Eco-Congregation
eco-congregation: making environmental issues accessible for churches
Climate change
Loss of biodiversity
Increased risk of flooding
Rising sea levels
Species loss
Genetic modification…
- Does the Creator care about what is happening to the Creation?
- How can the churches get involved with issues of global importance?
- How do we start?
Eco-congregation is a project designed to help churches get to grips with some of the pressing issues of out times concerning the environment.
It is designed to fit in with church life, and to help point the church outwards, involving the local community in caring for creation.
There are 3 steps:
1. Carry out a check-up for the church: how well are we doing already on environmental issues in the way that we run our church? It also provides ideas for what the church could be doing (download it from the website www.ew.ecocongregation.org Module 1 from the Free resources section).
2. Resources are available from the website (www.ew.ecocongregation.org/resources) which are designed to fit in with church life. There are suggestions as to how to weave environmental issues into the preaching, the worship, children’s work, youth group work, Bible study groups, the building committee’s work, and so on.
3. Apply for the Award! This is given to churches who are taking creation care seriously in their worship and teaching, how they look after the church building and grounds, and in their outreach (sharing the caring with those outside the church).
What could your church do?
St Michael and All Angels, Ashton-on-Ribble, Preston
- Harvest service on ecological theme
- workshops for young people
- low energy church lighting
- church and hall used regularly making better use of energy used to heat the premises
- no longer use disposable items, but use crockery
- community recycling facilities in church grounds
- composting workshop
- involved uniformed organisations in care for church grounds
- ran community energy road show
Selly Oak Methodist Church
- changed the heating system to become more efficient
- replaced lightbulbs to low energy, thus saving tonnes of carbon dioxide, and money!
- ‘Green Machine’ recycling (17 different items can be recycled in a blanket box) from envelopes to stamps, via mobile phones and spectacles, backed up with leaflet with information about how to recycle other items
- have regular ‘green tips’ in the church magazine to encourage individuals to make lifestyle choices which care for, rather than destroy, the planet
- getting back to clothes recycling by holding nearly new sales
Ideas
- get your church involved with Operation Noah (www.operationnoah.org): get to grips with climate change, and inform people how to become more energy efficient
- convert to green energy (electricity from renewables)
- reduce the number of cars in the congregation by sharing them (www.carclubs.org.uk)
- set up a lunch club for those at home during the day, using local produce. This might provide employment, give a regular outlet for West Midlands farmers, reduce food miles, give people access to healthy food for those who might not be able to afford it otherwise, and might build community as people get to know each other!
- how about setting up a co-operative giving people access to local fresh vegetables and fruit, and wholefood, rather than people having to rely on supermarkets and food miles.
- invest in the planet, and change your lightbulbs to low energy ones – it will save you time and money, and you won’t have to replace those really awkward ones in the church for years and years!
- get others using your church building!
- could your church grounds be looked after in a way which encourages bio-diversity, and also provide a resource for local schools?
Why should we look after the planet?
Ideas to get you thinking:
We worship the Creator, who has given us the Creation. To abuse the Creation through our lifestyle has been described by some as blasphemy: Colossians 1 v16 "For in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible......... all things have been created through him and for him".
If all things were made FOR him, then, as Bishop James Jones points out, to assume that creation exists for us and so to put our own desires and lifestyle demands foremost is to blaspheme, to deny that Christ is, in fact, at the centre of creation.
We pray in the Lord’s Prayer for God’s will to be done on earth…. If God as Creator made a place bursting with biodiversity, with enough resources for everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed, then to live in a way which reduces biodiversity, which destroys habitats and where poor people suffer disproportionately from environmental crises, then we are not living out the answer to our own prayer.
Limits to lifestyle were built into the framework for living that God set out for the people of God (see Leviticus). The land, and people and animals were not to be exploited limitlessly, but there was to be a voluntary choice to limit the demands made upon the creation. They called it the Sabbath, and the Jubilee. There were limits to consumption even in the Garden of Eden!
Contact details
EAUK.org
