Leaders from the World Evangelical Alliance, Baptist World Alliance, and the Lausanne/WEA Creation Care Network joined representatives of several other global Christian bodies Wednesday in a joint webinar calling churches worldwide to observe Creation Sunday on Sept. 6 — calling creation care an act of worship and discipleship, not a political cause.
The hour-long online event, held July 8, was co-organized by seven global Christian bodies and moderated by Latin American evangelical theologian Ruth Padilla DeBorst of the Latin American Theological Fellowship. It drew church leaders and pastors ahead of the annual celebration, which falls on the first Sunday of September.
"Caring for creation is not about politics," said Rev. Elijah Brown, CEO and General Secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, which represents 53 million baptized believers in 138 countries. "It is about worship, stewardship and loving our neighbors, especially those who are most vulnerable to environmental degradation and natural disasters."
Brown called the observance "an opportunity for your church to celebrate our creator God, give thanks for the beauty of the world God has made and recommit ourselves to faithful care and stewardship."
Rev. Botrus Mansour, Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance, grounded his endorsement in biblical theology and hope in Jesus Christ. "In a broken world that is kept captive between greed and fear, losing any perspective of hope, we as those who confess Jesus of Nazareth as our living hope should unite in serving our fellowmen in a relevant way," he said.
Mansour named environmental fear as one of the defining anxieties of the age. "One of the biggest fears for those who have no hope beyond the grave is that our planet is going down the drain," he said — and argued that Christians, far from standing apart from that concern, share it on deeper grounds. "Creation is nothing secondary. The natural is not unspiritual. Nothing is made without Christ" — citing John 1:3 and Colossians 1:20.
He argued that Christians who confess Jesus as Lord have particular reason, not less reason, to engage with creation. "As those who praise God for salvation and an eternal future in Christ, we honor the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ — not only by praising him for creation, but also by taking good care of his handiwork, not because we have no other hope, but because we do. It is an act of good discipleship and of fine stewardship."
The WEA leader framed the observance as a form of witness to a fearful world. "Those that confess Jesus as Lord should unite in taking care of God's creation, both to honor the creator and to show Christ's relevance in one more practical way, touching on the core of society's worst fears — showing that we also care for what is society's huge care, but with hope from the perspective of love."
"We therefore endorse the celebration of Creation Sunday as an expression of faith and as an expression of love, strengthened to do so by the authority of what scripture tells us to do," he said.
A theological foundation
Rev. Dave Bookless, an evangelical theologian who co-leads the global Lausanne/WEA Creation Care Network and serves as head of theology for A Rocha International, presented a new paper titled "Creation Sunday: An Introduction," produced by a working group of theologians from the convening bodies.
Bookless outlined six theological reasons for free churches — evangelical, Pentecostal and other non-liturgical traditions — to mark the day, beginning with Christology. "Creation Sunday helps us proclaim that Jesus is lord of all," he said, citing Jesus' role as preexistent creator in John 1, the cosmic reconciliation described in Colossians 1 and Christ's enthronement over all creation in Ephesians 1 and Philippians 2.
He described the gospel itself as inseparable from creation. Drawing on Romans 8, he noted Paul's declaration that "creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay." And he pointed to Romans 1 as evidence that creation plays an evangelistic role. "Creation displays God's eternal power and divine nature," Bookless said. "I often say creation is God's first evangelist."
The day also carries significance for discipleship and mission, Bookless argued. He cited Genesis 2's command to "work and take care of the garden" as a mandate that "has never been taken away," and linked creation care to the call in Matthew 25 to serve the most vulnerable.
He also drew a line from Creation Sunday back to Israel's liturgical calendar. "In the Old Testament, God's people celebrated festivals that often linked God's actions in history and God's actions in creation," Bookless said. Observances such as First Fruits and the Feast of Weeks were harvest-based, land-rooted celebrations. "We need to recover that tradition of celebrating God's provision and goodness in creation," he said.
Bookless spoke from personal experience about the spiritual dimension of engaging with creation. "The more I have learned about caring for creation, the more time I spend worshiping God in creation outdoors, the closer I find I get to Jesus," he said. He also noted that creation care "helps our faith become a seven-day-a-week rather than a Sunday morning thing."
African perspectives
Emmanuel Awudi, a theologian from Ghana representing the Pentecostal World Fellowship in the working group, opened with a historical observation. When the World Missionary Conference gathered in Edinburgh in 1910, he said, virtually no one anticipated the rise of a vibrant church in Africa. A century later, scholars widely acknowledge that the center of Christian vitality has shifted to the global south — and Awudi argued that shift carries direct implications for how the whole church thinks about creation.
"The wider church has much to learn from African Christians," he said. He pointed to indigenous African churches that have developed oral theologies enabling communities to conserve wetlands and ecosystems for centuries. He also drew on African hymnody, noting that African Christians sing of the mystery and wonder of God's creation in ways that echo the creation Psalms.
Among the Akan people of Ghana, he cited a traditional saying: "No one needs to teach a child the concept of God" — meaning the awareness of God as creator is understood to be innate, and the natural world is the first teacher. "The environment teaches believers a religious language," Awudi said. "The sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the lakes, the seas and the rivers, the thunder and the lightning, forests, plants and animals can all speak to human beings about the beyond."
For this reason, Awudi said, the feast of creation is not an import to Africa but a recognition of something already present. "The celebration of God's creation is already embedded in our spirituality and in our daily lives," he said.
That embeddedness, however, makes the formal observance no less relevant. Africa has suffered severe climate impacts, Awudi noted, and a named, celebrated feast can help channel African Christian creation theology into concrete care. He drew on Africa's long history of responding to environmental crisis — including, he said, the strategies employed by pharaohs during ancient famines — and expressed hope that "Africa can once again become the breadbasket of the world as it recovers the theology of creation."
Awudi identified three things the feast teaches: that creation belongs to God, not humanity; that human dominion is a delegated responsibility meant to mirror God's "compassion, love, mercy, and justice"; and that creation is not a resource pool to be exploited. "Every part of creation exists to fulfill God's purposes," he said. "It is not to be reduced to raw material or a commodity to be bought and sold on the market, but to be celebrated as God's creation."
He closed by urging that "the celebration of the feast of creation should not become an annual event but a way of life."
Creation Sunday is celebrated on the first Sunday of September each year. More information is available at creation-sunday.com.
