15 Onnuri Church’s Environmental Mission and Strategy
Chapter 16 Economically Viable Green Energy from Waste Plastic: A Fourth River
Energy Proposal to Support Missions and Bless the Environment
Chapter 17 Environment, Natural Disasters, and the Experience of the Dandelion Community
Chapter 18 Evangelizing All Creatures: Pastoral Ecology as Mission
Chapter 19 Can the Desert Be Green? An Environmental Mission to Plant Hope
in the Wilderness
Section E. Testimonies
Chapter 20 The Founding of Shine Church and Its Environmental Missionary Work
Chapter 21 My Journey of Growth and Hope: From God’s Word to Works and Wonders,
to World Care
Chapter 22 KGMLF Missional Koinonia
Section F. Summary and Conclusion
Chapter 23 The Gospel of Hope in a Hopeless World – Jonathan J. Bonk
Appendix: Resources for Mission and Congregation
Acknowledgments – Jinbong Kim
Participants
Contributors
Indices – Subjects, Names, Scriptures
This latest volume from the Korean Global Mission Leaders Forum (KGMLF) deals with the pressing issues of ecological and human calamity, and in so doing, offers an unusual richness of biblical reflection and practical wisdom. Wide-ranging, diverse, and hopeful, the book is the fruit of the unique space KGMLF creates by bringing together Korean and international scholars in conversation with mission practitioners.
Paul Bendor-Samuel MRCGP, MBE, Executive Director, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, Director, Regnum Books, Sundo Kim Research Tutor in Global Mission
Far too many Christians write off environmental concerns as marginal to the gospel or simply expressions of left-wing ideology. With solid biblical, theological, scientific, and practical grounding, the book in your hands compellingly challenges those assumptions and offers a hopeful and urgently needed corrective: love of God and love of neighbor require care for God’s creation of which humanity is only a part.
Ruth Padilla DeBorst, PhD, Richard C. Oudersluys Associate Professor of World Christianity, Western Theological Seminary, Member, Asociación Casa Adobe, Costa Rica
Hope for Creation represents a milestone in mission thinking: churches in the Global South collaborating on a series of international mission discussions and cooperation, and Christian mission now takes creation care as a major agenda. This urgent topic also promises a broader interaction with various institutions and even different faiths for the common future of humanity. This book will serve churches and mission communities as a road map for local reflections and applications.
Wonsuk Ma, PhD, Executive Director, Center for Spirit-Empowered Research, Distinguished Professor of Global Christianity, Oral Roberts University
- Title: Hope for Creation: Missional Responses to Environmental and Human Calamities
- Authors: Jonathan J. Bonk, Michel G. Distefano, J. Nelson Jennings, Jinbong Kim, Jae Hoon Lee
- Publisher: William Carey Publishing
- Print Publication Date: 2024
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781645085607, 1645085600
- Resource ID: LLS:9781645085607
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-10-16T17:34:34Z
Jonathan J. Bonk is research professor of mission at Boston University, where he is director emeritus of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography (www.dacb.org). He is executive director emeritus of the Overseas Ministries Study Center (www.omsc.org) where he served from 1997 until his retirement in July 2013. He was editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research (www.internationalbulletin.org) from July 1997 until June 2013. He has authored five books, edited eleven collaborative volumes, and published nearly two hundred scholarly articles, book chapters, reviews, and editorials. His best-known book is Missions and Money: Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem (Orbis 1991 and 2006). Past president of the APM, ASM, EMS, and IAMS, he has served on the executive of the Global Mission Leadership Forum since 2011. Each of the previous six forums has resulted in books published in English and in Korean. He retired as GMLF President following this seventh forum. He is a lay minister of the Fort Garry Mennonite Fellowship in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was raised in Ethiopia by missionary parents.
Michel G. Distefano (PhD, McGill) thought he was on a fast track for a career in Hebrew Bible, but after Bible college (Providence) and seminary (TEDS) in the 1980s that plan was interrupted for over a decade. So he quickly studied nursing and worked in neonatal intensive care. In the 2000s, he got his PhD and was an instructor in Hebrew Bible and ANE religions at McGill. In the 2010s, his plans were interrupted again and he became a homesteader, and lately also an independent scholar. He has been involved with KGMLF since 2019. He has known Prof. Jonathan Bonk (Dad) for more than forty years, and it has been a great privilege to work with him and the rest of the executive again. Michel and his wife, whom he also met at Bible college, are Canadians and have three children, a son and daughter-in-law, and the cutest grandchildren.
J. Nelson Jennings (PhD, Edinburgh University) is vice president of the Korean Global Mission Leaders Forum. He is editor of Global Missiology—English (globalmissiology.org) and is involved in several other online mission research projects, including the Dictionary of Christian Biography in Asia (dcbasia.org) and the Alliance of Mission Researchers and Institutions (amriconnect.net). He and his family served in Japan for thirteen years (1986-1999), first in church planting, then in teaching at Tokyo Christian University. Jennings taught world mission for twelve years at Covenant Theological Seminary (and again since 2018 in an adjunct capacity), served at the Overseas Ministries Study Center (2011-2015), and was a mission consultant for Onnuri Church (2015-2021). He has published numerous books and articles and has also served as editor of Missiology: An International Review and International Bulletin of Missionary [now Mission] Research. Jennings and his wife, Kathy, are both US-Americans and live in Hamden, Connecticut, USA.
Jinbong Kim, the coordinator of KGMLF, proposed its creation in 2008 and is now the managing director of the umbrella organization, Global Mission Leaders Forum. Beginning in 1990, he served for a number of years as a missionary in West Africa. He and his wife, Soon Young Jung, joined GMS in 1994 and in 1998 joined WEC International as well. They spent two terms working among Fulani Muslims in Guinea, Afterward, Kim served for six years as the director of International Church Relations at Overseas Ministries Study Center. Kim pursued mission studies in England (ANCC) and he also interned at a church in France. In 2006, he earned the degree of doctor of intercultural studies in the US. He and his wife are blessed with two young adult sons.
Jae Hoon Lee is senior pastor of Onnuri Church and chair of the Korea Lausanne Committee.