Eco Church Group

A Rocha is a charity supporting churches of all Christian denominations in sustaining and conserving God’s creation through good practices that wean us away from over-consumption of the earth’s resources, minimise climate change and preserve nature’s diversity. A Rocha has designed a scheme called Eco Church, a toolkit for churches to progress step-by-step in their commitment to these goals.

Find out more about the scheme here: Eco Church - An A Rocha UK Project

At St Mary’s we joined the scheme in 2022, and in 2023 reached our first milestone in gaining the Eco Church Bronze award (certificate displayed in church).  We are now working towards a Silver award, along with our Benefice colleagues in Brimscombe and Rodborough.

The scheme operates through providing a survey covering five key areas of church life:

• Worship and teaching

• Buildings and energy

• Land and nature

• Community and global engagement

• Lifestyle

Who’s ‘we’?  ‘We’ are an informal Eco-church group of committed church members, who meet monthly at a Saturday morning breakfast.

We assess ourselves against the questions and challenges in the survey, to determine what action to take, with the help of our PCC and wider church membership to making the improvements necessary.

We are currently working towards our Silver award and will then strive towards Gold - which will be a challenge, because it requires us to replace our reliance on gas-fired church heating with another environmentally-friendly system!

Examples of changes we have made, or are making, include:

• Better management of the churchyard for wildlife

• Installation of bicycle rack to encourage active travel to church

• Setting aside funds to replace our gas fired heating

• More re-cycling and re-use

For further information or if you would like to know more about the Eco-church group please contact:

Andrew Pemberton 07973 187923, andrew.pemberton@btinternet.com