“To live, that is the rarest thing in the world.  Most people exist, that is all.”  - Oscar Wilde

We’ve been on the road now for three weeks; we have five more weeks to go.

Anna Jane Joyner (Renewal’s other coordinator) and I (Ben Lowe) have been going from campus to campus, exploring the student creation care movement up close and learning how Renewal can help our student leaders rally their campus communities.  This first leg has been entirely on the West Coast with stops at Point Loma, Biola, Westmont, Azusa Pacific, Seattle Pacific, Trinity Western, Regent (College), and now Whitworth. 

We’ve talked to hundreds of students and dozens of faculty and staff, eager to discover what campus communities are already doing to care for creation.

We’ve learned a lot. 

For instance, Point Loma Nazarene University (San Diego) is aggressively covering their many flat roofs with solar (PV) panels to tap directly into the strong sunlight they enjoy along the coast in Southern California. They also give the trimmings from their Acacia and Bird of Paradise plants to the world-renowned San Diego Zoo to feed some of their animals.  Pretty creative!

The good news is that the above examples barely scratch the surface of what the Christian campuses we visited are doing to become better stewards of God’s earth.   However, we’ve also learned that it’s the faculty, staff, and smaller core groups of passionate students that are spearheading much of this progress. While we’ve found the majority of Christian students to be on board with creation care, many in our generation have yet to join in and channel their conviction into action. 

And yet an authentic and passionate student movement is exactly what we need today.  We need Christian students who truly live – as Oscar Wilde put it – and not just exist. We need our generation to step up as active agents of change and to care for God’s creation as an integral part of our relationship with Jesus Christ. 

The question remains the same: What does God’s kingdom look like and how can we start living it out now, not just as an add-on in our lives and communities but as the central organizing reality?

Maybe we’re just not asking ourselves this question enough?  Maybe we’ve been so influenced by our culture that we ask different questions instead, such as:  How can I get my work done quickly so I have time to enjoy college and hang out with my friends more tonight?  Or what can I spend my time studying so that I get good grades and find a well-paying job when I graduate? 

These questions aren’t bad ones to be asking.  But if we don’t consider them in light of the first one – what is our role as children of the Creator God and citizens in his kingdom – then I fear we’re only cheating ourselves out of the fullness of all God created us to be and do.  

As Shane Claiborne puts it so well: “What the world needs is people who believe so much in another world that they cannot help but begin enacting it now.”