Caribbean Graduate School of Theology

Distinguished Fellows Lecture Series

Friday, April 30, 2010

WOLVES, LAMBS, LEOPARDS AND GOATS

A Journey in Faith, Science, Business and
Christian Ministry

Presented by:

BARRY A. WADE
Honorary Fellow,
Caribbean Graduate School of Theology
&
Chairman,
Environmental Solutions Ltd.

i
Gye Nyame, the West African Adinkra Symbol for the Supremacy of God in all things, is the watermark on the cover page
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................2

2. MY JOURNEY IN FAITH ...............................................................................2

3. MY JOURNEY IN SCIENCE..........................................................................4

4. MY JOURNEY IN BUSINESS......................................................................11

5. MY JOURNEY IN CHRISTIAN MINISTRY ..................................................13

6. WOLVES, LAMBS, LEOPARDS AND GOATS LIE DOWN TOGETHER ....18

 1. INTRODUCTION

At a time of Israel’s disobedience and apostasy, the prophet Isaiah shared a vision of God’s
deliverance, restoration and healing of his people; of a new day when the wolf would dwell with
the lamb, and the leopard would lie down with the young goat; a time when the earth would be
full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11, 6-9). Such a new day
for the Israelites would be some time to come. For all the peoples of the world it would be the
time when God’s reign is established with Christ’s presence. But for all believers it is the time
when the Kingdom of God is established in their hearts. That new day of God’s Kingdom, of a
new heaven and a new earth, is prophetically now but not yet.

Today, I wish to share with you my own experience of the Kingdom of God, of my own new day
which began when I was fourteen years old, and my journey in faith, science, business and
Christian Ministry in which I, myself, have laid down with wolves, lambs, leopards and goats and
found peace, wholeness and fulfillment amidst the world’s conflicts and confusion. In a real
sense, the journey I shall share is not about me at all, but of God’s all sufficiency and grace in
every stage of my existence, in every circumstance, and in every aspect of my life. As a
scientist, it has been for me a particularly thrilling experience of finding and knowing God in
situations where many people say they have lost him, and of discovering his goodness in the
predictable and unpredictable probabilities of life; of proving God for myself in the crucible of the
scientist’s laboratory, in exploring the wonders of his marvelous creation, in creating and
managing a business and in ministering to the hearts and needs of the poor, the weak and the
oppressed.

I wish to share with you, therefore, my experience of God as a scientist who, trained as an
ecologist, has practiced as an environmental advocate, manager and consultant for more than
forty years throughout the Caribbean and other parts of the world. But I will also share as a
committed Christian who understands my mandate to love God with my entire being and to love
my neighbour as myself and who seeks earnestly to obey the great commission given to all of
us by our Lord to go to all peoples everywhere and make them his disciples. This mandate I
have sought to follow over the last ten years in particular in ministering at the edges of our
society to marginalized men and women who have no other hope in life except in God’s grace.
Finally, I wish to share with you as a responsible citizen who believes in and firmly commits to
my role in the society in which God has placed me for my own health and wellbeing as well as
for that of all the people, communities, organizations and systems that comprise the nations of
the Caribbean.

My sharing with you today is all about these experiences and I wish to thank the Caribbean
Graduate School of Theology for giving me the privilege and opportunity as one of your
Honorary Fellows to speak about the God I know and love and my walk through life in fellowship
with him and with his son Jesus Christ.

2
 2. MY JOURNEY IN FAITH

My journey in faith began as a young student at Wolmer’s Boys’ School when, having been
exposed to the gospel at Moorlands Camps, I found myself not only curious about Christ, but
also searching for meaning and purpose to my life. At school one day I happened to try an off-
coloured joke with my closest school buddy, Willy Rennalls. Willy was known to everyone at the
school as one of its best footballers and as having one of the most untamed tongues and
troublesome nature of any school boy his age. Willy was in every teacher’s bad books.
Imagine my shock when, in response to my attempt at an off-coloured joke, Willy turned to me
and said “Barry, I’m a Christian now, and those jokes don’t interest me any more”. He then
went on to tell me of his conversion and the difference it was making in his life. And then he
said to me “Barry, I’m praying that you too will become a Christian”.

Willy’s conversion was just what I needed to face up to my own personal disquiet. As an
aspiring young student of science, I had been trying hard to rationalize all my beliefs, based on
a knowledge of science, and had been failing badly. But here was Willy, living evidence of a
changed life. Was this evidence credible? For several weeks, the struggle raged within me and
then one day in the quietness of my bedroom, I decided it was time to give up. In a simple
prayer, and exercising all of my very tiny faith, I asked God to make himself real to me and to
enter my life. Through my exposure to the gospel, I more or less knew what this meant in terms
of a new relationship with Christ, but nothing could really have prepared me for the change in
my life that was about to take place.

Willy and I began to enter into prayer and Bible study with enthusiasm that was a surprise to
everyone. With the help and support of our church and several mentors, we grew rapidly in
faith. Together, we also fooled around and continued to get into the occasional scrap with our
teachers, for the change was far from complete. But together, for the first time in our lives, we
had discovered meaning and purpose and understood what it meant to hold treasure in earthen
vessels.

As I moved through the upper school, my interest in and study of science deepened and I began
to commit myself to this field. But with this came further struggles to integrate my new found
faith with the world of science. Furthermore, my particular interest was in biology and I began to
explore the origins of life and species in more informed and critical ways. Imagine my distress
when, in a panel discussion on Christianity and Science, one of my highly respected mentors
declared unequivocally that one could not be a Christian and believe in the process of evolution,
one of the very aspects of biology that I had been fervently pursuing. This was shattering to me,
not because of his firmly held opinion, but because of his total ignorance of the very process he
was seeking to dismiss. After my initial shock and dumbstruck reaction to this absolute claim, I
found myself wanting to go even deeper in my study of biology and through my last two years at
Wolmer’s as well as my three years as an undergraduate at UWI, my struggles with faith and
science seriously challenged my Christian commitment. Finally, I came to the conclusion that
there is no conflict and could not possibly be any between the two, and any perceived or
declared conflict must be the result either of a misunderstanding of the scriptures, or of science,
or of both. Regrettably, then as of now, I have found all three to be the case.

2
As I continued with my pursuit of science and my chosen field of Marine Ecology, I found a new
release in faith and science through being honest in both. This served to heighten my
commitments and by the time I had completed my Doctoral Degree, I felt secure in the
knowledge that I could be both a fully committed disciple of Christ and a first class scientist.
This did not mean that there would be no more uncertainties, doubts or struggles, for there
would surely be, but I knew that if I brought the same fervency, honesty and application to my
pursuits, God would be pleased to lead me through the rough places and make my way plain.
My testimony today is that he has done just that and my encouragement to all is that God will
not fail us through our dark searchings for he is indeed a rewarder of those who diligently seek
him – whether in his Word or in Science, or for that matter, in Theology, Philosophy, Politics,
Medicine, Economics or whatever.

