Sermon notes from October 13, 2013, on Christianity AND Evolution:

A Pastoral Approach to Christianity AND Evolution
Mark 4:26-29; John 1:1-4; Colossians 1:15-17

Prologue
It is not by splitting off science and Scripture that we grow, by by bringing them together, by recognizing their essential unity. What God has joined together, let no one separate.
The Bible indicates (Psalm 19, Romans 1:20) that God is made known in the creation. Unless you think this witness to God in nature is deceptive, then the Bible, rightly understood, cannot be inconsistent with the true findings of science.
The same God is at work in science as in the Bible. Therefore there can be no ultimate contradiction between the reality of God (as distinct from our ideas of God) and the reality of the universe. All truth is God's truth.

You should be really interested in this subject!
Not just because Evolution is reshaping Christianity as ancient Greek thought categories give way to modern ones;
Not just because the credibility of the church is at stake, as it was in the case of Galileo;
Not just because we are called to love God with all our minds;
But because you will find yourself in a new way, and find God in a new way that makes sense.

Jesus was both a pastor and a careful observer of nature. He kept using the natural world to illustrate and explain the kingdom of God, God's will being done on earth. He urged his students to pay attention to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, to the tiny mustard seed, and to crops growing in a field, as in our first text.
He pointed out the mysterious power in the soil that "produces crops all by itself."
He pointed to the growth that shows that God is at work.
He observed the stages by which growth occurs.

Christ is involved in nature in a much larger way .
Christ, named the Logos, was the source of all of nature, all the cosmos. John 1:1-4. Logos was a powerful word that had been used for centuries by both Greek philosophers and Hebrew thinkers to describe the order and reason and harmony apparent in the universe. It referred to the mind of God, to what gave meaning and purpose to the cosmos. Heraclitus was the first to speak of the Logos in this way, in Ephesus, the city of John's gospel, six centuries earlier.
In Paul's circle, it was understood that Christ was the force that holds everything together.  So there is not a chasm between the natural world and the spiritual, but a deep unity and oneness. Colossians 1:15-17.
So the revelation of God in Christ is not limited to Jesus. It extends to every subatomic particle and vibrating energy string, and from there to every molecule and every force and object, living or not, great or small.

Evolution teaches us valuable spiritual principles for our lives that are the teaching of Christ in the creation.
We live in the midst of unceasing change. Jesus called on all to change their hearts and lives because the world was in a different place that it had been.
We need to adapt creatively and constructively. The New Testament writers demonstrate this as they adapt Jesus' teaching to new times and places.
Interacting with others, including people who are different from us, brings forth higher forms of organization, life, and awareness.  New problems and creative solutions will emerge. There is a deep impulse in the universe to move to a higher level.
Personal and kingdom of God growth occurs in stages. Mark 4:26-29.