Eco Church

At St. Peter and St. Paul’s, we are busily working towards achieving our BRONZE Arocha Eco Church Award. We are committed to taking practical action in caring for God’s creation. The award framework consists of 5 main sections (worship and teaching, buildings, land, community engagement and lifestyle) and we are working our way though each section to see where we can make improvements in the way that we ‘do’ church.

The whole church is involved and invested in this enterprise. We have made some changes to the way in which we look after our church, and we are careful to make caring for the environment our priority. We ensure that we talk about being committed to caring for God’s creation during our services and we have particular times when we especially lean into this, for example, during creationtide and harvest.

Our young people have also been involved in helping us work towards our award, thinking about ways that we, as church, can be more eco-friendly when we meet, and how we can teach others how to care for God’s creation well.

One of the things our young people think it is important to consider, is how our outdoor spaces might be a safe haven for wildlife and bugs. We have spent some time thinking about, and planning, a bug hotel for our church yard. We have asked the local community for donations and at Sunday Club recently, we pulled our ideas together and created the hotel. We have noticed there are already some bugs and creepy crawlies making this their home.

During Creationtide (the period between September and October), we have been reflecting on what being an Eco Church means to us and how we might achieve this. Our prayers and weekly sermons have reflected this. At harvest time, we thought about the value of God’s earth, with particular emphasis on our locality. We thought about the local farmers and businesses that help bring food to our tables, and we prayed for them. We also gathered donated food for the local foodbank in St Ives.

Our youth group, Fen Youth, have been focusing on Ecology and God’s creation during their gatherings. They have been thinking about buildings and what it means to build God’s kingdom here, on earth.  They have been finding fun ways to explore structure, using play doh and junk modelling to help them think about how we look after our buildings, and what attributes of a building are similar to our faith (firm foundations, something that offers protection, something that lets the light in etc…)