Hope in the Age of Cli­mate Change: A Re­cap

MISHAWAKA—Last Wednes­day night in the Aca­d­e­mic Cen­ter room 342, Bethel Col­lege hosted Kyle Meyaard-Schaap from Young Evan­gel­i­cals for Cli­mate Ac­tion. This ses­sion cov­ered the topic of our world as it is chang­ing—per­tain­ing to the cli­mate and to the hope that we can find through this ap­par­ent process. 

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, the speaker for the event, said, “Je­sus’ com­mand to love God and to love our neigh­bors calls us to take some­thing like cli­mate change se­ri­ously as it is harm­ing God’s world. As young peo­ple, this is the world you are in­her­it­ing so there is every moral rea­son to be con­cerned with cli­mate change in or­der to se­cure a safe fu­ture for our­selves.” 

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap is the Na­tional Or­ga­nizer and Spokesper­son for a pro­gram called Young Evan­gel­i­cals for Cli­mate Ac­tion, bet­ter known as YECA. This is a pro­gram made up of ded­i­cated young Chris­tians tak­ing a stand for tak­ing care of the earth.  

YECA fo­cuses on three main goals: mo­bi­liz­ing our gen­er­a­tion of Chris­tians to act and ad­vo­cate to­gether; in­flu­enc­ing our church lead­ers to set an ex­am­ple and sup­port cli­mate ac­tion; and hold­ing our po­lit­i­cal lead­ers ac­count­able for re­spon­si­ble cli­mate poli­cies.  

The ses­sion on Wednes­day was specif­i­cally di­rected to­ward the hope a Chris­t­ian can have in the face of cli­mate change. Bible verses pro­vid­ing hope were dis­cussed, along­side the po­lit­i­cal side of rea­sons for hope on an in­ter­na­tional and do­mes­tic level. The ses­sion en­ti­tled Hope in the Age of Cli­mate Change was very in­for­ma­tive about the world around us and what every­one is do­ing to take care of the world God gave us do­min­ion over. 

The ses­sion held on cam­pus en­cour­aged stu­dents to join the move­ment and pro­vided many op­por­tu­ni­ties for get­ting in­volved. If a stu­dent is in­ter­ested in sign­ing up or learn­ing more about the pro­gram visit YECAc­tion.org.