Some people speak of thinking Christians. While I do not particularly like that description, I think
I can share wholeheartedly in the view that as Christians, oftentimes we do not bring our
intellect to the pursuit of the Kingdom of God. We treat it as though it is baggage or even a
hindrance on the way to the Kingdom. But didn’t Jesus himself say that we should love the Lord
our God with all our minds? And didn’t he also say that his Spirit, the Comforter would lead us
into all truth?

The recollection of my mentor who sought to dismiss evolution and indeed the world of science
through his clear ignorance of both still leaves a negative impression on me. On the other hand,
it may have been just the motivation I needed at the time to become an honest seeker for truth,
whether it be in God’s Word or in the Textbooks of Science. And perhaps it is still my motivation
as I seek to encourage my sisters and brothers in the faith, particularly young people, to be
serious students of God’s word, for in it they will find truth and life.

My journey in faith, therefore, is an endless one. John Stott, the British theologian, author and
preacher, has expressed the journey this way: “Life is a pilgrimage of learning, a voyage of
discovery, in which our mistaken views are corrected, our distorted notions adjusted, our
shallow opinions deepened, and some of our vast ignorance diminished”. 1 Charles
Ringma, the author of several devotional reflections, based on the lives of outstanding
Christians, has said it this way: “The Christian life is not one of certainty but one of faith,
not one of security, but one of risk, not one of guarantees, but one of hope; not one of
safe arrival, but one of journey”. 2

And Henri Nouwen, the Roman Catholic theologian and writer, has expressed it most succinctly:
“If on this journey of faith you think you have arrived, then you have certainly lost your
way”. 3

These I submit are exact expressions of my continuing experience in my journey in faith.

1
John Stott, 1975. Christian Mission in the Modern World. Inter Varsity Press.
2
. Charles Ringma, 2000. Seize the Day with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pinon Press.
3
Henri Nouwen, 1981. The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery, Doubleday.

3
 3. MY JOURNEY IN SCIENCE

Having rid myself of the perceived conflict between science and faith in God, I pursued my
scientific explorations through my graduate years with increased vigour and found a new
freedom to proclaim and practice the good news of Christ and his Kingdom while discovering
the beauty and elegance of God’s creation, especially in my specialty, the nature and structure
of marine biological communities. My research opened up new vistas of the evolution,
morphology, and behaviour of a beautiful little animal found on beaches throughout the
Caribbean, and I began to share my findings with audiences through lectures, seminars and
articles on and off campus. These included teaching the evolutionary process as conceived by
Darwin and developed by Mendel, Huxley, Leakey and others. In these, I also challenged
Christians and non Christians to pursue truth honestly and freely and not to be entrapped by the
perceived or conventional wisdom of those who were ignorant of the facts.

After completing my doctorate, I then went on to do a two year post doctoral in Massachusetts
returning to Jamaica immediately afterwards to undertake research on Kingston Harbour, a
work that lasted nearly ten years and which came to define me in Jamaica as Mr. Environment
and also gain for me international recognition as an expert in tropical coastal ecology and
pollution. All this time, I sought to broaden my interest in the environment beyond my specific
research areas and found myself being an advisor to the Government and Private Sector on
several broad environmental matters. The Church in Jamaica also sought my counsel and, in
1989, I wrote my first theological reflections on Christian Stewardship and Care of the
Environment. I now share some of these reflections with you as I have repeated them in one of
my recent publications. 4

Creation: The Work and Gift of God

The account of the beginning of Creation in Genesis 1-3 declares without question or debate
that creation is both the work of God and the gift of God, and that it is good. The picture we get
is that creation contains order and balance. God walking in the cool of the garden to commune
with man is a further picture of beauty and harmony within all of creation; that is, of the spiritual,
physical, biological and human realms. Ecologists refer to such oneness in order, function and
process as essential ecosystem balance. Theologians of the Judeo-Christian traditions speak
in spiritual terms of Peace and Shalom. These words reflect wholeness, wellness and oneness
as the essence of creation and of the highest ideals for human existence and relationships. Yet,
while these traditions recognize wholeness as the essence of creation, they confess to this
wholeness being “not yet”, but which through commitment, effort and time is to be achieved.

The Biblical Perspective of Creation

The Biblical perspective is that this wholeness existed in the very beginning, but has been
disturbed because of man’s choice to be self centred rather than God centred, to live as God
rather that to live with God, in communion and obedience to him. As a result man has
developed a distorted view of himself, of his creator and of creation. Hence we have in the
world a breakdown of wholeness (pollution), of harmony (disorder), of oneness (conflict) and of

4
Barry A. Wade, 2010. Creation: The Work and Gift of God. Caribbean Challenge Vol. 1 (2).

4
wellbeing (poverty). In all of this, the creation as God’s perfect ecosystem has suffered and now,
as the Apostle Paul describes it, “the whole creation groans for its redemption” (Romans 8,
18-25); but for what redemption? “To be set free from its slavery to decay” (Rom.8.23).
To fully understand the groaning of creation, we need to return to Genesis to see how God’s
creation was meant to be. We have already spoken of order and balance as essential features
of God’s good work. To this we must now add the ecologically critical concept of sustainability,
for that is the essential and inevitable result, and we may add reason, for order and balance.
God in the beginning effected his work of creation for eternity, for his good pleasure, for all of
time. For man with his distorted understanding of God, that may be difficult to grasp, yet that
was undoubtedly God’s purpose for creation, and now it is his plan for it as revealed in the
prophetic expression “a new heaven and a new earth”, a time when “they shall not hurt nor
destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the
waters cover the sea” (Is. 11.9).

God’s Purpose for Sustainability

But Genesis also makes it clear that sustainability is not only a purpose for creation, it is also a
responsibility given to the created man, the main source and cause of this world’s groaning. In
being self centred, man has sought to remove himself from the essential oneness of creation,
placing himself apart from and above the created order. In so doing man has only succeeded in
separating himself from God and the divine purpose for himself. By promoting and worshipping
the self, the ego (master), man has sought to relegate all of creation to the status of servant
(slave), for his purposes alone, thereby destroying the oneness of creation and his responsibility
to be “Partners in the Community of Creation”, as Callam, 2005,5 has argued. In a very
thoughtful and provocative essay written years ago, Lynn White 6, a well respected North
American historian and ethicist, pointed to this failure of man, particularly under Christian
influence to exercise “dominion over creation”, as the root of the ecological crisis under which
the whole world groans.

