Congratulations to St Saviour’s Church which has received a rare Gold Eco Church Award! The church is only the third to reach this milestone in the Diocese of Winchester and is the 63rd in the country.
The church was visited by representatives from A Rocha UK which runs the Eco Church scheme and also had to provide detailed evidence of their work to care for God’s earth.
Eco champion Milla Pearse said, “We are really delighted. It’s been a really fun journey and we’ve learnt so much along the way. I think we’ve just taken cumulative little steps and each one can seem like a small thing, but when you look at them all together, we have made an impact. Doing Eco Church has reached into every area of our church life, in small ways, but I think cumulatively significant ways.”
St Saviour’s set up an Eco Church team in 2018 and it consists of 6 people. They have also worked in partnership with the local Catholic Church and its Care for Creation team and were fundamental in the setting up of the community Greener Brockenhurst Group. A Rocha UK praised the church for its cross denominational collaboration and finding creative and innovative ways of engaging with the community.
These are some of the measures the church has taken to secure its Gold Eco Church Award:
Buildings and Energy
The church has halved its pre-Covid energy usage by changing light bulbs, thermostat adjustments and investing in a new software system to turn on the heating in the church and the hall only when needed. They have also altered routines such as serving coffee in the church after the service rather than heating the hall and holding a joint service with St Nicholas Church on the fifth Sunday of the month.
In the church office, they looked at regular orders for supplies and explored how they could replace these with more environmentally friendly options. Kitchen and cleaning purchases were swapped for eco alternatives and bought in bulk and refillable containers to save on plastic.
An energy audit of the church was carried out, with many of the suggestions put in place including extra insulation in the loft and installing door brushes under the doors.
Milla added, “I think a lot of churches are worried about the cost of doing work and actually we haven’t spent a great deal of money. In fact, we’ve certainly saved a lot of money in terms of the way we’ve reduced our usage of gas and electricity. We’ve used some of those savings on a few improvements, for example we’ve just had new insulation added to the old part of our church hall. That’s cost £2,000 but I’m sure we will get it back in savings.”
Worship and Teaching
The Eco-Church team organise special environmental themed services on a regular basis. Some of these have been held outdoors and have also included other local churches including the Catholic and Methodist church.
St Saviour’s also works with the local primary school to highlight the connection between faith and caring for God’s creation with assemblies and special events.
Eco Church is a standing point on the PCC agenda, so a report is submitted at every meeting and decisions made.
The church has led ‘Walks for Creation’ through the New Forest in partnership with the Catholic Church with stops for prayers, a reading and reflection, and invited members of the community to join in.
Jane Forrest is also on the Eco Church team and said, “I think we have made people much more aware of the need to do whatever we can to look after this planet and I think we can keep it going with the understanding and awareness we now have. If we don’t, we’re going to run into a lot of trouble. It won’t be our trouble; it’ll be our grandchildren’s trouble. I think with the foundations we’ve put in place; we will have made an impact.”
Land
Monthly Eco-Church working parties are held in the church grounds and a wildlife friendly land management plan has been created. Special areas have been set aside with a children’s nature trail, insect hotel, hedgehog house and bird boxes put up by the local Scout group. Areas of the church grounds are left unmown to encourage wildlife and pollinators.
Community
The church was praised for its “superb community engagement”. Alongside the Walks For Creation, it has jointly organised a March For Clean Water through Brockenhurst and hosted two Eco Fairs in the church grounds which attracted more than 300 people.
It’s organised and taken part in community litter picks. During Lent in 2021, the whole church congregation was encouraged to collect rubbish from the forest. The accumulated bottles and cans were then used to build a 12 foot high Easter Cross to raise awareness of the damage to God’s creation. It generated much local comment.
Lifestyle
The Eco Church team has inspired the congregation with a number of initiatives such as encouraging them not to use single plastic containers, trying to reduce car use, and exploring some of the connections between the bible and lifestyles, through small group studies.
A food sharing box is set up in the church porch for people to donate excess home grown products for others to use.
Eco tips are included in the weekly service sheet and regular articles with an environmental theme are written for the village parish magazine. There have been several educational events to which the wider community was invited such as how to cut energy usage in the home.
Milla added, “We were keen to challenge our congregation, but felt it needed to be done as sensitively and non-judgmentally as possible. We’re all in a different place on our Christian journey but we’re all moving towards the same goal of getting closer to God. The same is true on our environmental journey. I look back at myself in 2018, at the start of our eco journey and I thought I was an environmentalist. I feel that I’ve learned so much more and changed a lot. I’ve realised so much more deeply the importance of it, and that it is a fundamental part of our faith, but we need to recognise that everybody else is in a different place on that journey.”
St Saviour’s has been congratulated by the Rt Revd Graham Usher, Bishop of Norwich and Lead Bishop for the Environment. In a letter he said, “This is an incredible achievement. I can see that Eco Church and Carbon Zero is front and centre of your work and mission and creation care is embedded in all aspects of church life, which is fantastic. I hope the community feels empowered to continue this journey in their own lives outside of church. With plans for the future having vision and ambition, all firmly eco-orientated, please also be apostles for caring for God’s creation so that other church communities might be encouraged, challenged and walk this vital journey as well.”
Achieving gold hasn’t stopped the work at St Saviour’s with more plans in the pipeline. Bee hives are being erected in the grounds in the Spring as part of the Bee Mission which supports homeless people. The Eco Church team are also exploring the possibility of moving away from gas central heating.
Milla said, “We need to continually think up new ways of challenging ourselves about how we can live greener lifestyles. There is a danger that people get fed up with hearing the same old message and we need to think up fresh ways of inspiring our congregation and those around us to take that next little step. We will continue to work closely with Greener Brockenhurst and the Catholic Care for Creation Team to reach out into our community to raise awareness of environmental issues. As a church its’ important to do this and I think it inspires people to think about doing it at home as well. I think it is just about raising the awareness that this is an important issue. God cares about this issue. We care about this issue. The world needs to care about this issue. That’s what it comes down to.”
St Saviour’s will also now be working with St Nicholas, the other church within its parish which is a Bronze Eco Church. There are regular get-togethers with five other Eco churches in the area to share ideas and encourage each other.
Jane added, “I would say to other churches to just do it because it’s a great initiative and it increases awareness to everybody, including ourselves, teaches us, teaches everybody else and it gets back to our roots, that God created creation and it’s our responsibility, our job to care for that creation as well.”
The church shared the news of their Gold Eco Church award with the congregation at the Sunday service last weekend followed by a celebration.
Revd Simon Newham, Vicar of Brockenhurst Churches, said, “The journey to obtaining our Gold Eco Church award has been a thoroughly positive, creative, uniting and enlightening one – not always easy, but most definitely worth it, both for us and the whole of God’s creation! I’m so proud of our Eco Team, the whole congregation, and the wider community who have worked so hard and enthusiastically to gain this award, not for the sake of the award but for being better stewards of God’s wonderful gifts to us – a huge ‘well done and thank you’ to all of them!”
