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:

1. To proclaim the good news of the kingdom
2. To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
3. To respond to human need by loving service
4. To seek to transform unjust structures of society
5. 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, Alison Chippington and Edward Kearney but as the name suggests (Eco-Congregation) it must involve everyone. You can contact the taskforce on eco-cong@rugbybaptist.org.uk

Eco-Congregation Award

We received our award in late 2011 and it is valid until 2014. It was presented to us by our MP; Mark Pawsey in a special service on the 23rd of October. This is by no means the end however and we hope and pray this will spur us on to greater things, both so we can renew the award but more importantly take better care of God's gift of creation.

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.

This year on the 12th of October (save the date) we will be having a high profile speaker event: Ruth Valerio describes herself as “Community activist, Christian, academic, eco-warrior, mum, author, veg grower, wife and pig keeper rolled into one” and is a well-known speaker at Spring Harvest and many other events. She will be speaking on the theme of “Living lightly in God’s world”. A meal will also be provided.

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’. There was also a seminar given by the Revd Dr Michael Bochenski. See the text of the seminar (pdf). Here are also some photos of the day.

Transport day

We had a similar event in 2012 on the 6th of October, this time focused on eco-friendly transport. There was information on cycling, car sharing, public transport and some spiritual content as well as a photo competition. To encourage people to cycle to church where possible, there was also a cycle surgery and cycle training taster sessions. Once again the event was very successful and the cycle training taster sessions in particular were very well received. Here are some photos of the day along with the winner of our eco-friendly transport photo competition (Bikes at Liseleje).