DRAWING CLOSER TO GOD THROUGH SORTING TRASH

Have you felt a distance from God? Have you considered sorting your trash?

At 8 on a Saturday morning, just as the heat was permeating this sprawling Orlando suburb, Denise Kirsop donned a white plastic moon suit and began sorting through the trash produced by Northland Church.

She and several fellow parishioners picked apart the garbage to analyze exactly how much and what kind of waste their megachurch produces, looking for ways to reduce the congregation's contribution to global warming.

"I prayed about it, and God really revealed to me that I had a passion about creation," said Kirsop, who has since traded in her family's sport-utility vehicle for a hybrid Toyota Prius to help cut her greenhouse gas emissions. "Anything that draws me closer to God -- and this does -- increases my faith and helps my work for God."

Counting a megachurch's carbon footprint without question can draw one closer to God. I mean, how could one conceive that it could not?

And who revealed this truth to Kirsop and her fellow congregants? Why her preacher, none other than Joel Hunter:

"I did sense this is one of these issues where the church could take leadership, like with civil rights," said Northland's senior pastor, Joel C. Hunter. "It's a matter of who speaks for evangelicals: Is it a broad range of voices on a broad range of issues, or a narrow range of voices?"

Does anyone "speak for evangelicals"? Do evangelicals need someone--or a group of someones--to speak for them? Perhaps the number of volunteers for this job outweighs the need.

Or just maybe, rather than sorting their trash churches could be concerned with reaching out to the lost, encouraging the saints and helping their needy. Those are jobs we seldom have enough volunteers for.

[Thanks to theosebes reader Wild Bill for the link]