Flourish

FLOURISH is a collaborative ministry that helps churches care for creation in ways that honor God and help people. FLOURISH recognizes environmental stewardship as an expression of our love for God and a celebration of the bountiful world in which he has placed us.

Visit the new Flourish Store for the best resources in creation care for churches and families.

Creation Care

We work with local churches and partners to share ideas about how to integrate creation care with ministries of evangelism, compassion, missions, and community service. We help churches and ministries sort through the static of environmental information to find the stewardship actions that will build their work and multiply their witness. And we provide materials to help families raise kids in ways that are safe, healthy, rooted in God’s word, and aware of the natural world around them.

Thousands of churches in America are looking for teaching on the care for God’s creation that is biblically sound and that can fit into the programs and priorities of the local church.  To help address this need, we are focusing on three initial areas of ministry:

• Providing resources such as Flourish magazine, Bible studies and group guides, and other how-to materials for churches and families.
• Working with local churches and partner ministries to help mission teams, youth groups and other church groups to engage in U.S. and international projects that integrate creation care with ministries of evangelism, compassion, missions, and community service.
• Helping churches to audit their use of energy and to analyze their impact on local environments, and to guide churches in their implementation of cost-saving and creation-sensitive energy stewardship projects.

Together with churches, families, and our partner ministries, we are building a Christian environmental stewardship movement that it is focused on both lives and landscapes, depoliticized, integrated with other ministries of the church, and meeting the challenges of rural, suburban, and urban environments.

History: Founded in 2008 by Jim Jewell and Rusty Pritchard, Flourish is a product of scores of conversations, interactions, and interviews to determine what is missing in the Christian environmental movement. The co-founders, in partnership with others, have sensed an openness in many churches to a conversation about creation care, and a commitment to actions that make a real difference in human lives and landscapes. Together with those partners and a talented staff, Jim and Rusty invented Flourish to meet the needs of churches, families, and individuals seeking to live out authentic, Christ-centered lives with a faithfulness to our stewardship mandate.

Jim has served for over 30 years with various Christian causes and organizations, including World Vision, Trinity Forum, and Prison Fellowship, where for ten years he was chief-of-staff to Chuck Colson. Rusty has been involved in Christian ministry for nearly 30 years, has conducted international scientific research in economics and ecology, and taught environmental studies for seven years at Emory University in Atlanta (in a department he co-founded).

They met while working for the Evangelical Environmental Network, Rusty as national outreach director and Jim as chief of operations. Together they sensed God’s calling to a creation care ministry that celebrated and encouraged the work of the church as it builds the common good, shows compassion, and demonstrates the love of Christ in a pluralistic, post-Christian culture.

At about the same time, they met Kendra Langdon Juskus and Jonathan Merritt. Kendra joined the EEN team for a brief time, during which she took the EEN magazine Creation Care to a new level as managing editor. Jonathan Merritt met Jim and Rusty shortly after he began to envision the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative. Flourish is in large measure influenced by Kendra and Jonathan’s perspective, recognizing that faithful Christian churches need access to ministry resources on creation care that build faith, encourage discipleship, and demonstrate practical concern.