With floury fingers and thankful hearts: Relive CCFM 2018 -- Save the Date for 2020

Katharine Hayhoe finally finds a quiet moment at CCFM 2018. Photo credit: Frontier Ventures

Creation Care at the Frontiers of Mission

by Lowell Bliss

​It’s been one year since our Creation Care at the Frontiers of Mission (CCFM) conference out at the Frontier Ventures campus in Pasadena, and it’s been a busy year for one of our keynote speakers.  Katharine Hayhoe didn’t even have time to properly celebrate Thanksgiving.  She was one of the lead authors of the Fourth US National Climate Assessment, and here’s how she describes its snap release on the Friday after the holiday:
 
"The Monday before Thanksgiving, I was in full pie production mode. The counter was covered in apple peels and flour, and so were my hands. My phone chimed. Another message, this time from a colleague. “We’ve been told the report is to be released this Friday!” it said. “Sending proofs right away!”
 
I immediately reached for my laptop. With floury fingers, I opened the PDFs to see what I had to do and try to figure out how long it would take. The pies went straight into the freezer and the next 60 hours was a flat-out marathon for all of us, with emails and phone calls through the day and well into the night. I finished my own final checks in the car on the way to family Thanksgiving, and sent off my documents in the next pocket of phone coverage we found, driving through rural Virginia."
 
This past year, perhaps more than any other, has added a “time element” to creation care, at least to climate action.  A different report, the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, was released in October.  The Guardian and other newspapers were quick to run somewhat misleading headlines like “We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN.”  The National Geographic was more measured: “These solutions all require unprecedented efforts to cut fossil-fuel use in half in less than 15 years and eliminate their use almost entirely in 30 years.”  IPCC spokespeople simply said, “The next few years are probably the most important in our history.” 
 
Time frames are problematic and that’s why, while I take up the urgency of these climate reports, I am glad that Katharine’s personal story of Thanksgiving 2018 ties us back to “time” as followers of Christ understand it: the kairos moment and not just the chronos one, God-governed seasons, harvest, holidays, holy days, proactive Sabbath-like mechanisms which turn our attention back to the Creator God with faith and hope. 
 
I spent a portion of my time on Thanksgiving Day praising God for what a wonderful time we had together at CCFM 2018.  Many of the presentations, including Katharine’s talk “Loving Our Global Neighbor” are available as nicely curated podcasts at www.creationcaremissions.org . The urgency of our times—“the next few years are probably the most important in our history”—makes me pleased to deliver this announcement:
 
Save the Date!  
​CCFM 2020 is scheduled for March 19-21, 2020.
 
(Exact location to be announced.) This will be a Thursday-Saturday event which includes a meeting of the US Lausanne WEA Creation Care Network on Thursday, and a “Young Leaders” program on Friday, with our traditional CCFM programming on Friday night and Saturday.  Coinciding with the conference, we will be hosting a “hackathon” for young computer and design students who will, adding to award-winning work done recently at Urbana, create technological tools to help “see movements to Jesus which express the fullness of the kingdom of God [in creation care] among all peoples.”