All the talk about Wal-Mart in the "smores" post has brought a very interesting story TDD's way. One of our regular readers brought to my attention a post over at Kem Meyer's blog about the recent "conversion" (or betrayal, depending on your environmental perspective) of evironmental guru, Adam Werbach, former president of the Sierra Club.
I just finished reading the Fast Company article to which Kem links in her post. It is a bit lengthy, but very much worth the read. And it raises some intriguing issues concerning both the environment and the larger issue of challenging the status quo in order to carry out the vision to which one is committed.
A couple of things I want to elaborate on a bit further in light of Kem's post. First of all, she highlighted a frank admission from Werbach that gets at the heart of my feelings about the environmentalist movement. The author of the article summarizes Werbach's comments:
In it's efforts to protect seal pups and redwood trees, he told his mentors, friends, and colleagues, the movement had forgotten human beings. What was needed, he said, was a new way of connecting sustainability to the aspirations of everyday people.
That humility and fair-minded assessment of the environmental movement by one of its own deserves respect and reflection. The hijacking of the environmental issue by a liberal left, who have inverted the priority of animals and trees over the immeasurable value of human beings, is what has caused considerable resistance by the conservative Christian community to embrace that critical cause. (Though, as I saw at Catalyst, that trend is gradually changing.) I have immense respect for anyone who is willing to "call a spade a spade" and own up to one's own shortcomings, regardless of the consequences of such acknowledgements.
Secondly, Kem makes a quick fly-by analogy to the Church. And I think she is right. Sometimes we have become so attached to our identifiable, comfortable version of Church that we don't recognize the evolution that has been taking place around us. And thus, we run the risk of fading into increasing irrelevance without even realizing it. Are we willing to engage in what Brad Powell terms, "sacred cow-tipping" at times in order to effectively carry out the mission to which we have been called? This is a hard question, but a necessary one if we are really willing to do whatever it takes to reach our communities with the message of true hope that only comes through Jesus Christ.
If Wal-Mart can change, and if a leading environmentalist can break the bonds of the status quo and work hand-in-hand with "the enemy" in order to carry out the mission, anything's possible. 
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