Partnering with the Environment

In ecological terms, for sustainability to be realized, man must work in partnership with all of
creation by promoting its diversity in form and function, rather than by promoting his dominance.
Human ecologists as well as political scientists have become increasingly aware of this within
the last century as world and international wars, ethnic and cultural conflicts, and community
and family breakdowns have occurred with increasing frequency due to the superiority/inferiority
complex. The results of this have been seen in many forms of human suffering such as those
due to famine, pandemic diseases, and now the creeping effects of global warming and climate
change. In the Living Bible version of Genesis 2.15, we read: “Then the Lord God placed the
man in the garden to tend and care for it”. Other translations use words such as “cultivate,
guard, work it, take care of”. The Message Bible is distinctive in its directness “God took the
man and set him down in the Garden of Eden to work the ground and keep it in order”.
Within this little verse are many insights into man’s responsibility for sustaining God’s creation.
In considering them we must first recall that this injunction to Adam was given before his
disobedience and fall. But man’s responsibility for creation was not lessened or removed as a
result of his sin. Rather it became even more direct and urgent due to his failures.
5
Neville Callam, Feb 2005: Why should Christians care about the environment? An outline of the case. Jamaica
Baptist Union Document.
6
Lynn White Jr., 1974. The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis. Science 155.

5
Protecting the Environment
The first injunction to Adam was to protect God’s creation, the environment. Implicit in this is
that he was to protect it from himself, not from others, since there were no others at the time.
Furthermore, the garden (the environment) was still intact as a place of beauty and harmony.
This says to us that man should recognise that he is the greatest threat to the environment.
This has to be a stunning realization, not only as it was for Adam, but for all of us in the past,
present and future. In one of the earliest and most major reports on the state of the
environment in the USA, commissioned by the then President, the panel of experts after years
of study concluded “Mr. President, we have examined the problem of the environment in
the USA, and we have concluded that the problem is us”. I believe this is a lesson that we
all are yet to learn?

Sustainable Development
The second responsibility that we all have for the environment is to promote and optimize its
production. Essential to an understanding of sustainability of the environment is the need to
maintain its capital stock of resources. This entails increasing its level of production
commensurate with social development and consumption to achieve what ecologists refer to as
its “maximum sustainable yield”. This means that as population increases and with it an
increase in consumption, so must the rate of production in sufficient quantities as to provide
adequately for essential human needs, while not depleting the earth’s natural resources. That is
why “working the ground” is an absolute imperative for man while doing so in a responsible,
non-destructive and sustainable manner. God’s injunction to Adam to cultivate the land and
take care of it was the first essential ingredient for sustainable development. We read in
Leviticus 25 that the children of Israel were further instructed how to do this by practicing the
principles of the Sabbath and Jubilee Years. These instructions are as relevant today as they
were then; but not just for the cultivation and care of the land. As Leviticus 25 clearly expresses,
it was also for the relief of human suffering, forgiveness and restoration of human relationships,
and renewal of the family. Needless to say, all of these are intimately connected with
sustainability of the environment. In this connection, we may recall the wisdom of Indira
Gandhi, revered former Prime Minister of India, who declared that poverty is the worst form of
pollution, for pollution (decay of the environment) breeds poverty and poverty breeds pollution.
Therefore, while it is God who gives the increase, it is we who should always be planting and
watering, producing and developing, conserving and maintaining. That, after all, is what is
meant by partnering with God and with the environment.

Renewing the Environment

It follows from this that while God’s work in creation was complete and perfect, our work for the
environment is neither. For the creation that groans to be set free, our mission within it is to be
agents of God’s redemption, as much for our fellow humans as it is for the rest of creation.
This implies that not only must the environment be protected by us, it must also, through the
empowerment of God’s Spirit, be restored and renewed. That is why we must, as Christians, be
committed to the enhancement of our environment, to its beauty, balance and harmony, through
our tender loving care. Can we love God without loving His creation? Can we be our brother’s
keeper without caring for the environment on which his very existence depends? Psychologists
are very much aware that, to a very great extent, we are the products of our environment. The
flowers that bloom, the birds that fly, the radiant sky and the glimmering sea, these are all

6
expressions of God’s love - to be cared for, nurtured and enhanced for our well being as well as
for our redemption.

Enjoying and Enhancing the Environment

Finally and closely connected with this need to nurture God’s creation, is our responsibility to
enjoy and enhance it. That is to accept it as God’s gift, to be thankful for it, to worship with it, to
witness through it and to find peace with God within it, so that God’s Kingdom may come and
His will be perfected on earth as it is in heaven. Too often, I fear, we view the environment as
our enemy, to be struggled with and to be overcome; as the devil’s domain and not God’s
garden, to escape from rather than to find our fulfillment within, and to leave rather than to love.
The Biblical perspective of the environment is clearly different. It is indeed God’s love gift to all
the created. Our responsibility is to lovingly tend and care for it, to actively enhance and
promote its beauty and benefits, and to partner with God in His redemptive work of preparing for
and working towards its renewal. It is also to hope in and to wait for an end to its groaning when
God will usher in His new heaven and new earth as in the beginning, when “on God’s sacred
hill there will be nothing harmful or evil” (Isaiah 11.9).
Once equipped with this theological perspective on the environment which I believed to be
scripturally and scientifically sound, I felt compelled to share my views with a wide audience,
both Christian and non-Christian, and to challenge them to a keener and more active
involvement in care of the environment. With my Christian sisters and brothers, in particular, I
was able to bring a greater sense of confidence and competence to my advocacy for their
participation in the growing Caribbean environmental movement by becoming more aware of
the issues and by engaging in meaningful activity that would not only help some local
environmental cause but would also demonstrate Christian concern and leadership for the
environment. For example, in a Christian radio broadcast in 1989, I drew attention to the
looming problems of global warming and climate change as follows:

“The environment knows no boundaries, neither in space nor time, and what we do
wrongly today may well turn out to affect others in another place at some other time. In
fact, what we are now learning is that some of our actions today will almost certainly be
affecting the whole world in the years to come. Thus, we should not take lightly the
evidence of the so-called greenhouse effect which could lead to an increase in the
world’s temperature resulting in warmer climates, failure of agricultural crops and
increases in sea level. These are not fairy tales, nor science fiction… These are very real
and serious problems which we must face up to. And we must know about them, and
understand what the consequences are and fashion our attitudes and our behaviour
accordingly.” 7

That was twenty years ago and the response I received then was less than enthusiastic.
Indeed, I feared that many in the church must have thought me to be something of an alarmist
and to be residing on the fringes of Christian relevance. Incidentally, this was no different from
the reception I had received years before when I first began to speak publicly on the pollution of
Kingston Harbour. But in both cases, I was confident in the scientific soundness of my
pronouncements and in the responsibility I felt I had as a Christian to speak the truth to power,
especially when that power resided within the church.

