Evangelist?

|PIC1|This weekend I am packing my bags to go on a three week national tour speaking on climate change. People act somewhat surprised when I tell them this. “But is this the kind of work an evangelist should be involved with?” they question with puzzled faces.

As an evangelist I am passionate about people coming to faith. I am passionate about people discovering the love of God. I am passionate about lives being transformed.

But over the past few years, I have begun to discover a wider understanding of the gospel. I have begun to understand the gospel in relation to Jesus’ preaching when he declared “the Kingdom of God is at hand!” Jesus leaves us with the Great Commission to “go and make disciples…” (Matt 28:16-20) and he also leaves us with the Great Commandment, to love God and to love our neighbours as we love ourselves (Matt 22:37-39).

The gospel is undoubtedly about people coming into a relationship with God the Father through Jesus. But the gospel is also about the whole person, about caring for others practically as well as caring spiritually. It is therefore also about feeding the hungry, praying for the sick and fighting injustice.

You may then ask, what does this have to do with climate change? Climate change seems to be continually in the news and yet as Christians we don’t seem to have grappled with this issue and its implications.

I believe that the gospel is a call to combat climate change.

As we continue to pollute the atmosphere, in particular with CO2 gas, the sunlight is being trapped and the climate is being impacted. An overall increase in temperature creates flooding in some areas and droughts in others. Climate change is destroying the very systems that God has put in place.

And I believe that climate change is a gospel issue because climate change will impact the poorest hardest. Already in some parts of Africa and Asia, climate change is impacting weather patterns, destroying crop yielding land and causing flooding to such an extent that people are dying. If we are called to love our neighbour as ourselves, then we can not allow our neighbours to fall into deeper poverty. We must make a stand against climate change to demonstrate that the gospel is about the whole person.

Climate change demonstrates how we have failed to appreciate God’s creation… a creation that the writer of Genesis continually describes as good... a creation that we have been entrusted with to serve and preserve. Paul writes, “For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Rom 1:20)

When we pollute and destroy creation, we are failing to take our responsibilities seriously. In so doing we are prohibiting our neighbours from their right to discover God’s invisible qualities as the Creator God. The core issues that have led to climate change are greed and laziness. We consume and waste so much, and we have little care for the consequences of our actions.

As an evangelist, I am still very passionate about people coming to faith but as I have discovered a more holistic gospel message, I now believe limiting climate change is a gospel issue too. And that is why I am packing my bags …

Andy Frost is director of Share Jesus International www.sharejesusinternational.com To find out more about the Hope for Planet Earth tour, visit www.hopeforplanetearth.co.uk