Cover image from a Servants of Christ workday, in which kids helped to construct their church’s composting area. Unless indicated otherwise, all photos in this blog belong to Servants of Christ Anglican and are used with their permission.
by Noah Guthrie
Our Churches of Restoration program helps participating churches integrate care for God’s creation into their congregational lives.During our pilot year, we worked with over 20 churches from a diverse range of denominations, regions, and cultural backgrounds. Each church brings its own unique story and circumstances, and each pursues carefully chosen actions, large or small, to take a step forward to care for God’s creatures and landscapes.
This is the story of one participating congregation in Gainesville, Florida, Servants of Christ Anglican. Many thanks to Gretchen Stokes, Danielle Elswick, and Kim Harris for their efforts to improve their church’s composting system, establish a pollinator garden, and guide their congregation’s children into deeper love for creation. We also thank Kim Harris for taking the time to talk with us about the Wild Wonder Vacation Bible School curriculum.
Click here to learn how your congregation can join our Churches of Restoration program! You can also access our Wild Wonder VBS curriculum here.
Learn about becoming a Church Partner here.
An owl pellet.
There was vomit on the table, but it was all part of the teacher’s plan. Specifically, it was an owl pellet – a small, regurgitated lozenge filled with indigestible bits of mice, insects, or smaller birds. Filled with bones, it was like a bite-sized coffin, but the kids around the table, picking at the remains with sterilized tools, didn’t treat them with any funereal sobriety: only awe.
One of the teachers there was named Kim Harris. A while after this event took place, she described to me how these students rebuilt the skeletons of the little creatures the owls had eaten. The kids knew perfectly well they were dissecting bird vomit, but they were enraptured. “They were like, ‘This is the coolest thing ever!’” Kim exclaimed.
This scene would make most people think of a biology class. What if I told you that this was a kids’ Sunday school?
Wild Wonder session at Servants of Christ Anglican.
Based in Gainesville, Florida, Servants of Christ Anglican was a member of A Rocha USA’s 2024/25 Churches of Restoration program. They piloted a Sunday school version of our Wild Wonder Vacation Bible School curriculum for fourteen weeks between June and August 2025. The owl pellet dissection was only one of many hands-on activities they used to help kids connect more deeply with God’s wonder-ful creation.
Giving Children a Voice
When I interviewed Kim Harris, the Director of Children’s Ministries at Servants of Christ, she explained how much their church values youth participation in congregational life. If you were to visit one of their services, you’d notice children serving as acolytes, or teens running the soundboard or livestream.
The church also invites their kids to support their litter cleanup events, gathering trash from the streams and springs around Alachua County. “So, when we thought about Wild Wonder and creation care,” Kim said, “it was just this perfect fit.”
The goal of Wild Wonder is to invite children to delight in God as creator, redeemer, and sustainer of all things by immersing them in the wonders of the created world. Churches across the U.S. have already made use of our curriculum, cultivating awe for creation and Creator among their youths.
Dr. Elena Rhodes, an entomologist from the University of Florida, displays a host of insects.
At Servants of Christ, a typical Sunday morning of Wild Wonder would go something like this. First, they’d pray, reading a Bible verse related to God’s creation. Then, they’d jump into the day’s lesson, which – over the course of fourteen weeks – could cover anything from soil to water, trees, insects, birds, or mammals, including humans.
To help the kids connect with the lesson, a hands-on activity would follow. One of the most popular ones, of course, was the owl pellet dissection. Another favorite involved extracting DNA from a strawberry. After a closing prayer, the kids would rejoin the congregation for Communion.
Kim was delighted by how often the kids helped with the teaching. “I always had an expert in the room,” she said. If they were discussing bears, for instance, one of the kids would surely know about bears. Another child would be an alligator aficionado, and another would have experience collecting strawberry DNA, since they’d done that experiment at school.
Kim was delighted by how often the kids helped with the teaching. “I always had an expert in the room,” she said.
Teaching Kids to Teach
Wild Wonder doesn’t just teach kids about creation: it equips them to teach their parents. Kim told me that if the children “want to do something” to support creation care, “they tell their parents.” And if they get their parents on board, they’re well on their way to forming new family habits, ones that nurture God’s species and landscapes.
Florida is home to over 1,000 freshwater springs, whose warmer waters attract lots of threatened West Indian Manatees during the cooler seasons.
With this in mind, it’s encouraging that there are so many opportunities for kids – and their parents – to care for creation at Servants of Christ. One of these opportunities is to volunteer at their church’s litter cleanups. Other opportunities may come from the projects their creation care team has led as part of the Churches of Restoration program: a composting initiative, and a church pollinator garden.
So, if some of the kids want to encourage their families to compost at home, they can draw inspiration from the composting system at their church’s coffee bar (where they collect grounds and compostable plates), while also receiving the creation care team’s insights on the “do”s and “don’t”s of home composting. If some of the kids want to support pollinators, then they and their parents can hopefully – before long – help to dig holes, establish native plants, or carry out other such tasks at their congregation’s pollinator garden. The church has been trying to get permission from the condo association that they are a part of to break ground on that project.
Indeed, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, and to children the Kingdom belongs (Matt. 13:31-32, 19:14). It’s only fitting that kids should be some of the most passionate gardeners.
Servants of Christ volunteers at a stream cleanup event.
A Global Creation Care Family
When I asked Kim about her experience of the Churches of Restoration program, she shared that it was helpful to have the A Rocha USA team “checking in” on them, offering deadlines and responding to questions. “If I needed anything,” she explained, “they were quick to get that for me.”
Specifically, it was helpful for her to have access to our Wild Wonder curriculum, so that she could adapt its pre-made lessons for her church’s kids. It was also heartening for her team to connect with a broader creation care community.
Through their connection with the worldwide family of A Rocha, Kim felt that she became part of a “global network…”
“A lot of times,” she reflected, “creation care is [like] you’re on your own… Like, ‘Why are you doing that? Why is that important?’” Through their connection with the worldwide family of A Rocha, Kim felt that she became part of a “global network,” in addition to the more local network of four Churches of Restoration in Florida. “Being validated is huge,” she said.
(L-R) Myra, Gretchen Stokes, Kim Harris, Tracy, and Grace, creation caretakers from Servants of Christ.
Sometimes, all we need to move forward in creation care is a bit of encouragement – whether you’re a church, a children’s minister, or a young child, picking at an owl pellet and marveling that God brought such a thing into being.
“It’s not just us,” Kim assured me. “Other people care about this, and there’s a reason it’s important. God gave us a voice: let’s use it.”
Hear more from Kim and our program’s other creation caretakers by watching our Churches of Restoration video! To learn more about Wild Wonder, click here.
Noah Guthrie serves as our Nashville Conservation Coordinator, supporting our communications team and Churches of Restoration program from his home city. In his free time, he enjoys doing yoga, reading fantasy novels, and watching wholesome British TV with his family.
Since Noah’s role is largely sustained by individual donors, feel free to access his fundraising page at this link: https://arocha.us/donations/guthrie.
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