In a few days’ time, almost 200 world leaders, plus activists, non-governmental organisation representatives and perhaps even the odd surprised tourist, will congregate in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, for the 27^th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change, otherwise known as COP27. Around about this time last year, the UK was gearing up to host COP26 in Glasgow and I was three months into the role of BMS Creation Stewardship Co-ordinator. But how do COP27 and God’s creation intersect?

Regardless of how you might feel about climate change and the single-issue lens on carbon emissions, the recent UN Emissions Gap Report 2022 makes it clear that the world’s governments are nowhere near to even pledging the kind of change that is considered necessary to limit global warming.

From where I sit, one year on, I will dare to say that I’m not so surprised and I don’t believe we should be. As Christians who must draw our knowledge of the human condition from within God’s creation — primarily from God’s Word — this is certainly cause for lament. But it shouldn’t diminish our hope and personal commitment.

Over the last year, as I’ve started to unpack the creation stewardship role and all that it can, might or should encompass for BMS, there have been many positive moments. There were the talks I gave to my local church youth group here in Piura, Peru, which resulted in their decision to do a monthly evangelism-and-litter collection activity in the church neighbourhood. This led to an invitation to collaborate on an evening conference on “The Christian and Creation” with the Piura Baptist Youth Association. Here it became clear that many of the young people were barely aware that the Bible provided a clear foundation for environmental stewardship to counter the predominantly secular-humanist perspective they were learning in the colleges and universities.

There was the invitation to accompany Peruvian mission worker, Raquel Leon, in her ministry to the Awajun people of north-central Peru. Raquel had heard that I had done ‘environmental things’ in the low jungle of the Peruvian Amazon and thought I could assist in her integral ministry in the high jungle. So, I got back to basics, leading workshops on God’s blessing of clean water and how to keep it (and us) clean to avoid sickness, as well as God’s blessing in biodiversity and the importance of a varied diet of local fruit, nuts and vegetables to keep us healthy. I still hope to return in the next few months to follow-up with the local believers and the kitchen gardens that we created together.

Then there are the UK Creation Stewardship Champions, members of our UK-based staff who volunteered to champion practical creation stewardship in our UK office back in April. As we grapple with the reality that what we in the UK consider to be a normal level of consumption of goods and energy, is one of the main drivers of environmental pollution, biodiversity loss and global warming… well, we realise that we also need to prioritise putting our own house in order.

To that end, we’ve been working on how we can improve our environmental footprint across our all UK-based operations, including our international flight mileage and energy use (which I track by calculating our organisational carbon footprint each year). We also expect to have a fully LED-lit office by the end of the year, and we hope that parts of the lawn outside the building will have been converted to wildflowers by the end of next year.

And then there have been the numerous workshops, webinars and presentations which have taken me to more places than I can count – predominantly through my laptop and the internet. One thing is clear from the many conversations: we know that we are all part of the same creation, but stewarding it well takes many different forms and we often don’t know where to start.

I’ve concluded that the best thing we can do together is to sound out the biblical principles and learn to ask ourselves the right questions: how do I impact creation and how does it impact me?

Very recently I’ve had the opportunity to contribute to a course on “Creation Care and the Gospel” with the International Baptist Theological Seminary. It allowed me to delve into the biblical tradition of lament, specifically in the context of ecological brokenness. In human terms, lamenting is what we do when we’ve come to the end of ourselves, and hope has become a matter of faith where feelings no longer help us.

Where lament meets creation, we see that it is God who got there first upon seeing the state of the world just six chapters after he created it and declared it good. Yet even though he judged the world (and he will judge it again), he hasn’t given up hope. Instead, he carried on working and then sent his Son into the thick of things, telling us to follow him.

So, while corruption besets us on every side, outside and in, we are still called today to be witnesses in word and deed to the Creator and the Saviour of the world. Therefore, let’s not lament as the world laments, without hope. Let us lament, knowing that the God of heaven and earth laments with us, but he hasn’t given up hope and he hasn’t stopped working.