Author: Paul Slentz
Love for the natural world has been an important part of who I am for a very long time. That love was taught to me by my parents, who took my four siblings and me on wonderful camping trips every summer. I especially fell in love with the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
My mother was the first environmentalist I knew. One day when I was quite young, we were walking together when I saw a robin that was very sick. My mom explained to me that pesticides had been sprayed on the trees in that lot and that the robin had been poisoned. She went on to explain that that was why we pulled weeds in the yard by hand an did not use weedkillers. So, care for the Earth has been with me for a long time, but I was not making a clear conscious connection between this concern and my Christian faith.
Fast forward to the mid ‘90s when I went to Vanderbilt Divinity School and began to make that connection, especially through the teachings of one of the best professors I’ve ever had, the late Sally McFague who was an early leader in ecological theology. I was ordained and began serving a church. So, my daily attention was on all the very full plate of things that go into being a pastor and not on creation justice.
The deadly 2010 Deep Water Horizon oil explosion was the jolt that moved creation justice from being a concern to being a passion and a calling. Watching the footage of hundreds of millions of gallons of oil pouring in to the Gulf of Mexico day-after-day, week-after-week, along with the photos of oil-soaked pelicans, dying dolphins, and tar-covered sea turtles sickened me and awakened me. That same summer, while on vacation in the Rockies, I read Matthew Sleeth’s Serve God, Save the Planet which solidified my calling.
I began having conversations with my District Superintendent, Rev. John Collett, about this new vocation. He shared a passion for creation care, and with his leadership and the support of a number of pastors and lay persons, a Creation Care Ministry was formally established for the Nashville District of the Tennessee Conference in 2012.
In 2015, I took a sabbatical leave to focus fully on creation justice and in 2016 I was appointed as Pastor for Creation Care and Environmental Justice in the Tennessee Conference. Also in 2016, I attended the first EarthKeepers training. I retired in 2020, but am still very active with creation justice, serving on the new Tennessee-Western Kentucky Creation Care Ministry Leadership Team and the Coordinating Committee of the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement. I also am chair of the Nashville Chapter of the interfaith Earth care organization, Tennessee Interfaith Power & Light.
This ministry is at times very rewarding and at times incredibly frustrating, even discouraging. But I am given much hope by the incredible people I get to work with every day in this vocation and by my faith in a God of renewal and resurrection.
