Creation Care on the Home Front – Project Report
CCCS Supported Workshop
June 23-25, 2009
Bunker Interpretive Center, Calvin College
Introduction
We held a three day workshop at the Bunker Interpretive Center that brought
together a wonderfully diverse assemblage of people, all around the topic of creation care
in the context of the Plaster Creek Watershed. For three intense days we met and
discussed, heard presentations, had a field trip, worked in large and small groups,
welcomed guest speakers, shared meals together and in the end representatives from four
local congregations (Roosevelt Park CRC, Madison Square CRC, Alger Park CRC and
Woodlawn CRC) and the Christian Reformed Church Home Offices (North America and
Canada) presented action plans that will be implemented over the coming 18 months.
This was a very exciting time of awakening both to the deplorable condition of
Plaster Creek and the call for Christian environmental activism. Fresh insights and
creative ideas were numerous. Below is a brief synopsis of our three days of activities.
Tuesday, June 23
Morning Session I. Gail Heffner opened with a devotion that focused on the vital
importance of water for supporting human health. She highlighted how pervasive water
is in the scriptures and noted how water is portrayed as both a blessing and a curse. She
ended her devotion with a poem from Mary Oliver entitled, Thirst.
After the devotion we introduced ourselves to each other by stating our name and
the organization we each represented, and then provided an early memory we each have
that involves water. Among these memories were a father jumping into a swimming pool
in the arid southwest, a brother nearly drowning while swimming in a local lake,
luxuriously long days spent at the beach, a canoe trip in Northern Wisconsin, keeping a
pet trout kept and cared for in a drainage ditch, ice skating along frozen canals, and many
others.
Morning Session II. Dave Warners introduced the project by describing two
strands of experiences that have come together in this project. One strand was Dave’s
gradual appreciation for the unhealthy state of Plaster Creek, which included both a
memory of seeing an older man carrying a large salmon home from the creek to eat, as
well as an impassioned plea from Janice Tompkins (Michigan Department of
Environmental Quality) to a group of Calvin faculty to help her try to wake up the faith
community to respond to their stewardship responsibility to care for this creek. The other
strand that Dave described was his involvement in helping the Christian Reformed World
Relief Committee and Christian Reformed World Missions to integrate creation care into
their mission efforts. In a meeting with Andy Ryskamp in the fall of 2008, Andy
suggested we embark on an effort to try to motivate North American congregations to
understand the fundamental importance of embracing creation care as an integral
component of their Christian witness. These two strands each found resonance in this
project which focuses on stimulating tangible, creation care action plans among people of
faith in the Plaster Creek watershed.
After Dave’s introduction to how this project came to be, he led a lively
discussion of ‘Bounded Hope in the Household and House of God’, Chapter 9 from
Matthew Bonzo and Michael Stevens’ book, Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life.
This chapter emphasized the importance of churches being firmly place-based, focusing
their efforts on the human and environmental challenges that are presented in the
communities (social and ecological) in which they reside.
Morning Session III. Randy Van Dragt led this session which was a basic
introduction to the concept of a watershed. Randy presented an informative talk on
stream ecology and the various activities in a watershed that influence the health of a
stream. Randy also presented a brief history of the Plaster Creek watershed and
identified the prevailing threats to the health of Plaster Creek. Plaster Creek itself is 14
miles in length and the watershed covers 58 square miles in 4 municipalities (Grand
Rapids, East Grand Rapids, Wyoming and Kentwood) and 5 townships (Grand Rapids,
Ada, Cascade, Caledonia and Gaines). The main influences that are detrimentally
affecting the stream’s health are: sedimentation, pathogenic organisms, excess nutrients
from lawns and dairy operations, thermal pollution from the loss of canopied buffer
zones, and toxic substances.
Afternoon Session. Following lunch, we embarked on a field trip which included
four stops along Plaster Creek. We were led in this survey of the creek and watershed by
several community partners, including Wendy Ogilvie (Fishbeck,Thompson, Carr and
Huber ), Janice Tompkins (Michigan DEQ) and Kristi Klomp (West Michigan
Environmental Action Council). At one of our stops, where Plaster Creek crosses
Madison Avenue, we put on hip waders and gloves and we entered the stream to observe
many of the aquatic insect life that existed in this stretch of the creek.
Evening Activity. Our field trip was culminated with a delicious pizza supper in
the Warners’ back yard.
Wednesday, June 24
Devotion. Dave Warners began the day with a devotion on the concept of
‘shalom’. He described how this Jewish term has rich meaning that is watered down
through Biblical translations. He emphasized the notion of ‘fittingness’ this word
conveys; fittingness for all elements of creation. Dave also emphasized that the concept
of shalom offers an antithesis to ‘fear’, a reaction that is often present when things do not
fit together in the way God intends.
Morning Session I. Dave followed up his devotions with a presentation on the
Biblical Foundations for Creation Care in which he revisited the concept of shalom,
connected it to Christian environmental stewardship, and used these two concepts to
provide fresh insight to our understanding of ‘mission’. Although this presentation was
power-point based, Dave summarized his message with an extended outline that was
distributed to the participants the following day.
