As often as we can get there, my family and I love to vacation in Sun Valley, Idaho. We are big skiers but have only been to Sun Valley in the summer time where I get to chase after trout on the Big Wood River while Beth takes plein aire painting classes. A couple of summers ago, Beth and I went by a local art festival and I ended up talking with a photographer and fellow fly-fishing enthusiast. I bought a couple of his pictures and that led him to ask what I did for a living. When I told him that I was the pastor of the Presbyterian Church in San Clemente, California, he gave a response that I heard more than once during my vacation.
“You know, I used to be a Presbyterian, now I just worship in the mountains.” 
Interestingly enough, he was truly positive about the fact that I was a pastor and a Christian. He even communicated a sense of kinship and camaraderie. From his perspective we were both fellow pilgrims of the spiritual life, both of us were friends of the soul. From his perspective, my spiritual journey led me to church, his to mountain streams. The journey and intention was the same, it was just the location that was different.
But from my point of view, while the enjoyable pursuits of our lives were so linked, there was a sad, great divide between us. Like two hikers who had come to a crossroad, we had been led down different paths that would eventually take us to two quite different destinations.
Oddly, we would both use the same word to describe what our lives were about: worship.
I understand why my fly-fishing photographer friend describes being in nature as a kind of worship. There is little like being in nature that reminds us of just how small we are. Climbers who take on the challenge of Everest often gather at a local shrine to humbly seek favor from the spirit of the mountain. The writings of John Muir are filled with exultations of praise and exhortations to humility and gratitude because of the inspiration of the Sierra Nevadas (one of my very favorite places). Muir, who was raised in a strict Presbyterian home naturally turned to the biblical phrases of his childhood when he tried to express his delight in the wonders of the natural world. But as an adult it’s clear that he had left orthodox Christianity behind.
Now, while most readers of this blog would quickly be able to identify the deficiencies of this deliberate “non-discipleship” of Jesus, what we can’t often articulate is why in our desire to follow Jesus, we seem to be so cut off from the very Creation that Jesus both made and saved—and so inspires us to feel like we are indeed worshipping!
While it is certain (as others have pointed out in the comments) that the creation makes less demands on us than the Creator (something I will return to), it is also certain that we who seek to serve the Creator often do so disconnected from the very creation of which we are part and have been charged with cultivating and keeping.
In his book, Remember Creation: God’s World of Wonder and Delight, Scott Hoezee tells of a study from 1994 that demonstrated that “Christian congregations that show the greatest seriousness for the Bible and are the most committed to biblical inerrancy are the very same congregations that tend to be least concerned about ecology and are the least interested in the environment or in those programs and groups that promote its preservation” (p. 9). Indeed, Hoezee points out that the more “liberal” a congregation is, with a lower view of the authority of Scripture the more likely it is to have much greater concern with preserving creation. And even more, most leaders of most environmental movements today have little or no connection to biblically rooted Christianity.
While most of us biblically-rooted Christians can quickly see the problems with a spirituality that has left behind the Cross and the Creator to settle in creation, we can’t always describe why we who sing of the “beauty of the earth”, don’t care more about the earth that inspires such praise.
While my fly-fishing photographer friend was certainly on the wrong path by leaving the church and heading for the hills, why are we in the church so unconcerned with--so disconnected from--the hills? 
Over the next few days I will try to look at this great divide between we who worship the Creator and those who worship in Creation by looking at issues from both sides of the divide.
But for now consider this: How can we who follow Christ, lead our more outdoorsy friends, back into the shelter of a Christian community and biblical faith? Won’t at least part of it be learning to enjoy creation in the name of the Creator?
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