Earthkeepers: A Circlewood Podcast on Creation Care and Spirituality · Forrest Inslee

Exciting New Directions in Faith-Based Earth Care: Victoria Loorz Interviews Forrest Inslee | Ep. 139

·43 min·2 clips

Bethany Community Church chose to rewild a dead lawn instead of rushing to a community garden.

1. Earthkeepers: A Circlewood Podcast on Creation Care and Spirituality centers this episode on a conversation about faith-based earth care, ecological discipleship, and a wider view of creation. 2. James Amidon introduces Forrest Inslee, Circlewood’s director and the podcast’s occasional co-host, as a guest on Victoria Lohrs’ sister podcast The Holy Wild. 3. The episode asks what happens when Christian faith expands beyond “saving human souls” toward relationship with the whole community of creation. 4. Forrest describes a transition that began in evangelical church culture, where his pastor told him, “Jesus didn’t die for the mountains and the trees.” 5. He connects that older worldview to community development, where relief work in places like Haiti could leave behind trash because the focus stayed on human need alone. 6. Forrest says indigenous mentors helped him see that “community is much bigger than people,” and that the goal is to be “a good relation” in the broader family of creation. 7. He says his students are now “all over the world” trying to influence community development toward that wider ecological view. 8. Forrest and Victoria discuss Ben Lowe of Arusha USA and the idea that churches increasingly want help with creation care rather than simply resisting it. 9. He points to Arusha’s “Churches of Restoration” program as one example of congregations seeking guidance on how to care for God’s creation more deeply. 10. He also cites David Swanson’s book Plundered, The Tangled Roots of Racial and Environmental Justice as another sign that churches are linking earth care with justice and repentance. 11. Forrest argues that the church’s task is not only recycling or plastic reduction but “inner change” expressed through repentance, kindness, love, and restoration. 12. He references Walter Wink’s The Powers That Be and says Wink’s reading of “cosmos” as “worldview” helped him rethink separation from the earth. 13. The conversation turns to the Department of Defense being renamed the Department of War, which Forrest treats as a sign of a domination-based ethic. 14. Forrest contrasts that impulse with Phyllis Tickle’s claim that Christianity passes through major 500-year shifts, which he now feels in his own time. 15. Victoria asks about Bethany Community Church in Seattle, and Forrest describes its wilderness ministry as a place where many people meet God more readily in nature than on Sunday mornings. 16. He explains how Circlewood is teaching a year-long series on ecological discipleship there while also helping the church rewild an unused lawn with native plants, water-flow awareness, and Duwamish collaboration. 17. The episode’s tone is reflective and conversational, with long exchanges about theology, land, and spiritual practice rather than quick back-and-forth debate. 18. The style stays practical even when it becomes philosophical, moving from church culture to cardboard mulching, pond design, coyotes, and John O’Donohue’s language of reverence. 19. People interested in creation care, church renewal, and ecological spirituality will likely find this episode useful. 20. People looking for a short, purely devotional, or non-Christian conversation may skip it.

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