Chapter One
 I was an Ecology major at the end of the 1960s during the height of the environmental movement, but eventually began a career as a school teacher. My wife Nancy and I spent the first 14 years of our marriage without electricity because we lived in an older home on our family ranch in southern California. We truly lived off the land; we grew some of our own food and always valued the natural balance of our surroundings. Because of that lifestyle, our two kids grew to know the worth of nature. But later in life when I became a Christian and entered into the ministry, somehow I disconnected from all of these values and affections. I never stopped loving nature, but it was somehow set aside because there was no real value for environmental stewardship in the church. The evangelical church in the 1970s was rife with a theology known as Dispensationalism, which implied—if not explicitly stated at times—that “Jesus is returning and the earth is going to burn up anyway, so go ahead and use it up.” During that time, a lot of Christians—people who had once seen the value in cherishing and protecting the environment—lost their ideals and didn’t see them as a value in the church, myself included.
Since 1989, I have pastored and led a church in Boise, Idaho, a place where God’s beautiful creation surrounds you on every side. Outdoor recreation is a high value here. People hike, ski downhill and cross-country, mountain bike, fish, and hunt. But for years, I was always afraid to use the word “environment” because I didn’t want to be labeled a “liberal.” In the political landscape of the United States, environmentalism has always connected with a liberal perspective on the world. If you were a liberal, you were also supposedly for many other things that I simply could not accept or attach myself to. And while I shared many of the ideals of “conservatives,” I viewed the environment as one issue that I could let slide. But that began to change when I realized I couldn’t let political affiliation dissuade my higher allegiance to God’s Kingdom, and from my charge as a Christian to be a good steward of all God’s creation...
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