Eco Church is A Rocha UK’s award scheme for churches in England and Wales who want to demonstrate that the gospel is good news for God’s earth
The Award is designed so that churches can express their care for God’s world in their worship and teaching; in how they look after their buildings and land; in how they engage with the local community and in global campaigns, and in the personal lifestyles of their congregation.
The actions a Church takes count towards a prestigious Eco Church Award at Bronze, Silver or Gold level.
So far at St John’s we have achieved the Silver Award by demonstrating our commitment in the different categories of Worship and Teaching; Buildings; Land; Community and Global Engagement; Lifestyle. Some examples that show this are the following: we have Special Sundays relating to caring for God’s earth eg Rogation Sunday in May and Environment Sunday in September, we pray for environmental issues, we are reducing our paper usage, our church maintains an area of land for native wildflowers, we have built a Bug Hotel to encourage native wildlife on our church land, some of our church members have participated in a local litter-pick, we try to buy Fairtrade products for church use, we encourage our members to limit their waste by adhering to the principles of reduce, re-use, recycle and many more.
The vision of A Rocha is for churches of all denominations to care for creation as an integral part of loving their neighbours and following God faithfully.
Currently, the Eco Church Award Scheme is led by Julie and Zoe, but we would welcome ideas from the congregation as to how we can keep promoting our care for God’s Earth within St John’s. Please come and speak to us to find out more and look out for our Eco Church Silver Award at the back of Church.
We also run a St John’s Green Club for our youth members. This runs on the 1st Sunday of each month. Please speak to Zoe for more information.
We are already well on our way to achieving the next Award and look forward to joining with you to do this. We have also joined with other Caterham Churches to support each other and enable more Churches locally to achieve this Award.
Zoe Roberts