MINISTRY VETERANS PROVIDE A GREEN OUTREACH

Environmental Expert and Evangelical Communications Veteran
Team-Up to Launch FLOURISH, A New Creation Care Ministry

ATLANTA, July 24, 2009 — Two veterans of environmental work who also know their way around the church are making progress in the challenge to provide projects and products that are both authentically green and theologically accessible to most evangelical churches and families.

Dr. Rusty Pritchard, former faculty member and co-founder of the Environmental Studies Department at Emory University, and former editor of Creation Care magazine; and Jim Jewell, 30-year management and communications veteran and former chief of staff for Charles Colson, have begun a new organization called FLOURISH to bridge the gap between green concerns and the Christian faith they believe both informs and undergirds these matters.

“We want to provide services, products, and projects that will focus the attention of our churches and Christians in the pews on creation care-- primarily in the context of local ministry and outreach, in the midst of teaching ourselves to love God and love our neighbors,” Pritchard said.

“Many Christians aren’t ready to jump into the arguments about cap-and-trade climate legislation but are reasonably convinced about the need to be involved in the celebration and preservation of God’s creation and the people that depend on it,” Jewell added. “We want to help them.”

Barrett Duke, vice president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said Pritchard and Jewell “are to be congratulated for their vision of a way to bring all of God's people together in an effort that really does matter, and that finds common ground for us that unites us rather than divides us." [Associated Baptist Press, May 18, 2009]

Already, FLOURISH has conducted a trend-setting symposium on creation care in May. Flourish 2009 surprised many because of its tone, the speaker list, and the connections drawn between environmental stewardship and existing ministries of compassion, outreach, and advocacy. (http://flourishonline.org/flourish-2009-conference/).

Christianity Today editor David Neff wrote that at the 2009 conference “creation care entered a new phase with key pastors, scientists, and thought leaders . . . talking to pastors about how to promote environmental concern in their congregations without creating factions.” [Christianity Today Liveblog, May 17, 2009] This may be a turning point in the shape of evangelical engagement with environmental action,” Neff said.

Among projects planned for FLOURISH are materials that will provide inspiration and ideas for Christians looking to dig deeper on Christian environmental stewardship. The first FLOURISH church curriculum will be published online on August 25 and will be available at www.flourishonline.org at no cost for a limited time.

In addition, the inaugural Flourish magazine is now available at the FLOURISH website, and features articles on “greening the hood” (urban ministry, international missions, evangelism, church-sponsored farms, movie and book reviews, and tips for graceful green living. The Fall issue (out Sept 1) will feature a rare reprint of the article “The Gift of Good Land” by Wendell Berry.

Next month, the organization will announce the location and line-up for its 2010 creation care conference.

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Senior Leadership Bios

Dr. Lowell Pritchard, Jr., president & co-founder, is a resource economist, and since 2006 he has been the National Director of Outreach for the Evangelical Environmental Network. Prior to his role at EEN, he was a full-time faculty member at Emory University in Environmental Studies, a program he helped create in 1999, where he maintains an adjunct affiliation. He has taught courses in natural resource economics, environmental institutions, public health, resource use and management, environmental justice, ecological economics, and environmental decision-making under uncertainty. Dr. Pritchard holds degrees from Duke University (B.S., zoology) and University of Florida (Ph.D., resource economics; M.S., environmental engineering sciences). He serves FLOURISH as the senior policy and program officer and editor of Flourish magazine, overseeing product content and program quality, and speaking and writing on behalf of the organization. rusty@flourishonline.org

James W. Jewell, chief executive officer & co-founder, served as campaign director of the Evangelical Climate Initiative and chief operating officer of the Evangelical Environmental Network. He has been involved in the communications and management of Christian organizations and causes for more than 30 years and he remains the managing partner of Rooftop MediaWorks, a public relations firm serving the Christian community. Jewell was a senior executive with three respected nonprofit organizations – World Vision, Prison Fellowship, and The Trinity Forum – and also has provided public relations direction for dozens of client organizations. He was the chief-of-staff for Charles Colson for more than a decade, and the director of communications for Promise Keepers’ Stand in the Gap in 1997 and Billy Graham’s Amsterdam 2000. He has a B.A. in communications from Biola University and a M.A. in Mass Communications from California State University, Fullerton. He is an adjunct professor of communications at Kennesaw State University (Georgia). He serves Flourish as the senior executive, overseeing fund development, strategic planning, associations and memberships, communications and brand protection. jim@flourishonline.org.

To interview Rusty Pritchard or Jim Jewell, contact Debbie Payton at (404) 245-8500 or dpayton@rooftopmediaworks.com. For more information see www.flourishonline.org.

A Great Resource for Those Preaching about the One Who is Before Gutenberg and After Google.

I just finished a new book on communications by longtime preacher and uber-organizer of Christian meetings, James O. Davis, now president of Second Billion Ministries. Gutenberg to Google, 20 Indispensible Laws of Communication is a lively and interesting discussion of preaching--the calling and craft. From the first page it is clear that Davis is intent on equipping his fellow preachers to avoid a truly dreadful sin: boring the audience.

If you are a preacher or a teacher; or if you just speak publicly (or know or love someone who does), here’s a book you need to pick up. It is a valuable guide with the information of a comprehensive text book, the international sweep of a travelogue, and the personal touch of a biography.

James Davis has titled his new book Gutenberg to Google to illustrate the changes in communication technologies from the mass use of the printing press to the dominance of the computer search engine. He could have call it from Peter to Present or Jerusalem to Jakes or Galatians to Graham or any alliterative reference to the span of time that required good preaching.

This is a book of principles that can be applied to any speech-making , and there are principles here for many disciplines in which people rely on communicating well to be successful.

Davis tells great stories to make his points, and he uses humor where it is helpful. For instance, in bringing to life a particularly bad speaking performance, he writes:

“By the time the presentation ended, I surveyed the crowd and estimated that [of an original crowd of 12,000] perhaps one thousand of us remained. We were scattered so sparsely throughout that great auditorium that a shotgun blast may not have hit two people.”

The pages are full of examples of excellence and the author tastefully decries great speaking blunders. Those of us who have been in the church a long time have heard and seen plenty of both.

For several years I traveled with a great speaker, Chuck Colson, and Chuck applied many of these good principles. He brought them from the political realm, where the consequences of poor speech making are seen at the ballot box. He put them to good effect in bringing many otherwise-resistant people to faith in Christ, and to stab the conscience of many otherwise-comfortable pew sitters.

Clearly James Davis loves good preaching and his enthusiasm for the calling is infectious. He closes with a charge to come to preaching in tune with the Lord and to be clear about your purpose: He writes:

“The best preachers are not “thunder from an empty cloud” but are part of the noblest calling on earth, to draw others into communion with Jesus, the Christ, the Savior of the world.”

You can read a free chapter at www.JamesODavis.org. The book is available for purchase online.


--Jim Jewell