An Earth Day Invitation to Watershed Discipleship

Last updated on: April 22, 2014 at 8:53 am by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

An Earth Day Invitation to Watershed Discipleship 2014-04-22T08:53:49-06:00 Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Below is an Earth Day invitation from my friend Fred Bahnson, who directs the Food and Faith Initiative at Wake Forrest Divinity School in Winston-Salem, NC. I’m just tickled that they’re hosting another friend, Ched Myers, for a course on Watershed Discipleship this summer. If you want to take issues of place and justice seriously, this is one place to join the conversation. Wish I could be there myself.

“We have lost our way as creatures of God’s biosphere,” writes Ched Myers in the May 2014 issue of Sojourners magazine, “but the map woven into creation can lead us home.”

What is the map?

Many of us are un-placed people, Ched writes, which means that we don’t know much about the places in which we live. To care for a place, we need to love it. To love a place we have to know it. And one way to know your place is to think in terms of your watershed. It’s a kind of map that tells us how we might care for not only our local ecosystems, but the also the planet.

In his article Ched calls for the church to take up what he calls watershed discipleship. “Watershed discipleship invites Christians to ‘re-inhabit’ that corner of creation in which we reside by engaging everything within it in terms of ecological resiliency and social justice.”

Ched lists five marks of how watershed discipleship can lead to the renewal of our broken world: theological re-grounding, re-placed economics, political imagination, social justice, and ecclesial renewal.

Those five marks cover pretty much every area of our lives. In other words, watershed discipleship is not a riparian club for Christian biology geeks who want to get better at identifying salamanders. It’s for all of us. It’s about rethinking how we live on this earth.

Earth Day is not something we should celebrate only once a year. Every day is Earth Day, and God’s mandate to “serve and preserve” (Gen.2:15) this Earth is really an invitation to love. Learning about watershed discipleship can give our love hands and feet.

If these ideas interest you, I invite you to join Ched, myself, and others in the NC mountains June 16-20. The course is called “Sabbath Economics and Watershed Discipleship,” and it combines morning lectures, afternoon site visits and permaculture training, communal meals, music, and discussion. Each day is bookended with Lauds and Vespers, led by our in-house musician and chaplain. The course takes place on the lovely campus of Warren Wilson College, in Swannanoa, NC, with site visits to several model food gardens.

Thus far we have a great group of folks who’ve signed up: the director of the Memphis Center for Food and Faith, several pastors from around the country, a community garden manager from Lexington, KY, several students. We even have an international contingent: a couple from England working on food and faith issues across the pond and two Anglican mission workers coming from Brazil.

It’s an impressive group. Which means that the learning will happen not only in the classroom, but also out in the garden and in conversations around the table. Early Bird registration ends May 15, and we still have spaces left.

The map of creation is before us, and we have the opportunity to help each other become better map readers. I hope you’re consider joining us. Course details here.

Features

Previous Post

April 20, 2014

NC Clergy Send Open Letter to State Government Leaders

Next Post

April 25, 2014 Freedom Ride 2014: Get on board!

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Features Front Porch Nurturing Communities Testimonies

Select a Month April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz