The conception of A Rocha Singapore

Phillip found it hard to comprehend how sustainability figured in the Christian life. ‘Usually there’s an overarching imperative guiding your actions and resources. Often this would have been directed through an evangelical lens, with sharing the Good News, looking to share God’s love with people who were yet to know how much God loved them. It was something I had come to understand as a key focus of our Christian walk – but something which I felt I was pretty bad at.’ But then he was confronted with something different – an environmental crisis that made the question harder to set aside. 

‘There’s a world of trouble – and it’s God’s world,’ he says. ‘Using tools of modern science, there’s plenty of data pointing to that trouble. Climate change, biodiversity loss, challenges to food production, air quality, deforestation, ocean health, over-fishing and more. If you’re not convinced in one area, there’s another where the evidence is hard to deny.’ 

Through a mutual friend, Philip met Peter Harris in Singapore. ‘The initial conversation with Peter was about how our modern evangelical Christian narrative had focused on the good news of God’s love for us through Jesus Christ and loving our neighbour as ourselves. This is all correct, of course,’ Phillip says. 

‘Maybe you need to think about it in terms of the responsibility we are given to steward the gift from God. But we have virtually no understanding of our relationship with the rest of God’s created world – the creation, of which we are a part. Peter reframed it as a theological issue: maybe we need to think about it in terms of the special responsibility we are given to “work and keep” creation, to steward the gift from God.’ 

As Phillip began reading more – from A Rocha’s materials and wider ecological theology – something started to cohere. 

‘It felt like the puzzle pieces were coming together. I began to see how anthropocentric our theology often is – focused almost entirely on human salvation. But Scripture consistently places us within creation – not apart from it. I realized how dualistic my thinking had been. I would enjoy nature, thank God for it, and then return to urban life without any sense of responsibility to care for it.’  

Over the following months, reading Scripture with this new awareness began to reshape familiar passages. ‘Romans 8, where creation groans. The Psalms, where nature is precious. Jesus’ parables – soil, seeds, sparrows, lilies. I realized how much I had missed by reading everything through a purely human-centredlens.  

Even well-known verses took on a different dimension. Genesis 9 ‘speaks about God’s covenant not just with Noah, but with every living creature – the birds, the livestock, the wild animals,’ he says. ‘It’s a commitment that includes the whole of creation, though the subheading frames it so narrowly that you read it as if it’s only with Noah.’ 

These insights began to shift not just Phillip’s understanding of environmental issues, but his understanding of the Gospel itself. ‘This has been deeply transformative. The Gospel feels bigger now. Creation doesn’t exist just for us. It exists for God’s pleasure. So the question becomes: What does it mean for us to care for what brings Him delight?’ 

With the help of Melissa Ong – one of the leaders of Friends of A Rocha in Singapore – Phillip ran three rounds of a six-week study on creation care. ‘People were really transformed,’ Phillip recalls. ‘They said, “Now that we know this, we want to do something. What do we do?”’ So they convened a working group of about 15 people. They prayed, they discerned and slowly the idea for Singapore to move to the next stage and join the A Rocha family as a nationally-registered member took shape.