Eco Church

In November the UK hosts the UN climate change summit when countries will gather in Glasgow to make plans for tackling the climate emergency. What is this emergency? This is the threat to our world from the increase in average temperatures which is causing rising sea levels and more extreme weather patterns. Climate change affects people in the poorest countries the most, because changing weather patterns have a severe impact on farming communities in places where crop yields are fragile, along with people’s dependence on them. As Christians we recognise that creation care is an issue of justice and what we do in our daily lives impacts the climate and therefore our neighbours around the world.  

As a church we have signed up to Eco Church which is a scheme run by a Christian environmental charity called Arocha UK. The scheme is supported by the Church of England as well as other Christian groups and has recently allocated its 1,000th award to Hereford cathedral. Eco church encourages churches to put care of God’s creation at the heart of the church’s management of its buildings, management of its land, worship and teaching, global engagement and lifestyle. The scheme gives out bronze, silver and gold awards based on a questionnaire which assesses how well the church community is doing in caring for God’s creation in the five areas mentioned earlier. Our results on the questionnaire completed in 2019 showed that although we had reached bronze level in some areas we needed to do more. This has prompted us to respond to the challenges raised by making some changes and we plan to re-assess ourselves to see how we are doing next month. However, the Eco Church award is just an incentive for us, providing some guidance about what we could do as a church to make an impact in our world, as we all prayerfully respond to the challenge to take caring for God’s creation more seriously in our lives.