Morning Session II. Randy Van Dragt led this session, which was focused on the
challenge of promoting creation care principles to Christian Reformed Church
congregations. Randy offered several thoughts at the outset, and then randomly divided
the participants into four groups to have them begin to identify the fundamental concepts
of creation care that need to be transmitted to fellow parishioners, as well as potential
assets and hindrances that may be encountered when trying to do so.
Morning Session III. Gail Heffner, Peter Hiskes, Linda VanAndel, Dave Warners
and Ken Piers used this third session to present a wide variety of possible action items
that could be undertaken by local congregations that would have a positive effect on the
health of the watershed. Among these options were rain barrels, stream bank clean-ups,
restoration activities, rain gardens, naturalized landscaping, and porous parking lots.
Afternoon Session I. The midway point of our three day workshop marked a
transition from participants receiving background information on watersheds, Plaster
Creek and theological foundations, to helping them to begin developing a response. This
transition was initiated with a large group discussion aimed at helping the participants to
collectively process the information they had been given to this point. For this discussion
Gail Heffner divided the workshop into two groups, a group of church representatives
that was led by Clarence Joldersma, and a group of the denominational representatives
that was led by Andy Ryskamp. Gail provided three questions for the two groups to
discuss, after which we reconvened the entire workshop to hear their responses.
Afternoon Session II. For the remainder of the afternoon we had participants
meet within their own church and denominational groups to begin dialoguing about the
particular approach they would plan to take to their home institutions. This session
marked the beginning effort for these groups to formulate their own action plans.
Workshop conveners were each assigned to a group, as well, to help facilitate the
discussion and beginning implementation strategies.
Evening Activity. For our evening meal, we all convened at a local Ethiopian
restaurant in Eastown called GoJos. This communal meal offered further opportunity for
participants to get to know each other and to continue processing the experiences from
the first two days of the workshop.
Thursday, June 25
Devotion. Randy began the morning with devotions in which he reflected on his
childhood experiences in the drainage ditches around Lynden, Washington. He
encouraged us to move forward as bearers of a vision for how things can and should be.
Morning Session I. Mayor George Heartwell joined us to offer his
congratulations and affirmation for what we are doing. He reported that in December he
traveled to New Zealand and learned how the government structure there had reorganized
itself from 800 governing units to only 80, and these 80 governing units were organized
according to watersheds. He talked about how the problem of combined sewage
overflow in the Grand River has been corrected but warned that a continuing challenge to
river quality is pharmaceuticals and personal care items – these can act as endocrine
disruptors. He also talked about runoff from nitrogen fertilizers and petroleum products
from parking lot and street runoff. He highlighted the city-wide river clean up on
September 19 and invited us to partake.
Mayor Heartwell also emphasized his triple bottom line approach – that Grand
Rapids needs to move forward in ways that promote the economic, social and
environmental sustainability of our region. In response to a question about the
involvement of the faith community in sustainability efforts, he admitted that, although
an ordained pastor himself, he has a love/hate relationship with the church. He loves the
potential that the church holds but hates the way the church so often falls far short of that
potential. He stated that he thinks the faith community in West Michigan has been very
good at showing mercy, but not very good at doing justice. For example, mercy would
be something like cleaning the streams of trash, but justice would be a change in the way
we live so that we no longer contribute to the degradation of our waterways. He hasn’t
seen a passion emerge for environmental justice the way it has for social justice.
Morning Session II. After break, we began hearing preliminary reports from the
five groups. Each group presented their ideas for activities they are planning to
undertake and then received feedback on their ideas. This session involved much
creative dialogue and took a fair bit longer than the conveners had anticipated, but there
was much good that came from this, both in terms of encouragement as well as additional
ideas and suggestions.
Morning Session III. Around 11:00am we sent each group off with a laptop
computer and a PowerPoint template and gave them until 1:00pm to polish up their
presentations.
Afternoon Session I. After welcoming a few additional guests, we used the time
from 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm for each group to formally present their action plans. These
presentations were marked by many creative ideas, each action plan specifically designed
for each institution. It was an exciting session for all of us, as the three days of education
and hard work were translated into tangible activities that will be implemented over the
coming 18 months.
Afternoon Session II. Andy Bowman, director of the Lower Grand River
Organization of Watersheds (LGROW) presented the organizational structure for this
group and suggested ways that a Plaster Creek sub-basin group, possibly comprised of a
representative collection of members from the workshop, might fit into his overall
scheme.
Afternoon Session III. Dave Warners finished up the workshop with some
concluding remarks. We decided to all meet again in the fall over lunch to hear of the
progress and difficulties encountered as these action plans are taken to the representative
institutions. We also agreed to keep meeting approximately once a semester to keep the
momentum moving forward. To conclude, Dave thanked everyone for their gifts of time,
energy and creativity, he congratulated the group on the excellent work that had been
accomplished and offered encouragement for the days ahead. He concluded with a
prayer, after which the participants were dismissed.