Blue Heron Ministries exists as an opportunity to be stewards of our Lord’s creation within the context of community.
We are a non-profit Christian land conservation organization based in Angola, Indiana. We contract with private and public land owners and other non-profit conservation organizations to restore marshland, sedge meadow, prairie, oak savanna, and open oak woodland communities in northeast Indiana, south central Michigan, and northwest Ohio.
We are an official ministry of the Presbyterian Chapel of the Lakes, located in the heart of lake country. Environmental stewardship, education, and advocacy is a significant part of our Christian witness. Acting upon our faith that relationships may be restored and experience substantial healing in an imperfect world, we offer the following four initiatives as tools of reconciliation:
– Land Trust program keeps in perpetuity agricultural lands and uninhabited open space obtained from sellers or donors.
– Conservation Design program cooperates with civic and private developers on comprehensive land planning projects aimed at balancing land use for population centers, agricultural lands, and uninhabited open space.
– Education program dissimates the biblical principles and mandate for stewardship of Creation and the uniqueness of the local natural and cultural landscapes.
– Natural Lands Restoration program focuses on restoring this region’s open space to its unique native ecology. Native landscape and ecological restoration management tools are the hands on craft employed to tend creation. Tools at our disposal include:
Prescribed burning
Brush and custom field mowing
Local genotype seed harvesting
Wetland, prairie, and savanna seeding
Broadcast and spot-herbicide applications
Invasive species control
The mission of Blue Heron Ministries, Inc. is to build communities where creation is kept and to keep creation so that community may be restored.
Relationships: Relationships are the foundation for community. God made us to enjoy community with Him and His entire creation.
Community: Community is developed when relationships are reconciled. God desires us to live in right relationship with Him and His entire creation.
Creation: Creation, when restored, reflects the glory of its creator. Blue Heron Ministries desires to be messengers of God’s reconciliation process through keeping creation, thus sustaining relationships with vitality, energy and beauty.
Caring: Caring for creation draws us into a direct relationship with God. The vision of Blue Heron Ministries is that people will come to know God through the revelation
of His creation and through the love of Christ.
