ECO CHURCH
AS A CHURCH WE WANT TO DEMONSTRATE THAT THE GOSPEL IS GOOD NEWS FOR GOD'S EARTH.
COMMUNITY INITIATIVES
TURNHAM GREEN HERBAL KNOT GARDEN
Asmall church team continue to maintain the herbal knot garden, sited just south of Christ Church on Turnham Green and have seen plenty of bees and butterflies around the lavender this summer.
TURNHAM GREEN LITTER PICK
The Turnham Green litter picking group is out in action every fourth Sunday afternoon (excluding December) and gathers together between 12-24 people from both church and the local community, to pick up litter from Turnham Green and the surrounding streets. It is gratifying that people do actually notice and take the time to thank us for our efforts.
CHISWICK REPAIR CAFÉ
Two members of our church Eco Group are founder members of this new community group, starting up a Repair Café at Christ Church in 2022. Our aim is to address the challenge of being a throw-away society, and to encourage people to seek to repair items, rather than send them off to landfill unnecessarily. If you have repair skills for things such as small electrical/electronic items or carpentry skills, we would love you to join us as we launch this new project.
If you have any questions please email us on: chiswickrepaircafe@gmail.com
ECO LIVING TIPS
TIPS FOR COST OF LIVING CRISIS TO SAVE MONEY AND SAVE ENERGY
We are all facing challenging times with the costs rising in every aspect, however there are so many quick tips that can really help to not just save you money but reduce our energy use and water waste. am sure you are all doing many but just in case here are some that I have found particularly impactful.
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Don’t leave devices on standby. Switching off at the wall devices such as televisions, set-top boxes, microwaves, games consoles and computers when not using them can see you save an average of £147 on your annual electricity bills according to British Gas.
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Do not charge devices over night. It takes on average 90 mins to 2 hours to charge a phone and I do not know if like me you charge your phone overnight, this means that you will keep using electricity to charge the phone even when it is full. It is estimated that per phone this will cost you up to £80 per year in wasted energy use. So try to charge before you go to bed so you can unplug at night.
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Spend less time in the shower. Did you know that by reducing the amount of time you spend in the shower to just four minutes, you could save 30 litres of water a day and around £70 a year on your energy bills? For each minute you cut your shower time by for a four person household is £30 a year.
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Keep your Freezer full even if not with food. keeping your fridge and freezer full could save you hundreds of pounds over the course of a year. This is because a stocked fridge freezer is able to regulate its temperature more efficiently than an empty one. Instead of over-buying on food, fill any empty spaces with bowls, jugs of water and ice trays to prevent cold air from escaping.
RESOURCES
EQUIPPING THE LOCAL CHURCH WITH RESOURCES
ECO CHURCH - AROCHA UK
We are part of Rocha UK’s award scheme for churches in England and Wales who want to demonstrate that the gospel is good news for God’s earth.
Their free online survey and supporting resources are designed to equip your church to express we care for God’s world in our worship and teaching; in how we look after our buildings and land; in how we engage with our local community and in global campaigns, and in the personal lifestyles of our congregation.
Their vision is for churches of all denominations to care for creation as an integral part of loving their neighbours and following God faithfully.
AUDITING YOUR LIFESTYLE
Changing our personal lifestyles is essential if we’re to worship God with heart, soul, mind and strength – and love our neighbours as ourselves.
‘We all need to make a complete, radical and honest audit of our lifestyles, their impact on the poor and on the planet,’ said A Rocha UK co-founder Dave Bookless, ‘and to ask God to pinpoint where we should start making changes.’
It’s not always easy to know where to start, or how to get buy-in from other members of the family! A personal lifestyle audit helps you identify where you are doing well and where you could improve. There are many available measuring slightly different things.
ECO SUNDAY SCHOOL
THE STARFISH STORY
A young boy was walking along a beach one hot sunny day, and he realised it was covered in hundreds & hundred of beautiful starfish. On looking closely, he saw that they were dying as it was so hot, and they were drying out. As he was bending down to pick one up & rescue it, an elderly man came up to him and said, ‘you won’t make any difference, there are far too many of them’. The little boy threw the starfish he was holding back into the sea and said, ‘well it made a difference to that one’.
Our Sunday school team began a new imitative this term and have partnered with the Eco-Church group to devise environmentally themed sessions for the children. These sessions will become a regular feature and run once every term.
The focus of the first session was being mindful of our environment. The group made use of the sensory garden that has been developed by the nursery to see how many sounds, textures, and scents they could identify.
The group read Psalm 65 and discussed passages about the environment, how the Earth belongs to God and that we all have a duty to look after it.
The session concluded with the children considering different environmental conundrums, they were asked to decide whether this matters and place themselves somewhere along a line to indicate how much it matters to them. E.g., Chopping down trees and killing plants or Using too much plastic.