7
Barry A. Wade, 1989. Christian Stewardship and Care of the Environment. Christ For Today Broadcast, Jamaica
Baptist Union.

7
Historically, the church has often had considerable difficulty in accepting new discoveries in
science and has strongly expressed its stance through dogmas of unbelief and denial. In
extreme cases, not only has it intoned on the heresy of new scientific discovery, but it has also
attacked the scientists who have been brave enough to defend their findings. The classic case
was the repudiation of Galileo’s support for the discovery by Copernicus that the earth revolved
around the sun and therefore that the earth was not the centre of our universe. For refusing to
retract his writings, Galileo was denounced for his heretical stand, prohibited from writing further
on the structure of the solar system, and incarcerated for the rest of his life. 8 Somewhat similar
treatment has been handed out to Charles Darwin who, even today, is denounced by many
Christians for being the author of a scientific theory they regard as unscriptural and anti-God.
Let’s listen to both these noted scientists in defense of their belief in God:

First, Galileo: “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed
us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use.” 9

And from, Darwin: “When reflecting, I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having
an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man, and I deserve
therefore to be called a Theist.” 10

In very recent times, church leaders have also expressed sentiments of disbelief, denial and
denigration of compelling scientific discovery. For example, the late Jerry Falwell, an
evangelical leader of the Southern Baptist Church in the United States, declared not long
before his death in 2007 that climate change was a myth and a device to distract the church
from its true mission. As a result the church should have nothing to do with it. The following
quote of his is instructive: “Those drawing attention to global warming want to
economically destroy America…They want to distract attention from the fact that the
whole world is morally bankrupt. Worse yet, they want to redirect the church’s focus,
distracting it from its core mission”. 11

Regrettably, views such as these are not uncommon among certain influential church
leaders and display at least a disbelief in scientific discovery if not a total rejection of its role
in explaining physical realities.

Similar attitudes have been exhibited by tele-evangelist John Hagee who attributed the
Katrina Hurricane disaster to the homosexual march hosted by the city of New Orleans
rather than to the compelling evidence of the effects of climate change, the government
neglect of deteriorating flood control dykes, and the diversion of essential infrastructural
maintenance funds to the war effort in Iraq. Sadly, and extremely galling to most well
thinkers, has been Rev. Pat Robertson’s recent attribution of the disastrous Haiti earthquake
to that country’s so called “pact with the devil”.

As a Christian and as a Scientist, I am disturbed whenever I encounter such attitudes of

judgment and condemnation in the face of environmental reality and inevitability, attributing
8
Charles Hummel, 1986. The Galileo Connection – Resolving Conflicts between Science and the Bible.
InterVarsity Press.
9
Galileo, 1615. Letter to Grand Duchess Christina.
10
Charles Darwin, Quoted in Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin’s God. Harper Collins, 1999.
11
Jerry Falwell, 2007. Quoted in Huffington Post, 26.02.07.

8
 divine judgment to events while at the same time ignoring or rejecting altogether
straightforward scientific cause and effect phenomena. I am equally disturbed by persons,
many of them my close friends, who quote scripture to me to disprove scientific explanations
of the origin of life, or of evolution, or of genetic inheritance, or of hurricanes, earthquakes,
tsunamis or other natural phenomena. The truth is that we cannot and must not try to prove
science with scripture nor scripture with science without understanding that they seek to
deal with two different human realities, the spiritual and the physical, and that in so doing
they use two different languages and images. We should never lose sight of this nor seek to
dismiss one by invoking the other. As Francis Collins has so rightly stated: “There is
nothing inherently in conflict between the idea of a creator God and what science has
revealed… I would like to suggest that science should not be denied by the believer, it
should be enhanced. The elegance between life’s complexity is indeed reason for
awe, and for belief in God.” 12

The relationship between faith, science and especially the environment need not and indeed
must not be held in tension and, with more careful insight and analysis, we can find, as
Collins has pointed out, a beauty and harmony between them that is both awe inspiring and
practical.

I contend therefore that the all too frequent attempts to put down one by the other is both
unscriptural and unscientific and I am particularly thankful that in recent years, outstanding
scientists and theologians have sought to address the misconceptions directly by publishing
theological and scientific material that is thoughtful and rigorous and by demonstrating the
wholeness of their commitment to both their faith and their science.

I have already quoted from Francis Collins, one of the world’s leading scientists who is head
of the Human Genome Project in the USA, commonly referred to as the code of life. Collins,
a man of unshakable faith in God and scripture has written a book entitled “The Language of
God” in which he presents evidence for belief, especially as he finds it in his studies of
physics, chemistry, medicine, molecular biology and human genetics and especially as it
refers to the mechanisms and processes of evolution. In addressing the issue of the
evolution of species, he concludes: “I find theistic evolution, or BioLogos, to be by far
the most scientifically consistent and spiritually satisfying of the alternatives. This
position will not go out of style or be disproven by future scientific discoveries. It is
intellectually rigorous, it provides answers to many otherwise puzzling questions,
and it allows science and faith to fortify each other like two unshakeable pillars,
holding up a building called Truth.” 13

With regards particularly to faith and the environment, Sir John Haughton, a leading British
Scientist with a long involvement in atmospheric science and space research and former co-
chair of the Science Assessment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) as well as Chief Editor of its comprehensive Climate Change Report is also direct in
his conclusions. I quote a few excerpts from his book “The Search for God – Can Science
Help?”

12
Francis Collins, 2006. The Language of God – A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Free Press
13
Francis Collins, 2006. The Language of God – A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Free Press.

