Sustaining Creation: A Faith Journey for Small Groups

Hi, I’m Terry Gallagher and over the past several years, I have focused my ministry entirely in the critical work of awakening communities of faith to respond to the climate crisis. Along the way, I’ve discovered that “one & done” presentations, no matter how cleverly done, are insufficient.

In response, we have developed an amazing resource to engage people of faith in this work.

As its name indicate, this series is all about journey. The Bible is filled with examples of journeys as the means necessary to transform people from unbelief to belief to action. Ranging from Jacob to Moses to Jonah to Paul and even to Jesus, journey is the path they each took to wrestle with their doubts/demons/angels and ultimately to discern God’s call to action.

Right now, human civilization is on the brink of the greatest crisis that has ever been experienced. I’m talking about the destruction of the life systems of God’s good creation, and its cause is us, simply by the way our modern society has chosen to live. Here’s the difficult truth: the next 10 years are a critical period in which we must change or the survival of billions of people and future generations to simply live is at risk. But this Creation Crisis is such a difficult truth to understand and accept that many of us have, like Jonah (and Paul), chosen to head in the opposite direction of what God is calling us to do.

So, consider this an invitation for your faith community to participate in a journey to discern how God would have us live. Sustaining Creation is an eight-session series intended to guide Christians on an extended journey to a new understanding of our call to live sustainably with all of God’s good creation. Richly grounded in scripture, this series includes reflections, interviews with Creation Justice faith leaders, taps into the wisdom of noted authors, takes the audience on location to ponder the climate crisis and includes discussion time, so that together we can seek to discern how God is calling us to respond. Included in the series are participant discussion guides and action steps to living sustainably.

Part 1 The Situation We Find Ourselves In
            Session 1.A Things Have Really-Really Changed
            Session 1.B Some Deadly Serious Risks Lie Just Ahead
Part 2 So Why Aren’t We Responding?
            Session 2.A Old Stories That Are No Longer True
            Session 2.B Those Pesky Human Behaviors
Part 3 And Yet There Are Reasons to Hope
            Session 3.A Hope Arising Out of New Technology & International Cooperation
            Session 3.B Hope Arising Out of Ancient Stories Made New Yet Again
Part 4 Discerning God’s Call
            4.A Where Do We Go from Here?
            4.B How Do We Get There?

Sustaining Creation – A Faith Journey for Small Groups is available directly without charge to individuals and faith communities everywhere at our website www.sustainingcreation.org or DVD sets are available by contacting terrenceggallagher@hotmail.com