Maria Ale Andrade V and Clark Buys began by presenting Tearfund’s Abundant Community Theology (ACT). They talked about cultivating an abundant community mindset over that of a scarcity mindset: this prioritizes relationship over individual identity, a shared home over competitive market, generosity over greed, and better distribution over more production solutions.

Prof. Must Dube followed this presentation with a critical reflection on ACT. She highlighted the importance of contextual theology with concern for the communities included and excluded within our conversation. She raised the need for decolonized theology and mentioned that ‘…a spirit of inclusion does not mean a spirit of equality’. She also emphasised the importance of lament with God and God’s creation for ‘…naming oppression, calling for change and justice for earth’. She ended by reminding us that the good news extends to all creation and underscored the transformative nature of salvation.

Dave Bookless offered an overview of creation care theology trends. He first began by highlighting how early creation care theology existed among Desert Fathers, Coptic Christians, Celtic Christians, and even early evangelicals. He discussed how a great reversal took place when a fear of science, liberal theology and ‘social gospel’ concerns emerged. Integral Mission was rediscovered through the aid of theologians such as René Padilla, Samuel Escobar, and John Stott. Currently, we are witnessing a rise of eco-theologies, including liberation theologies, interfaith theologies and post-colonial and indigenous theologies. Finally, he named a few future trends including:

a) rethinking ‘stewardship’
b) questioning ‘anthropocentrism’
c) cultivating theologies of lament, loss and hope
d) exploring intersectionality of ecotheology among other issues like gender, decolonization, and so on.

A link to the recording of this webinar will be shared in the next Pollinator.

Paper: Abundant Community Theology – Buys & Andrade V. (2023). Abundant Community Theology: A Case Study in Decolonial Theological Research. Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer2023.

Video: Tearfund – Enough for All

You can read more about this role and other opportunities here: arocha.org/en/get-involved/opportunities/

Don’t miss it—see you there!

Kuki Rokhum joins A Rocha International!

After a rigorous global recruitment process, we’re delighted to share that Kuki Rokhum from India has been appointed as Director of Church Engagement for A Rocha International. You can read more here. Many of you will know Kuki from her work with EFICOR, Renew Our World, LWCCN, Micah and other networks. Kuki will be based in Aizawl, Mizoram, NE India but her role will be global…so look out world, here comes Kuki!

He’s passionate about A Rocha’s vision and says “A Rocha’s work is so close to God’s heart: the environment, poverty, simple living, speaking out, justice, community, theology, education and science are all intrinsically interwoven with the command of Jesus to “preach Good News to all creation”. More information can be found here.

Here’s Ed! (photo from A Rocha website)

• 40^th Birthday! A Rocha began in 1983 with a single project in Portugal. In September there will be a local gathering at Cruzinha, the centre in Portugal where it all began, and a virtual anniversary party for supporters. There’s also a special 40^th birthday edition of A Rocha’s e-magazine, Field Notes for all to read.

• Field Notes Podcast: the latest edition of A Rocha’s podcast features Prarthini Selveindran based in Singapore (hello, from The Pollinator editor!). If you have some time to spare, I invite you to join me in reflecting on student ministry and learning from God’s two books: scripture and nature. You can find that here.

1. A Rocha USA, South Florida marine intern news

Three intrepid university graduates in conservation science spent the past nine months in Titusville Florida actively working in the conservation field. The interns conducted microplastic, biodiversity, and horseshoe crab research that aids in the management of species and habitats. The volunteered with our local partners to restore oyster reefs, clams, mangroves and seagrass to the Indian River Lagoon, the USA’s most-biodiverse estuary. This lagoon is subject to significant nutrient input, fishing, and habitat alteration which is negatively impacting this ecosystem. There was also a focus on presentation at scientific fora and developing their conservation storytelling skills. They produced a StoryMap on the Florida Springs, contributed to A Rocha’s blog and e-news, and developed a reflective video featuring horseshoe crabs. This internship and work on horseshoe crabs was featured in a Biologos podcast which gives a great summary of the work here and also the spiritual underpinnings and direction of travel.

2. Marine Work, globally

A Rocha continues to increase the depth and breadth of their marine conservation work. One of our main foci is to work with local species and habitats of conservation concern. This ranges from the oi/grey-faced petrel Pterodroma gouldi in Aotearoa/New Zealand to Halavi guitarfish Glaucostegus halavi in Kenya to Olympia oysters Ostrea lurida in Canada. Habitat restoration work includes mangrove habitats in Ghana, USA, and Kenya as well as among many of our new Friends of A Rocha network country projects. Plastic research and conservation continue to feature, including at our now 40-year-old work in Portugal. A Rocha Kenya has had a year-long project cleaning beaches near our field study centre. Our Plastic Toolbox continues to be used within and beyond A Rocha to start new projects and to discover the theological underpinnings and outworking of plastic in God’s world. We are moving ahead in projects emphasizing fisheries particularly livelihoods within poorer communities. Wellbeing continues to be an important part of work, seeking to enjoy the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits of being in, on, under or around water. Coral reef monitoring and several habitat restoration projects seek to contribute to our understanding and mitigation of climate change impacts on the ocean.

