I wrote this book for several reasons. First, handing on a love for Creation Care is a “come and see” kind of thing. I wish I could invite every one of you to my place, to walk with me, worship with me, to sit down over a cup of coffee at The Porch Cafe…just so you could see, feel, touch and taste what it is like when God puts people and place back together.

I also wrote this book to add a pastoral voice to the many good books on environmental stewardship from a scientific or theological perspective. Creation Care is simply a part of whole life discipleship, what I call, “following Jesus all the way down to the dirt.”

Through my involvement with A Rocha, a Christian Conservation organization, I have found myself in the middle of heated conversations between the evangelical church and those with environmental concern. It is not uncommon for the church to take quite a beating for not being there when the creatures they were given dominion over needed them most. Some of the criticism is called for; some is certainly not.

Rather than beat up “the church” as an organization, whose primary God–given task is making disciples, this book hopes to help put the local church back together with its place. The simple, common sense reality is that you cannot love people and destroy their place and you cannot love a place and ignore the people who live, work and worship there. Read along and I will tell the story of the place and the people that have helped put me back together; the people that live in the place called Santa Margarita, California.