Some Guy Named Matthew Sleeth and How I Still Don’t Get It

Written November 2008

I travel to Ichthus Music Festival every year. It is the longest running Christian Music Festival in the United States (39 years).  While I believe the big events with shiny bells and pretty whistles are on their way out the door, this was a special event. Besides worshiping with thousands of Christians to the tunes of D. Crowder, Casting Crowns, etc., I was able to connect a face and name with one of my favorite iTunes Podcast sermons. Yeah, yeah only nerds listen to podcast sermons and I enjoy nerdom with the other 40,000 or so that enjoy Mars Hill Bible’s Podcast (which is closely behind Name-it-and-Claim-it Olstein as one of the top Christian podcasts.)

Last year Mars Hill did a sermon series called God is Green, which seems to be the theme of many Christian groups trying to make a Kingdom sized difference these days. The recent realization that the carbon trails we leave behind look something like Sherman’s march has initiated a shift in even some conservative Evangelical thinking. “Screw the earth, I’ m busy  makin  converts” now sounds like “Maybe we should do something about this too.”

Here’s where Matthew Sleeth comes in. What does some no name have to do with saving the planet? Well I learned of his story from this nerdy Mars Hill Podcast. He shared his “conversion” experience from a fast car/huge house lifestyle to a $17 dollar a month electric bill and 4lbs of trash a week (family of 4) lifesaving style. His group recycled thousands of bottles at Ichthus last year and he shared about that as well. Sleeth’s book Serve God, Save the Planet chronicles his drastic lifestyle shift and how he has quietly moved to the forefront of the creation care movement.

This year Sleeth was back at Ichthus and he had reinforcements.  His group  was quite a bit more noticeable as they had sidekick recycling bins next to all of the trash cans. I was able to collect recycling with my youth group and help with collection each day of the festival. We came to the last night of the festival and I led my youth group out to pick up trash at the main stage area one more time and I had to make a decision. It went something like this:

Trash from 20.000 Ichthusers peppered the area directly in front of the main stage. We set out to clean the area at 1:30am as concerts were not over until 1am. Looking at the 500+ bottles scattered about like poorly hidden Easter eggs, a thoughtful student asked if we were going to sort out all the bottles and recycle whatever we could. Without thinking much, I said, “no” and we filled our bags and deposited them in the dumpster. In hindsight I realize that my late night “no” sounds a lot like “screw the earth, we’ve got a job to do.”