St. James Eco Church – Your Church Caring for Gods Earth

On 1st September 2022 St. James Church and St. James on the Grange launched its Eco Church initiative under the umbrella of A Rocha UK a Christian environmental charity that equips churches to actively demonstrate that they care for God’s earth. The scheme covers five key areas of our church life: Worship and Teaching, Management of Church buildings, Management of Church land, Community/global engagement and Lifestyle.

We encourage everyone to join in with any of the initiatives/events and to contact the team with ideas of their own. You can email ecochurch@jam.es.

Team

Josh Maynard
Andy Walmsley
Sue Walmsley
Sharon Fishpool
Julia Graham
Alan Mullett
Dan Cobould
Keith Binks (representing The Grange)

Bronze Award

In December 2022 we received confirmation of our bronze award and we are now working towards achieving the silver award.

These are some of the initiatives we have tackled:

On completion of the survey we were able to see what areas we are good at, what needs to be improved or taken on board. We have prioritised these areas and at each of our meetings we focus on issues from each of the five areas. We were grateful for the help of many members of the church community in enabling us to complete the survey.
Sharon and Mark Fishpool with a team of helpers look after our churchyard. Sharon completed the Living Churchyard Scheme survey. As a result of that and our Eco agenda we set up an Eco Churchyard gardening day and put up birdboxes and insect habitats and did a lot of general tidying up. Our young people made bird food balls which they helped to put up. The next date is on March 25th to continue this work, to construct a leaf cage and put up a bat box.
At Christmas we encouraged our congregations to join our Eco Christmas card scheme. Putting up one Christmas card to greet our friends on the Christmas boards and with money saved putting Christmas food items into the Food Hub boxes. Next year with earlier notice we can make more people aware that it is a worthwhile project again.
Rebekah put together our own St. James Creation Care Ideas booklet with ideas and photographs from church members. This provided tips for our own homes, gardens, shopping, eco incentives and St. James. We will produce another one and get people to complete an Eco survey.
We found out that some members of our congregation use bicycles to come to church and others would consider it if we installed cycle racks to stand bikes securely. We have collected a number of options and are seeking a faculty to install one.
We are already using ethically sourced coffee and are encouraging the use of other ethically sourced goods throughout the church.
We are encouraging people to use their own eco coffee cups to lesson washing up at Church events.

Silver Award

The silver award was received in October 2024.