9
 i. “Some Christians tend to hide behind an earth that they think has no future,
But Jesus has promised to return to earth – an earth redeemed and
transformed …Our task is to obey the clear injunction of Jesus to be
responsible and just stewards until his return”. He continues:

ii. “We may feel daunted as we face the seemingly impossible challenge posed
by care for the environment and the need for sustainability…There are real
contributions that all of us can make… To quote from Edmund Burke, a
British Parliamentarian of 200 years ago, “No one made a greater mistake
than he who did nothing because he could do so little.” He adds:

“Further an essential Christian message is that we do not have to carry the

responsibility alone. Our partner is no other than God himself”. Finally,
Haughton stresses:

iii. An unmistakable challenge is presented to the world to take on the God-

given responsibility for caring for the environment. In doing so we can
demonstrate both love for God, the world’s creator and redeemer, and love
for our neighbours whoever they may be.” 14

In October 2008, Sir John led a group of Christian scientists and students from 16 countries
of the global north and south in an International Symposium on Faith and the Environment
held at Runaway Bay, Jamaica. At this symposium directed by Dr. Las Newman, former
Associate General Secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students and at
the time the newly installed President of CGST, the participants pooled their expert
knowledge to examine the wide body of evidence of the significant challenges posed by
global climate change. In particular, the serious impacts already being experienced in
countries of South America, the Caribbean, Africa, southern Asia and in the South Pacific
were recounted and demonstrated. At the close of the symposium, the participants affirmed
that “The scientific evidence linking humankind’s actions to observed changes in our
climate, oceans and biosphere is now conclusive. Urgent action is needed using all
available means to counteract climate change, to assist those communities least able
to adapt to its adverse impacts and to protect biodiversity.” 15

Accordingly, the Symposium made a six point covenant with each other and before God as
follows:

1. Develop a lifestyle of responsible stewardship

2. Encourage the global IFES Fellowship to unite in prayer for the well-being of God’s
creation.

3. Prayerfully communicate the reality and implications of climate change.

14
John Haughton, 2007. The Search For God – Can Science Help? John Ray Initiative.
15
Final Report of the IFES Symposium on Faith and the Environment, October, 2008. International Fellowship of
Evangelical Students.

10
 4. Advocate through partnerships involving governments, business and industry, churches
and Christian and secular networks, the acceptance of the widely recommended target
of an increase of global average temperature of less that 2oC above pre industrial levels.

5. Formulate programmes to adapt to the degree of climate change which cannot now be
avoided.

6. Persuade governments, churches and Christian organizations to provide for the world’s
poorest people, especially in the areas of clean water, food security and cheap and
sustainable energy.

As the closing speaker at this Symposium, I took the opportunity to also challenge the
participants and the church at large to be among the leaders in the global environmental
network and in so doing to learn to work with peoples of other faith or of no faith at all at
both the local and global levels. This, I concluded, was an important step in our work for a
renewed creation.

Now into the second year since the convening of this Symposium, I am happy to report that
several new networks have been established among the participants, interesting practical
projects have been launched, and care of the environment is now a major plank in the IFES
global student mission. For further encouragement and guidance in similar efforts, I
recommend the book “Our Father’s World – Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation”, by
Edward R. Brown who was an active participant at Runaway Bay.

The approach and achievements of the IFES Symposium are to be highly applauded. In my
mind, they represent just the kind of initiative that the church of the 21st Century must
engage in; but not only in respect of climate change. There are other serious environmental
issues that need to be addressed like suitable land and water management, energy
conservation, waste reduction, informal squatter settlements, sub-standard housing, food
security, refugee status and a host of others. I submit that the CGST with its emphasis on
the church in development and its promotion of the UN Global Millennium Development
Goals is ideally suited as a Christian educational Institution to undertake teaching, research
and publication in the field of Christian stewardship and care of the environment, and I
wholeheartedly recommend that it pursue this initiative in the years ahead.

In summary, my journey in science and particularly the environment has sensitized me to

the needs of a fallen creation for redemption and renewal and of the responsibility Christians
have in meeting these needs. I hope I have been able to adequately share my concerns
with you and to challenge you to commit to this mission. I know I have much further to go in
my own journey and I invite you to join me in this.

4. MY JOURNEY IN BUSINESS

Growing up as a youngster in school and in church, my heroes were teachers, my pastor,

doctors, scientists, a few public servants and, of course, outstanding sportsmen. There were no
businessmen among my heroes. In fact, the conventional wisdom of my youthful days and the
butt of many a joke was that the smartest students went into the professions and the not so

11
smart students became businessmen. Much later in life, in an informal survey, I tested the
wisdom of my day and found that in the church, for example, there were very few of our leaders
who were in business. Their profiles indeed were not very different from my boyhood
impressions.

I have often wondered about this, and at times questioned whether to be in business is not to be
in the will of God. On reflection I think I can say with some confidence that within the church,
and to some extent in the wider society, we have been socialized to be conservative and
compliant; much safer and more secure to be in a stable job, earning a fixed income than to be
out there hustling, not quite sure what tomorrow will bring; much easier to be an employee
rather than an employer; much better to have someone else sowing where you are reaping.

Certainly within the church we have been taught to be financially responsible and, somehow,
risk taking does not fit easily within this mould. We have been encouraged to care for the poor,
but little has been said about how to create wealth to improve their lot. Indeed,
entrepreneurship and wealth creation have never been high on the church’s agenda; at least not
nearly as high as earning a fixed income and using it wisely in carefully budgeted proportions.
Something must be wrong here as my understanding of Jesus’ Parable of the Talents and
Servants in Matt. 25 suggests. Here we find the Master chastising the lazy and useless servant
for not using his talent to gain anything in a situation where all the other servants were profiting
with a 100% increase. Could perhaps the same charge be laid against many of us in the church
today?

Just when I was beginning to approach the pinnacle of my teaching and research career at the
University with the likely appointment of a professorship, I was invited to join the Petroleum
Corporation of Jamaica in order to set up and lead its new Department of the Environment, a
position that seemed to offer many new and exciting challenges. As Director of Environmental
Services, I soon found myself deeply engrossed in serious technical issues, but also taking on
administrative responsibilities for which I had had no previous training or other preparation. To
my Managing Director, I seemed to handle both aspects of my job well, so that within three
years, I was promoted to the position of General Manager of the Corporation with new
responsibilities for planning, accounts, human resources, information and public relations. My
span of interest was immediately broadened and my learning curve had to be very steep. For
the first time in my life, I found myself having to think outside my accustomed boxes and to
unearth talents I never knew I had. This indeed became the fastest and most fulfilling growing
phase of my adult life and, by all accounts, my star was shining very brightly.

Then one day, my good friend Tony Williamson approached me with an unusual offer. He had
been appointed President of an insurance company to renew and rapidly grow it and he wanted
me to be his administrative right hand as Vice President of Corporate Affairs, specializing in
corporate strategy, planning and growth – this would entail no science at all, no environmental
issues, no teaching, no research, or so I thought. This would truly be a life changing move, but
a move, strangely in the scheme of things, I thought, after much prayer and struggle, I should
make.

Within a few months of moving into the job I found myself sitting on two high powered financial
boards, helping to analyze business trends, interfacing with bank managers as colleagues,
writing business plans and learning and then teaching Total Quality Management to the staff of
the insurance company – all totally new to me, but not really as I discovered that my scientific

12
training and discipline were perfect foundations for learning and teaching new management
skills. After one year I was promoted to Senior Vice President with even greater responsibility
and, later on, I was approached by a competing financial company to join them with a view to
becoming their new President and CEO. This now was too disturbing, not because I did not feel
I could fit the bill, but because within my now restless mind, I had begun to formulate plans for
forming my own company and offering services to Governments and Private Sectors throughout
the Caribbean in environmental matters.

