Blog

Rachel is Strategic Development Officer - her work currently covers strategy for theology and churches, volunteer coordination, and the mission, value and commitments process. She lives in Sheffield, UK.

29th February 2020 | Rachel Mander | 0 comments

Facing the Future: Perspective

A friend this week asked me why I love the sky so much (‘I do mean that question genuinely’, they said). It gave me pause because I hadn’t considered my love of the sky to be overly notable. I also hadn’t actually ever given thought to the reasons why I do, in fact, love the sky.

Categories: Facing the Future
Tags: future Psalms sky
30th June 2017 | Dave Bookless | 0 comments

The power of China

I recently returned from a lecturing visit to Hong Kong, Beijing and Yanji. Speaking about environmental sustainability to students and professors in three such very different contexts got me thinking afresh about China’s place in the world and its significance. My thoughts here are inevitably personal and subjective.

Categories: Reflections
30th September 2016 | Dave Bookless | 3 comments

Obsessed with beginnings and endings

Recently, I was in Kathmandu, speaking on creation care to a group of about 90 Christian leaders from across Nepal, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. They were really receptive… until I got to God’s future plans for creation. Surely we’re all going to heaven? What about the Rapture? Won’t there be a new creation? Won’t the earth be destroyed by fire?

Categories: Reflections
29th February 2016 | Dave Bookless | 8 comments

Nature, red in tooth and claw?

I was distracted from the documentary by the reactions of my two friends. Jack revelled in the power and skill of the predators, their mastery of timing and feather control, the elegance and efficiency with which they hunted. Jill was horrified by their bloodlust. How could such callous cruelty be part of God’s good creation?

Categories: Reflections
31st December 2013 | Dave Bookless | 4 comments

Out with the old, in with the new?

Today’s consumer culture takes a love of new starts to extremes. Fed up with your clothing, computer, phone or furniture? Chuck them out and buy something new. The New Testament is full of ‘new heaven’, ‘new earth’, ‘new Jerusalem’, ‘new creation’. As I grew up I assumed ‘new’ meant exactly what it means in the culture I’m surrounded by.

Categories: Reflections
31st October 2013 | Dave Bookless | 6 comments

To boldly go? Exploring planetary boundaries

Once upon a time we believed ‘the sky’s the limit’. Then we discovered ‘space, the final frontier’. Now we reach out ‘to infinity and beyond’. Is there no limit to our ambition? The idea of boundaries has become counter-cultural. It’s why tackling humanity’s footprint never gets to the top of the agendas. We simply don’t want to be told ‘Enough!’

Categories: Reflections