In Romans 1:20 we read that we can see God’s nature displayed in the things He created. So when we farm to the glory of God, we don’t just ‘tack’ Him onto what we do, but we seek to discover more of Him as we work with the Creation that manifests His Glory. This makes our witness more genuine as we seek to make incorporate disciplemaking into our work of creation stewardship. It is much more effective to help people discover Jesus through things like farming than it is to relegate talk about Him to the merely ‘religious sphere’ of our lives.
One good example of this is the “Compost Gospel” which I heard about from a young couple I met in Zimbabwe who teach Foundations for Farming to the poor in southern Africa. “Compost Gospel” is essentially a way that they discovered to explain the gospel to people while teaching them to make thermal compost piles. I wanted to share this at the conference we held last year so I asked them to describe it to me again and the following is what they sent me (edited).
“When you’ve already explained the compost making quickly, you ask the people: What do we normally call that (referring to/showing the heaps of green/brown materials, things like cut grass or leaves). They normally answer “garbage”, or if they don’t you ask again,”before you knew that it could be useful,what did you call that heaps of stuff lying in your backyard?” Then you say… “Garbage, right? We call it garbage.”
Now before I or we came to Christ, we were much like garbage, I was also like that, garbage. BUT, then when I/we came to Christ, we were baptised and put in the body of Christ. (While saying this you take some of the brown/green (whichever) material and dunk it in the water and put it in between the four composting poles.)
But inside the body of Christ (motion with your hand to the space between the 4 poles defining the started pile) we cannot just be comfortable. Like the compost material we need to be broken down (die to self).
And then we can’t just stay inside of the body of Christ (we are no good when we are just staying there). Like the compost,we need to go out into the world (be applied to the poor soil), to reach out and spread the good news that Jesus Christ is alive! To go out and bring life to the world around us.”
Creation points to our amazing God. It’s only natural to expect the gospel to be reflected in this. It’s a great story to tell, Noah. Thanks for sharing it. The whole regeneration idea (being regenerated into a new creation by and through Jesus Christ) is a model for us in our agriculture … to be sure we practice regenerative techniques, not degenerative ones. Through Jesus Christ, we have gained, not lost. Through regenerative techniques, we realize a net gain, not simply sustain the land and obtain a yield. Through our techniques, we should grow the soil, enrich it and allow it to be a productive place. Just as through Christ we grow as He enriches us in our process of sanctification and He allows us to be a productive child of God. Praise Him that even His creation can teach us these principles and not a single word spoken or written.
Dan Grubbs
Stewardculture Magazine
http://issuu.com/stewardculture