Resource Library

Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care

2020 Calvin Symposium on Worship | Workshop

Audio | February 11, 2020

Renee Reimer on Being Rooted and Grounded in God’s Creation

Worshiping outdoors and bringing nature into worship helped one church experience more connections between God’s creation, worship, and neighbors.

Conversation | October 10, 2017

Jamie Skillen on Creation Care and Sabbath Rest

Christians often talk about the doctrine of creation as mainly about origins and God’s glory. Jamie Skillen goes deeper by looking at God’s purpose in creation and how that applies to creation care.

Conversation | August 04, 2017

Worship Songs about Care for Creation

Caring about God’s good creation includes lamenting whatever harms it and joining God’s mission to make all things new. Songs from around the world explore these ideas.

Article | June 15, 2017

Worship Resources for Creation Care

We confess that God created heaven and earth and everything in it. We sing that this is our Father’s world. Yet, billions of people suffer in places where so much is no longer bright and beautiful. This worship resource guide will help your community plan services that honor our Creator, who invites us to join in caring for the whole creation.

Resource Guide | June 14, 2017

Tree of Life

A visual symbol that can be placed on the cover of service bulletins, within the written liturgy, or on a large screen display.

Image | March 23, 2017

Wendell Kimbrough on Singing Creation Psalms

A regular discipline of writing psalm refrains helped one musician notice psalms in which creation and God’s people call each other to worship the Creator.

Conversation | February 21, 2017

Green Congregations Advocate for People Affected by Environmental Problems

As creation care takes hold in a congregation’s building, worship and church life, God often nudges the church to a tipping point. Members begin advocating for those most affected by environmental problems.

Feature Story | October 10, 2013

Guillermo Márquez-Sterling on Youth and Unique Mission Trip

Guillermo Márquez-Sterling is associate pastor at Coral Gables United Church of Christ in Coral Gables, Florida. In this edited conversation, Márquez-Sterling talks about their MTR mission trip in June 2013.

Conversation | October 10, 2013

Green Congregations Become Centers of Creation Care and Renewal

As more churches include creation care in congregational life, all ages experience hope and joy. They start to see how God has gifted their church with specific callings and resources to protect the earth so that all may flourish.

Feature Story | October 09, 2013

Daisy Rhau on Children, Creation Care and Worship

In this edited conversation, based on email and phone conversations in September 2013, Daisy Rhau talks about the Christian Education committee members’ awareness that “the children were deeply invested in earth care.”

Conversation | October 09, 2013

Worship in the Season of Creation and Earth-Themed Sundays

Green congregations around the world celebrate the Season of Creation, emphasize earth keeping throughout the Christian Year and plan other earth-themed Sundays.

Feature Story | September 12, 2013

Green Congregations Celebrate God’s New Creation in Worship

Christians often remind each other that worship is more about God’s beauty and glory than about us.

Feature Story | September 12, 2013

Bob Waldrop on How Earth Care Led Him to God

In this edited conversation, based on emails and an April 2013 phone conversation, Bob Waldorp explains how his church work and activism fit together.

Conversation | July 11, 2013

Kristi Holmberg on Hope for Healing the Earth

Like many young adults, Kristi Holmberg is keenly aware of inheriting an earth damaged by previous generations. However, rather than despair or turn cynical, she began during college to connect with Christians who are working toward a just and sustainable future.

Conversation | June 10, 2013

Green Congregations Promote Sustainability

Whether your church goes solar, diverts money from utilities to missions or plants a community garden, you can find creative and sustainable ways to model that the earth is the Lord’s.

Feature Story | May 28, 2013

Delight in Creation: When Science and Faith Talk

Calvin College and Calvin Seminary have teamed up to bring the voices of scientists into the consciousness of the church. Through “The Ministry Theorem” website and the new book Delight in Creation, Deborah Haarsma and Scott Hoezee have worked to foster fruitful conversations that connect the wonders of what science reveals about God’s creation with the ministries of the church.

Audio | February 22, 2013

Coop's Column - Creation's Choir Sings Hymns of Praise

It takes an act of slowing life down enough to cultivate wonder, which is one of the reasons God bids his children to practice Sabbath—to take a day off in order to savor life for the sheer and undeserved gift that it is, and then in turn to worship God and to give God thanks for it. This column includes an audio recording by Dale Cooper.

Reflection | Audio | February 15, 2012

Coop's Column- All Your Wondrous Works Proclaim

With so much around us to invite our curiosity and to evoke our wonder, a bored attitude toward life is sinful. A day’s adventure in the world ought to end, after all, with an exclamation point of thanksgiving to God.

Reflection | January 05, 2012

Natural Disasters

What exactly is a natural disaster? The intersection of ‘the average’ and 'the extraordinary.’

Article | December 15, 2011

Calvin Institute of Christian Worship