We Just Can't Do As We Please!

Selected excerpts from From Vantagepoint
by Melissa Ong, a filmmaker engaged in conservation work zooms in on the need for creation restoration and encourages all to get involved!

THE ENCOUNTER WITH A ROCHA
A Rocha (Portuguese for "the rock") is an international Christian conservation NGO working to show God's love for all creation. When I first found A Rocha through Google on the Internet, it was like finding my long lost family and I just had to work for them. The other search results were disappointing. Basically, a whole lot of Christians condemned the movement as unbiblical, a form of new age spirituality, and connected to worship of Gaia. A Rocha turned out to be very biblical, totally legit, and they didn't just talk about creation care, but actually did practical conservation work. I was so happy (my husband, Dan, said I was jumping up and down). I didn't feel alone anymore!

That was 2003. I had been in the local television industry for about eight years writing and directing TV programs and documentaries. I loved making shows about Singapore's natural heritage and the environment. A turning point came when I was in Japan for another environmental series for youths. I felt really moved by the Japanese activists who were doing amazing work and I couldn't help but ask myself, "Why aren't Christians doing something about the environment? We are supposed to be stewards, right? What does the Bible really say about the new creation?"

Immediately, A Rocha (AR) got an email from me: "Do you have a media department? I would like to make films for AR." At that time, I had just resigned from my job as an Executive Producer at a production house and I wanted to give more time to missions and conservation. Well, they didn't have a media department, but Peter Harris, the founder of AR wrote to encourage me and also sent his book Under The Bright Wings. It's the story of how AR started in Southern Portugal. This book changed my life because it articulated something I felt for deeply, but didn't have the theology or language to express. A year later, Peter and his wife Miranda invited Dan and I to join the AR International team as volunteer filmmakers for one year. By then, we had met in Singapore, organized a little AR conference at the Singapore Bible College and gone to Bangkok together to run an AR booth at the Third IUCN World Conservation Congress in 2004. We had become dear friends.

So Dan and I raised our financial support through friends, bought camera equipment, and a souped-up laptop for video editing. In March 2005, our church sent us off on an itinerant life which has led us to France, Portugal, UK, Kenya, and Canada to film what God was doing to restore His creation. It's a dream come true to serve God in this way.


HOW TO GET INVOLVED
If you'd like to know how you can support or partner with us in our work (communications and creating Chinese resources), we'd love to hear from you. It would be wonderful to see an AR community group start in Singapore.

We need to ask ourselves: How can we be better stewards of God's creation? How can we love our neighbor? Who is our neighbor? In the environmental crisis, the poorest people are most at risk. It can be quite overwhelming. Where do we start? Shopping and eating are a big part of Singaporean culture. I'd like Singaporeans to be more connected to where their food comes from and for Christians to eat responsibly as a spiritual discipline. Can we ask the Holy Spirit to show us how we can shop and eat in ways that honor communities and places? It's important to ask where does this come from? How was it grown, produced or reared? Do I need to buy this new thing or can I borrow it, fix the old item or stick with what I already have?

You don't have to be a field biologist to volunteer in A Rocha although we do need them! When Dan and I were in Canada, there was a colorful mix of volunteers: those who helped in the Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) project and worked in the organic vegetable garden, businessmen who gave good advice, people who fixed the lawn-mower, carpenters, helpers in environmental education with the kids, children who weeded, and environmental studies students doing surveys.

Like all charities, A Rocha also needs people who can give or know of others who can. I would be happy to exchange emails, meet with people, go to home groups, and to show the A Rocha films.

"If God is really at the center of things and God's good future is the most certain reality, then the truly realistic course of action is to buck the dominant consequentialist ethic of our age - which says that one should act only if one's action will mostly likely bring about good consequences - and simply, because we are people who embody the virtue of hope, do the right thing... Our vocation is not contingent on results or the state of the planet. It is simply dependent on our character as God's response-able human image-bearers." - Steven Bouma-Prediger

Melissa Ong and her husband Dan Tay are a filmmaking team based with A Rocha in Singapore. Melissa produces video tools for A Rocha teams (find them on our Creation Care video resources page). They are also making A Rocha's work known amongst Chinese-speaking audiences. You can contact her at melissa.ong@arocha.org.