Scott Freeman

God’s green earth: Local pastor takes environmental focus

God’s green earth: Local pastor takes environmental focus

Here’s another article about me.  Since most people won’t click the link, here is the text.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

By Katy Moore

Tribune-Herald staff writer

When pastor Scott Freeman prayed last year for God to help him be more loving toward other people, the Hewitt resident thought perhaps God would direct him to be a bit more extroverted with his congregation at Northside Church of Christ in Bellmead.

Freeman describes himself as something of an introvert, which may seem contradictory for someone who speaks from a pulpit every Sunday morning. But he notes that preaching is a private, one-dimensional thing. It’s easy to go back and forth between his study and the pulpit without interacting much with his parishioners, he said.

So Freeman did not expect that he would become a part of an evangelical movement to encourage environmental awareness. Nor did he anticipate the attention he’s recently received from the Dallas Morning News and the British Broadcasting Corporation. On Sunday a crew from the BBC was present during the church’s morning service and interviewed Freeman for a documentary on evangelicals and the environment. In September, Freeman joined nearly 100 other church leaders nationwide in signing the Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation, a call for environmental awareness from religious conservatives.

“Because we worship and honor the Creator, we seek to cherish and care for the creation,” the declaration states. “Because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation. Therefore we repent of the way we have polluted, distorted, or destroyed so much of the Creator’s work.”

Before he began researching green-friendly issues, Freeman thought of concern for the environment as a bunch of “liberal politics.” But his view has changed, and he now considers caring for creation part of a larger call — to care for the poor.

“When I began to pray the prayer, I thought God would move me toward loving people in my own congregation more, but I think he had bigger plans for me in that I began to love everyone more,” he said. “It began to help me rethink some of my long-held convictions and misconceptions about people. I began to question my political views, my sociological views, everything.”

Freeman said those questions brought up more questions — about how he might be understanding Jesus’ call to be a steward of creation. He said he began to contemplate what it meant to have “dominion” over creation. Many Christians believe God gives humans dominion, or authority, over the earth, which Freeman said he thinks many people could take to mean dominance rather than stewardship.

“I’m not chaining myself to any trees or anything like that, I’m just trying to take more personal responsibility,” he said, explaining how his family is getting more deliberate about recycling and the efficient use of energy.

“That’s one of the things I loved about this initiative,” he said. “It wasn’t in support of any specific legislation or in conjunction with any political party. It was a group of conservative Christians saying we acknowledge that this is true, and it’s time for us to be a voice.”