My first task was to share the idea with some trusted colleagues and then to put together a
small team of shareholders with vision and technical competence. I was to own one third of the
new company, another colleague one third, and three other colleagues the remaining one third.

On Earth Day, April 22, 1991, we launched our new company “Environmental Solutions Ltd.”
with the mission statement “We aim to provide the practical solutions required to achieve
harmony between the environment and development”. That company is still alive today and
has become the largest and most successful of its kind in Jamaica and throughout the English
Speaking Caribbean. Like any other company, it has had its ups and downs and times of real
crisis, including the financial meltdown of the mid 1990’s and now the global recession. At one
time, its staff complement was almost thirty, but we are now down to about 20 regular staff and
close associates. Business is generally good but we never expect to be a more than a small to
mid-sized company.

As Chairman and Consulting Principal, I have had to contribute all my scientific, business and
financial skills to overseeing the consolidation and growth of the company and in keeping a
vision alive of a company committed to the highest qualities of excellence in service and
customer care. I thank God that, in partnership with my business partners and staff, we are
achieving a measure of success that we feel is pleasing to God and a witness to those we
serve. Through all of this, my faith, my science and my entrepreneurship continue to be a
source of great satisfaction and blessing to me, and I can witness to the fact that my life in
business has been a vital means of support for my many other endeavours.

5. MY JOURNEY IN CHRISTIAN MINISTRY

The Apostle Paul, writing his second letter to the Corinthian church, reminded them that God
had given him the Ministry of Reconciliation, that is, of making enemies of God into friends. By
direct and indirect appeal, he encouraged the Corinthians to also exercise this ministry, and so
not to let the grace of God be wasted (2Cor 5.16-6.1). In the context of the strained relationship
Paul was having with the Corinthians, one sees considerable meaning in this appeal and in his
declaration that “No longer then do we judge anyone by human standards” (2 Cor. 5.16),
or, as the Message Bible renders this verse: “Because of this, we don’t evaluate people by
what they have or how they look.”

By the grace of God, Paul and the Corinthians did reconcile their differences and he was able to
delight in his subsequent fellowship with them as well as in their ministry on behalf of the
Christian Jews in Jerusalem. For a community of believers that had so many spiritual, social
and moral problems, the Corinthian church stands out as an example of God’s grace at work in
the midst of a diverse and fractured community.

13
In the course of my environmental consultancies in poor communities in Jamaica over several
years, I had come to understand in practical ways what Indira Ghandi had meant when she
declared that poverty is the worst form of pollution. Not only had I experienced first hand the
ravages of poverty upon the environment in which poor people lived, but I had also come to see
how these ravages served to divide people and make enemies of friends, resulting in
heightened personal conflicts and polarization of whole communities. In our work at
Environmental Solutions Ltd. we also saw how improved environmental conditions could
contribute significantly to improved human relationships and community well being.

But poverty divides not only among the poor, it separates or isolates those who do not have
means (the have-nots) from those who have (the haves), creating “dem/us” social divisions and
uptown/downtown sub-cultures. In short, I learnt first hand that poverty is not pretty, even in the
church where there is often the tendency to spiritualize it.

Arising from my deepening perspectives on poverty, I began to explore how my environmental

expertise might more practically be used to alleviate it in our inner-city communities. But there
was no ready answer to this and for a long time I despaired over my dilemma.

In April 1999, the City of Kingston erupted in riots as a result of sudden and marked increases in
the price of gasoline and other petroleum products. On the third day of the riots when most
people stayed home because of the fear of uncontrolled violence, I watched on TV a
demonstration mounted by a particularly poor community. Two of their placards immediately
caught my attention and froze me on my feet. In essence, one read “Who will listen to us”
and the other “Who will speak for us”. I was speechless, and there and then I decided that I
would give myself to working more among the poor and helping to give a voice to the voiceless.

However, I hadn’t the faintest idea as to how this would happen, but certain things soon began
to fall into place. First, I began to pray about what I felt to be a new call upon my life. The
thought of full time Christian service had never been far from my mind. Now I reopened this
idea with God and simply asked for his guidance.

The second thing I did was to make contact with a group of persons whom I had heard was also
seeking to give voice to the voiceless. At the first meeting I attended with the group, 32 young
men from the Grants Pen Community related how they had been rounded up by the security
forces, treated very roughly and wrongly over more than 24 hours, and then released without
any charges being laid against them. The concerned citizens took up their case and were able
to get some measure of redress. A few months later, this group formally constituted itself into
Jamaicans for Justice, and I became a founding member and later Vice Chairman. The
situations they encountered and the cases they took up served to sensitize and powerfully
motivate me to get more involved. But my unease only grew more. I then decided to seek the
counsel of some Christian leaders whom I admired, including my pastor.

Father Richard Albert shared with me the work of the St. Patrick’s Foundation in the inner city of
West St. Andrew but advised me “Don’t try to change the world. Transformation will come
through changing one life at a time.”

Father Richard HoLung was most gracious in sharing with me the Ministry of the Missionaries of
the Poor and in inviting me to see in the life of every poor, abandoned and dying soul, the very

14
likeness of Christ. The life, sacrifice and joy in service of Father HoLung and the young
Brothers of the Poor moved me deeply and permanently.

Rev. Sam Reid of Calvary Baptist Church in Montego Bay advised me to look at Jesus again,
for in Him I would find new life and my new direction.

With my Pastor Rev. Stephen Jennings, I discussed taking time off from my regular work and
routine to pray, read and reflect. This was to be my first time off in more than twenty years and I
greatly valued both the advice I received and the result of my focused time in seeking the
leading of the Lord. Before three months were over I had committed in writing to Rev. Jennings
and my family that I would be offering myself for full-time Christian service.

My next task was to advise my business partners at ESL that I would be taking time off from
daily involvement in the company to pursue studies at the United Theological College of the
West Indies and to enter into service at the HELP Ministry (Healing and Empowerment with
Love and Prayer) at the Mona Baptist Church. Thus began for me in September 2000, a new
journey in life.

As Director of the newly formed HELP Ministry in the church, my responsibility was to minister
to all the spiritual, emotional, material and health needs of the most needy in the church and its
neighbouring communities. Initially I had to oversee the church’s feeding and clothing
programme, homework centre and educational institute (offering CXC teaching in English and
Math), and offer personal and family counseling to anyone seeking assistance. Working in the
church office four days a week, I also had to determine the participants’ most pressing needs
and to see how the church could minister to these both within and outside the church premises.

