Eco-Congregation
The idea of Eco-Congregation is simply to look after God's creation. The first activity in the material provided looked at the five marks of mission for Christianity:
- To proclaim the good news of the kingdom
- To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
- To respond to human need by loving service
- To seek to transform unjust structures of society
- To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation; to sustain and renew the life of the earth.
Unsurprisingly we found we could have spent a whole evening writing down our activities for the first 4 where as we had next to nothing for number 5 so our main goal is to change that.
Our taskforce consists of Martin and Emma Tiller, Russell Ogle, Terry Mann, Alison Chippington and Edward Kearney but as the name suggests (Eco-Congregation) it must involve everyone.
Modules
Eco-Congregation is broken up into 12 modules. Module 1 is called Church Check-up, designed to help identify any weaknesses and choose your other modules. The other modules are broken into three sections: something spiritual (2-6), something practical (7-9) and something community based (10-12) and we have chosen one module from each.
Spiritual
Our spiritual module is module 2, Celebrating Creation – this is about trying to bring creation into our services, the main way we are doing this is with a series of all age talks co-ordinated by Alison Chippington. So far we have had two of these and there are still five more to look forward to.
Practical
Our practical module is module 7, Greening the Cornerstone – this is all about making the church premises more efficient. Let’s face it we can’t call ourselves an eco-congregation without having a look at the boiler. This module is being co-ordinated by Terry Mann.
Community based
Finally, our community based module is module 10, Personal Lifestyle. This means looking at how green we are individually which will hopefully make a big difference collectively. Our eco-day on the 20th of November 2010 was a great success. We had over 100 people through the door and not just from our church! Among other things we showed the results and analysis of the questionnaire we previously asked in church along with your ‘green tips’. Here are also some photos of the day.
