COP30 convenes one week from today in Belém, Brazil. In preparation, Climate Intercessors has unveiled our "Four Strategic Prayers for COP30." The poster can be downloaded and shared from our website. If you want a further explanation of these four simple prayers, we invite you to watch the video explanation that Juliana Morillo of Colombia and I prepared. It includes Juliana’s poem/prayer "Camino a Belém" as well as her further description of the 148 murdered and missing environmental defenders from last year who will be featured at COP30.
The fourth prayer is labelled “Save our Souls” and features the Global Ethical Stocktake, an initiative led by Marina de Silva, Brazil’s Minister of the Environmental and Climate Change. De Silva, a Pentecostal Christian, comments: "I often say we already possess virtually all the technical solutions for climate change, biodiversity loss, and even pressing social issues. What is needed is the ethical commitment to apply our technical capabilities and accelerate our political decisions, ensuring we fulfill what we've already committed to.”
It's hard to do the right thing, particularly if you have spent 30 years not doing the right thing, or at least not adequately doing enough of the right thing to avert the consequences which make it even harder to do the right thing. We’ve affixed the prayer “Save Our Souls” to the Global Ethical Stocktake at COP30 because of what Jesus says in Matthew 16:26: “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” I can imagine faith-based Civil Society confronting the Heads of State who show up at COP30 (and those who won’t be there) and saying: “What good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” I can imagine faith-based Civil Society confronting the fossil fuel lobbyists (who are joined this year in the rainforest by mining and agri-business lobbyists) and saying: “What can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
But Matthew 16:26 has a surprising context. We might be tempted to quote “What does it profiteth a man if. . .” as a stand-alone platitude, rhetorical question, or a pearl of wisdom. But in Matthew 16, Jesus is not addressing Herod, the Romans, Pharisees, or greedy tax collectors. He’s talking to his disciples, having just rebuked one of them, Peter, for having tried talking him out of going to Jerusalem and to his inevitable suffering.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done (Matt. 16:24-27).
In other words, the prayer “Save our Souls” is for more than just politicians or industry executives or Christian nationalists or climate fascists. We pray for ourselves as well because it is always hard to take up our crosses and follow Jesus. And there is a sense that it is harder to be a climate activist in 2025 at COP30 than it was in 2015 at Paris’s COP21 or in 2021 at Glasgow’s COP26. There is a temptation to sell out. Instead, we pray for perseverance: Hosanna, Lord Jesus, help us all to do the right thing.
We invite you to join us on Tuesday, November 11, for our regularly scheduled Climate Intercessors prayer meetings. COP30 will into its second day and at least two of our leaders will be “broadcasting live” from Belém for at least two of our meetings.
You are very dear to God,
Lowell Bliss
On behalf of the Climate Intercessors Leadership Team