To begin with, I was given a very modest petty cash account and to make do with this along with
a handful of church volunteers. Before long, however, the character of the ministry began to
enlarge beyond expectations.

First, we commenced a soup kitchen and then a health clinic on two days a week. Later we
added a legal assistance clinic and a literacy programme. The counseling programme
expanded to almost a full-time exercise, including phone-ins after hours and on weekends, and
the number of volunteers swelled from a handful to over forty. Contributions of food, household
items, and school materials, for example, also increased considerably and money donations
grew beyond bounds to make the ministry almost entirely self sufficient.

Two aspects of the ministry, however, began to take on national proportions. Initially, the
profile of persons seeking counseling closely paralleled that of the church community – 75% of
females and 25% males - but as needy men in the area discovered that they could come in at
any time and talk over their problems with me, the number of men coming for counseling
increased dramatically and surpassed those of the women. Who were these men and why were
they coming? We soon discovered that the Papine area was a major drug centre in the city and
on any one night, more than one hundred men would access their drugs, mostly crack cocaine,
at any of four drug bases in the immediate vicinity of the church. These men we also
discovered presented a consistent profile. Any one of them would fit into at least a number of
the following situations – Jobless, Homeless, Deported, Abandoned by Family, Mentally
Disturbed, HIV/AIDS infected and, of course, Addicted to Drugs. Thus, we began to focus on a

15
specialized ministry to these marginalized men offering assistance in virtually all of the above
situations. Networking with the Police, Correctional Services, the University and Bellvue
Hospitals, Drug Rehabilitation Centres and other Churches and Church groups, we developed a
ministry that caught the attention of the Ministry of Health and eventually resulted in their
financial support. In addition to personal counseling, we also engaged in a group therapy and
support programme that we called “Our Brothers’ Keeper”. All of these programmes continue to
the present and, to date, we have directly ministered to more than 40 drug addicts in addition to
the jobless, homeless and those living with HIV/AIDS.

The other ministry of national significance is our Mother and Baby Programme. Early on in the
HELP Ministry, we began encountering young teenagers who were either pregnant or were
already the mother of one or two infants. We soon discovered that instances of forced rape,
incest, prostitution and the like were common occurrences among young girls in impoverished
situations resulting in all kinds of health, emotional, legal and educational problems. In most
cases these young girls were without sound family and community support and so we undertook
to assist with their needs, either through our own counseling, educational and economic
programmes or through networking with established state and private sector support groups.

Our Mother and Baby Programme continues today, and the need only seems to be increasing
as young girls in the inner city become entrapped in the web of poverty, crime, abuse and family
abandonment. Neither the state, nor the private sector, nor the church seems to understand the
gravity of the problem and attempts at tackling it are therefore less than impressive.

My nearly ten years in the HELP Ministry opened up a whole new world to me, far removed from
anything I had encountered in my educational, church or community upbringing; and far
removed too from how I envisaged the good news of Christ should be shared among the needy
and desperate. During this time and still to this day I have had to learn five important lessons.

The first lesson I had to learn was how to listen and communicate. Words mean different things
to different people and language is neither standard nor static. I needed to know not only what
people were saying with their lips, but also what they were feeling and meaning in their hearts.
By hearing the spoken word alone, one may easily miss the coded messages and pain of the
seeker’s soul. The words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer have been helpful to me. “Careful listening
allows us to enter the world of another person…. The beginning of love… is learning to
listen”.16 Bob and Debby Gass have said it this way: “The way to someone’s heart is not
just through talking; it’s through listening… To love is to listen” 17 These have taught me
that we who have been socialized only in the formal educational system to a large extent really
do not understand the cry of the poor and their deepest need. As a result, it is very easy for the
church to spend its energies ministering to perceived needs of the poor rather than to their
actual needs as Jesus so remarkably and consistently did. I sometimes think that this is a major
reason why the church often appears to be irrelevant to the very people who are reaching out to
it.

The second lesson I had to learn is that no attempt at assisting a desperate person, no matter
how well meaning, can be effective and sustainable in the absence of a relationship of belief
and trust between the helper and receiver. This was particularly evident in our work with drug

16
Charles Ringma, 2000. Seize the Day-with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Pinon Press.
17
Bob & Debby Gass, July 2006. The Word For Today Caribbean. Reconciliation Ministries International.

16
addicts who we found would never admit to their addictions until they were confident in our
genuine interest in them as whole persons and our willingness to deal with their entire situation.
As we got to learn very early, drug addiction is usually a symptom of a greater problem more
than it is a cause in itself. Relationships allow the helper not only to understand the need but
also to feel the pain and suffering of the victim. This is the principle that Henri Nouwen brilliantly
elucidated in his work, “The Wounded Healer”, and that Isaiah portrayed in his vision of the
Suffering Servant. As Nouwen explained “The great illusion of leadership is to think that a
person can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.” 18

Arising from the above, the third lesson I had to learn was to always begin with a seeker at his
or own point of need. That is, where they are; not where we wished them to be. A close look at
Jesus’ ministry while on earth reveals that Jesus always did this and he often asked those who
came to him “What do you want me to do for you?” I find that in our evangelical tradition we
frequently start our interaction with a seeker by declaring “You need to be born again”, an
approach that Jesus used on only one occasion with one individual. More often he first dealt
with their need for healing and sustenance before getting to their spiritual condition. I believe
this should teach the church a profound lesson in evangelism and ministry and also strike at the
very incongruity of the so-called social gospel.

Listening, sharing and serving inevitably lead in a seeker/helper relationship to exposure, risk
and possible suffering. That is the nature of the incarnate gospel and is no different for us than
it was for Jesus. It is not popular nor is it easy, but it is the way we must go if we wish to be the
agents of Christ’s redemption to fallen people. This was the fourth and possibly the most
difficult lesson I had to learn for it called for my daily denial of self and submission to the infilling
and leading of the Holy Spirit.

In all of this, the fifth critical lesson I had to learn was not only to see in each seeker, no matter
how vile or desperate he or she might be, the very image of God, that is not just a soul to be
saved from the penalty of sin, but a whole person to be delivered in every aspect of life from the
control and consequence of sin. That is to proclaim the good news of Christ and His Kingdom
as the means for whole and abundant life, and to demonstrate this gospel through one’s own
living; to say with utter meaning and conviction “Jesus loves you and so do I”.

Time does not permit me to relate how the lessons I learnt played out in my ministry to Ricky,
the gunman who found release from his murderous past, or to Matthew the twice married
homosexual who also was a drug addict and HIV sufferer, or to Mona the prostitute turned
prayer warrior, or to the many other men and women living at the margins of our society who
found Christ and new life through our ministry.

