‘Church must lead crusade to protect environment’

The synod Moderator of the Dayi Presbytery of the Evangelical Presby­terian (EP) Church, Ghana, Reverend Wisdom Seloame Alorvi, has reminded the church and Ghanaians of their responsibility to protect the environ­ment, which is the creation of God, and not to destroy it.

Reverend Alorvi stated that God created the world and saw all that he created, and said it was very good – Genesis 1:31, and stressed that it was the duty of people who benefited from the creation of God to protect the environment, saying if they could not protect it, they should not destroy it.

The Moderator gave the reminder at a day’s special synod of the Dayi Presbytery of the EP Church Ghana, at Vakpo in the North Dayi District of the Volta Region on the theme: ‘Care for Creation; The Task and Mission of the Church’.

The Synod deliberated on the activ­ities of the church in propagating the gospel to win souls for Christ, and the role of the church in the protection of the environment, which is God’s creation, including our forests, water bodies which are crucial to the surviv­al of the human race.

Additionally, Rev. Alorvi stressed that if God said in His word that everything that he created was very good, then it was the duty of men to take good care of the creation of God, which must be seen in the collective mission and task to care for them and not to destroy them.

He underscored the importance of the church to propagate the gospel alongside educating the people on the need to protect the environment, which was full of God’s creation, saying “any church that did not take good care of God’s creation would be deemed as ignorant of their mission.

Rev. Alorvi observed that Ghanaians belonged to one church or the other, and it is important that the church educate and encourage their members to protect the environment, adding that the inability of the church and Ghanaians to protect the environment would be regarded as negligent of their God-giving task.

Moreover, he said that “if the last tree dies, the last man dies,” highlighting the critical connection between the human race and the eco­logical world, particularly our forest resources, which underscored the fact that the survival of people was fun­damentally linked to the health and well-being of the environment.

Rev. Alorvi also stated that the above phrase raised ethical issues about the responsible use of natural resources and the impact of human activities on the environment, stress­ing that after all, the very survival as a people largely depended on how the environment was cared for.

The Moderator, therefore, called on Ghanaians to stop the wanton pollu­tion of the environment, plant more trees, dispose of refuse properly, and stop illegal mining popularly called ‘galamsey’ and other human activities that threatened the sustenance of the environment.

From Samuel Agbewode, Vakpo