A Place at the Table

We are eager to share with you a good read, an invitation to encounter and consider hospitality, through the story of A Rocha and the life of the late co-founder Miranda Harris.
This book was jointly written by Miranda Harris and her daughter, Jo Swinney, now ARI’s Director of Communications.

The book was published posthumously last year.

Consider purchasing your copy here, or through Amazon.

A Rocha is a global family of conservation organizations working together to live out God’s calling to care for creation ​and equip others to do likewise. The worldwide A Rocha family has been through a lot of change and development in recent years. At the helm, Simon Stuart as Executive Director has provided wise and able leadership, and A Rocha is now growing and developing fast in many places. Simon is retiring as planned, and so the search has begun for a new Executive Director. Details can be found at: https://arocha.org/en/a-rocha-international-executive-director. Key qualities include:

• Experience of organisational leadership and growth ideally in a multinational/multicultural and/or federated context
• Fabulous relationship building qualities
• An excellent strategic mind and organisational development qualities
• Christian maturity and wisdom to discern God’s activity in the world
• Passion for the natural world, and for its conservation and recovery, seeing this as an integral part of her/his Christian walk

Related News:

The A Rocha Commitment to Creation Care (ACCC)

The worldwide A Rocha family has recently been through a major consultation leading to a new ‘Commitment to Creation Care’. The gives a clear biblical basis for creation care, placing within God’s purposes from creation to creation. It will form the basis for A Rocha’s work, but it is also hoped it will prove to be useful to many Churches and Christian organisations around the world. You can read and also download the ACCC at https://arocha.org/en/theology-churches/faith-distinctives.

It has been almost three years since the entire global creation care family mourned the loss of A Rocha leaders Chris and Susanna Naylor and Miranda Harris, wife of Peter Harris. But what a beautiful way to bring Miranda’s memory back to life in the pages of A Place at the Table, a new book set to be released by Hodder Faith on 18 October 2022.

Here is the publisher’s description:

Rooted in the story of the Christian environmental conservation charity, A Rocha, and the life of its late co-founder Miranda Harris, A PLACE AT THE TABLE: Faith, Hope and Hospitality (Hodder Faith, Oct. 18, 2022) is a profound reflection on hospitality and the transformative power of community.

Miranda Harris’s tragic death in 2019 sent a shockwave across the globe to those closest to her and the many who found her approach to hospitality and community a life-long inspiration. Her daughter Jo Swinney honors her mother’s dedication to a life of community and fellowship with A PLACE AT THE TABLE—pairing her own words with her mother’s writings and exploring how sharing food is at the heart of a shared life.

Lyrically written and structured around the shape of a meal, A PLACE AT THE TABLE explores the six parts of a meal:
•Hunger—a God-given gift reminding us to seek out what we need to live and experience joy
•Preparation—preparing our houses, ourselves and our food, and doing so with love
•Welcome—the biblical practice of hospitality and how it challenges us to open our hearts and homes to people very different from ourselves
•At the Table—how sharing meals forms relationships and the meaning and significance of community
•The Clean-Up—tending to the messiness of life: inner messes, outer messes, relational messes
•The Forever Feast—God’s promises for tomorrow foreshadowed today and loving God’s people in the waiting

With prayers, biblical examples and stories, and personal reflections A PLACE AT THE TABLE meditates on themes of belonging, loss and community and is an encouraging call to action to make hospitality a part of daily life.

More information and preorder links are here. But before you do that, spend a couple of minutes listening to Jo tell us how she discovered the unfinished manuscript in her Mum’s office:

Thank you, Jo, for helping us all to remember Miranda.

There are all kinds of technologies, from carbon capture and sequestration to artificial trees, being proposed to deal with the climate crisis. But this raises an important question: is more technology the best way to tackle a problem that has been created by technology?

Our friends at A Rocha have produced an important paper outlining how we might use nature itself to bring the climate change problem under control:

Nature-based Solutions are approaches that work with and enhance nature on land and sea, providing benefits for both human wellbeing and biodiversity, to address societal challenges including climate change. Nature-based Solutions to climate change can both avoid greenhouse gas emissions and enhance carbon sinks on land and in the sea as well as build resilience and aid adaptation to climate change for both nature and people.

Read more here.