I thank God for the opportunity to minister to these persons in all their poverty and misery and
for all that they now mean to me. As Mother Theresa herself confessed “I have learned from
the poor how poor I myself am” 19 and from John Wesley I have learned “There but for the
grace of God go I”.20

18
Henri Nouwen, 1979. The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society. Image Books
19
Mother Teresa, 1988. One Heart Full of Love. Servant Books.
20
John Wesley, 1740. The Works of the Rev John Wesley

17
6. WOLVES, LAMBS, LEOPARDS AND GOATS LIE DOWN
TOGETHER

The journeys I have shared with you, my journey in faith, in science, in business and in Christian
ministry are all ongoing and have a common theme. It is about the grace of God at work in a life
seeking to be fully surrendered to him and to be in His will in every aspect and circumstance of
life. It is about seeking and finding God amidst doubts, uncertainties and failures in areas of life
that to many seem widely different and even conflicting. Henri Nouwen’s perspective is
encouraging. “You are a Christian only so long as you look forward to a new world, so
long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in” 21, and Charles
Ringma’s comments are equally penetrating: “Spirituality has more to do with restlessness
than with peace; more with change than with conformity; more with radicalism than with
conservatism; more with transformation than with conservation”. 22 This reminds us that
God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him and that those who refuse to seek Him in the
inner secret places will never truly know the fullness of God. Like Jacob at Peniel, we must be
prepared to wrestle with God throughout the night and to come away bruised but blessed.

In our search for God, we should also be prepared to break down man-made barriers of thought
and dogma and be willing to encounter God in the full tapestry of life. Rev. Sam Reid’s advice
to me to look at Christ again has been one of the most profound and liberating of my entire life
and I am finding much blessing at looking at Christ again and again and again, each time with a
new perspective and with a new expectancy. Charles Ringma is insightful in advising “If we
think we can contain the living Christ within our words and our theology, we have
grasped far less than we realize”. 23

But it is not only Christ that we must free our minds to know; it is life itself, in all its fullness,
complexity and beauty. Those who would seek to reduce the complexity of life to simple
formulas or those who would seek to place life’s meanings and experiences in neat little
categories or compartments surely have no sense of the wholeness of human life or of the unity
of body, soul and mind. Hence they see the salvation of God as being related only to the soul
and not to the entire person. This leads to the offering of a partial gospel to disconnected
persons. According to Martin Luther King Jr: “Religion that professes to be concerned
about the souls of man and is not concerned about the …conditions that damn the soul
…is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion”. 24 Charles Ringma is also concerned about the one-
sidedness of a partial gospel and advises “We are called to promote all that which sustains
and enhances life and not only that which promotes eternal life”. He adds “The word of
the church must be one that champions freedom, promotes responsibility, encourages
justice, inspires hope, makes room for mercy, and calls for accountability”. 25

These expressions reflect my understanding of a whole gospel for the whole person for a whole
life and help to explain my own pursuit of God’s truth in all my various journeys. They also

21
Henri Nouwen, 1972. With Open Hands. Ave Maria Press.
22
Charles Ringma, 2000. Dare to Journey with Henri Nouwen. Pinon Press.
23
Charles Ringma, 2000. Seize the Day with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Pinon Press
24
Martin Luther King Jr., 1988. The Measure of a Man. Fortress Press.
25
Charles Ringma, 2000. Dare to Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Pinon Press.

18
serve to reveal my inner disquiet when I see the church trying to confront the world with
blinkered eyes or with simplistic solutions to complex issues, or when it becomes ultra defensive
about tired worn-out positions that have no relevance in a modern world. According to Henri
Nouwen “Christian leadership is a dead-end street when nothing new is expected, when
everything sounds familiar and when ministry has regressed to the level of the routine”.
26

Howard Snyder who has been quoted in Ron Sider’s penetrating work “Good News and Good
Works” is devastatingly critical in stating “Church people think about how to get people into
the church; kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church
people worry that the world might change the church; kingdom people work to see the
church change the world”. 27 Would that all of us might be converted from being church
people into being kingdom people. But this must begin at the heart level for heart matters are
all-of-life matters as, according to Ringma, “The seeking heart must be the heart open to
change, renewal and conversion”. 28

I have tried in my own life to be converted and renewed from day to day. For me, to be born
again is not an event but a day to day process and I believe this is why I have been able to
travel through several journeys, even when these journeys have seemed disconnected,
uncertain and without human logic or reason. It is also why I believe I have been able to resolve
seeming conflicts between faith, scientific evidence, evolution, the environment,
entrepreneurship, business, and ministry to the poor, the oppressed and the weak. It is why I
have found a measure of peace where others might find conflict and why I continue to seek to
lie down with the wolves and the leopards and not be devoured by them nor with the lambs and
young goats and neither violate their innocence nor their weakness.

It is why I must also challenge the church and all its agents (including the Caribbean Graduate
School of Theology) to teach, preach and practice the meaning and values of the Kingdom of
God, including the centrality of the Word so that the whole world may be full with the knowledge
of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. It is also why we must not only proclaim good news,
but must ourselves be good news. It is why we must move away from being a comfortable
middle class, consumer church that, according to Ringma, is neither passionate about the
gospel nor the poor, a church that should be transformed to reflect the values of the upside
down Kingdom of God rather than the comfortableness of Western values.29 This will entail
courage, risk, and even failures, but it is undoubtedly a task for all of us. It is after all the
church’s authentic mission.

S. St. John Redwood, a Jamaican pastor, theologian and politician warns “If the church does
not make efforts to relate to her context, then the context will make no effort to relate to
the church” and adds “when the church does not seek to maintain a continuity between
the sacred and the secular, it becomes difficult (or impossible?) for persons to make a
connection between worship and life”. 30

26
Henri Nouwen, 1979. The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society. Image Books.
27
Howard Snyder, Quoted in Ron Sider, 1993, Good News and Good Works. Baker Books.
28
Charles Ringma, 2006. The Seeking Heart – A Journey with Henri Nouwen. Paraclete Press.
29
Charles Ringma, 2004. Let My People Go with Martin Luther King Jr., Pinon Press
30
S. St. John Redwood, 1999. Pastoral Care in a Market Economy – A Caribbean Perspective. UWI Press.

19
I have been trying throughout my journey in life, just as I have sought to do in this lecture, to
make the connection between the spiritual and the material and to demonstrate that we can
indeed lie down with the wolves, the lambs, the leopards and the goats and be at peace. I pray
that together, by the Grace of God, we all will strive to do just that and thereby serve to usher in
the Kingdom of God in our midst.

April 16, 2010

My grateful thanks to Beverley Cooke who typed and reproduced this manuscript through its many
stages

20