In 2012, the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA) adopted a position statement on climate change, affirming that it is the near-scientific consensus that human activity has been a primary driver of global warming and that the Church has a religious, moral, and ethical responsibility to respond. With this statement, the CRCNA became the first evangelical denomination in the US to both affirm the urgency of climate change and to call its churches and members to action.

One such action occurred a year later, when in the spring of 2013, a small group from the CRC traveled to Kenya, East Africa. Their objective was to hear the stories from Christian brothers and sisters in that part of the world of how changing weather patterns are affecting their livelihoods.  “The goal was to learn. To hear about how Kenyans are talking about the weather and about climate change, and to try to bring those stories back to North America,” says Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, a staff member at the CRC Office of Social Justice and a co-leader of the learning tour. “As we listened, a common thread began to emerge: a changing climate isn’t a debate in Kenya as it is in North America; it is a daily reality. It is a daily reality for the farmers we talked to who can no longer predict the rains and do not know when to plant their crops. It is a daily reality for villagers whose centuries-long river-fed water supplies are dwindling ever lower by the day. It is a daily reality for a population that has done very little to contribute to the problem, and yet is already facing its worst consequences.”

Upon the group’s return, participants set out to share the stories that they had heard with the rest of the CRC and beyond. Out of this determination, the Climate Conversation: Kenya video series was born. A series of 4 short videos, together with a companion discussion guide, it combines on-the-ground footage and interviews from Kenya with study materials to help groups and individuals not only hear the stories of Kenyan Christians, but to begin to think about how they can respond. “The Climate Conversation: Kenya resource offers a chance to move past the white noise of politics and ideology and to get up close and personal with flesh-and-blood people. People who are most deeply and personally affected by a changing climate,” says Meyaard-Schaap. “ It’s a chance to meet people, not statistics; to hear stories, not arguments. It’s an invitation to a conversation.”

The video resource and downloadable discussion guide can be found at climate-conversation.org.