Eco Church

Hannah and James Razzell from the St Mary's Eco Group placing a nesting box in one of the trees in the churchyard. Photo by Alan Hawkes 

Click on the links highlighted in the right hand menu bar for our other Eco Church pages.

What is Eco Church?

As part of our mission to share God’s love, we have formed an Eco-Team at St Mary’s to explore how we can better care for God’s creation. This is in line with the Fifth Mark of Mission according to the Anglican Communion, which is ‘to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.’

As such, we are on a journey towards reducing our carbon footprint as a church and as a congregation.
In June 2019, the PCC registered for us to undertake the Eco Church award. Eco Church is an award scheme run by the Christian environmental charity A Rocha. It recognises churches that are caring for the world through giving awards at Bronze, Silver or Gold level. The award takes five key areas of church life into account:

•    Worship and teaching
•    Management of church buildings
•    Management of church land
•    Community and global engagement
•    Changing the Lifestyles of our congregation and parishioners
 

Our hope is to reduce our carbon footprint as a church and as individuals in order to show that our environmental concern is rooted in our Christian faith, our approach to spirituality and our concern for social justice.

We would love to receive ideas and help from those within the congregation and community who have a passion for or knowledge about particular areas.  We would love to grow the team and to have Eco champions in all aspects of church life, from the office to the catering team and from the choir to the Sunday school. Please contact Eco Team leader Edward Gildea to share your ideas or to receive more information: edward@edwardgildea.co.uk

You can explore the A Rocha website and all their resources at  https://ecochurch.arocha.org.uk

You can also see the survey questions we have to answer here.