Creating Wealth and the Created World is an upcoming Regent College conference on business and the environment, sponsored by A Rocha Canada. As businessman John Diack recounts, A Rocha was a catalyst for the transformation of his perspective on Creation.

I ACQUIRED a love of cars from my dad. I’ve owned 17 of them in my life – many of them high performance vehicles.

Once I was married with children, I enjoyed my SUV and travel trailer. Then we bought a ski boat – big engine, horrific gas mileage.

I travelled a great deal with several high tech companies. In one year, I logged more than 200,000 miles on planes. During my travels, I noticed severe air pollution in Athens, Denver, Los Angeles and Vancouver.  What I saw made no real impact on my actions.

Greenpeace

My wife and I gave money to Greenpeace for several years, especially while they tried to stop the French government from dumping nuclear waste in the Atlantic. When Greenpeace went radical, we pulled out.  

In 2001, I was fortunate to become a Christian. This started a series of significant changes. After years of commuting, I moved to a company in downtown Vancouver. Because it was convenient, I started using the Westcoast Express train each day.  

In January of 2006, after a tough two-year stint leading an edgy tech company, I told my wife I was taking a break. It was my fourth break over a 25-year career.  

Prayer of Jabez

This break was quite different.  I had been praying the ‘Prayer of Jabez’ for more than a year, and had told my various Bible study groups I felt something ‘coming on.’  I had a deep sense life was about to change, and I was pretty sure God’s hand was at work.  

I felt I needed the break to slow down enough to hear what God was saying.

Over the next 16 months, I spent every Tuesday in downtown Vancouver with people I had never met before.  I realized one of God’s ways of communicating with me was to put people in my path who had something to teach me, something for me to do, or something for me to teach them.  

Impossible odds

I met an individual who led me to Africa in November, 2006, with Canadian Food for the Hungry International.  After intense visits to Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo, I began sensing how God’s people can make an incredible difference in the face of impossible odds. I returned home with a sense of hope based on Jesus, not on man’s efforts.

I was then introduced to A Rocha’s executive director – and came face to face with an aspect of my faith walk I had never considered: my relationship with God’s creation.

In my five or so years as a Christian, my church never talked about creation in a way which included me directly. Creation discussions were centered on Adam and Eve and the fall of mankind. Never did they address God’s assignment of the earth (and all of its inhabitants) to the care of mankind.  

My Bible study groups never addressed our personal calling to be stewards of God’s creation, and so I was ill equipped for the impact A Rocha would have on me.

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Inconvenient Truth

At this time, the Al Gore movie An Inconvenient Truth was playing, and the media were pushing it hard. I noticed Gore and his army made me feel like there was nothing I could really do, but that it was my fault we were in this mess. I found myself feeling hopeless and frustrated with the mainstream environmental movement, so much so that I became hostile towards the whole global warming issue. I even got into nasty discussions with friends and family.

A Rocha, and its message about the stewardship of creation, came at me from a very different place.  I started to get a sense, like in Africa, that this is God’s creation – his planet, his people, his environment.  

I started to sense that if God wanted to fix the environment tomorrow, he could.  

God’s challenge

He often doesn’t work that way. He wants us to work with him. I truly believe he is challenging the Christian community to participate in a transformational process, in relation to  environmental problems.

As I’ve worked with A Rocha, I’ve acquired a deep sense of my role as a steward of creation. The same desire that calls me to serve God by sharing the gospel, and by living a certain way, has inspired me to change the way I live my life within his creation. This has become a hope-based process.  

Unlike the Gore model, where I’m a servant of mankind, this transformed state has me being a servant of God – working on his environment as an act of worship.

I now have God’s power on my side – not the weight of a failing environment on my shoulders.

As natural as anything is when God’s hand is at work, I sold my hot rod – and bought a Hybrid. Without having gone through a transformational path, I believe this would have been inconceivable. The ski boat is on the block as well.

Walk the talk

I started to take on my role of educating others around their calling to be stewards of creation – which requires one to walk the talk. Working with A Rocha and many others, I’m now involved in a push to bring the church into the creation care dialogue.

Right now, it appears the church is either missing, or is hostile to the topic. I’ve started a dialogue with my church and others, and am involved in fundraising to support the education of children – and business people.

I’m now the CEO of a high tech company focused on energy management; so I’m living and breathing energy conservation and  accountability every working day.

I can imagine the power of having the worldwide church rally behind the environment because God calls them to – not because they are shamed into it by the media or radical environmentalists.  

I have a strong sense of the incredible impact the church can have on God’s creation, and the many people who will see the love of God through this type of work. Lives will be changed this way; people will come to know Jesus.

I’m a long way from being done with this work.  However, the difference between the man of today and the man of two years ago is visible to many. Jokes and teasing come with such change; but I feel blessed to be on this journey.

Creating Wealth & the Created World, featuring Preston Manning, Cal DeWitt and Loren Wilkinson, runs November           2 – 3 at Regent College. Contact: 1-800-663-8664.

October 2007