Stories

Ngā Kōrero

Contact us to add your story to the collaborative Eco Church NZ puna mātauranga / pool of knowledge.

Ruapehu Parish Rehabilitates Wetland in Community Effort

During the Season of Creation, Ruapehu Anglican Parish hosted a successful community working bee, transforming a wetland area adjacent to St. Mary’s Hall on Seddon Street in Raetihi. The initiative, aimed at rehabilitating the local environment, brought together 20 volunteers, including students from Ohakune Primary School’s William Pike Challenge programme.

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Opoho Church: A hub of Christian hope and creation care

Nestled in the hills of Dunedin, Opoho Presbyterian Church has become a beautiful example of how a faith community can embody Christian hope through practical action and environmental stewardship. With a strong commitment to creation care, the church is carving out a unique identity as a hub for sustainability and creation care in its community.

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Chartwell Church’s Inaugural Eco Church Awards

Tied into Sunday’s Service of Creation service, was the introduction of Eco Awards presented by Tim and Anna Cox. The Eco Church awards are an acknowledgement of the actions by members of our parish towards environmental change and improvement.

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St Michael and All Angels Celebrate Season of Creation

Having joined in the Eco Church movement in 2023, St Mike’s are continuing to look for ways to support local whenua. As the recent Season of Creation kicked off, each member of the church whānau were invited to consider making a fresh pledge for creation: one act which they would personally commit to in response to the call to be kaitiaki of God’s world.

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Season of Creation, Worship Iris Lee Season of Creation, Worship Iris Lee

Altar panel art for Season of Creation

Rachel Doragh, Eco Church kaihāpai at Tawa Anglicans created a beautiful altar panel art for Season of Creation 2023 using the theme of the year: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! (Amos 5: 24)”

“…by putting these images in front of us as we worship it will help us keep in mind that we are joining our voices in worship with those of all creation, and also to ponder on the image of the river and what justice and righteousness might look like for us in our world right now."

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Celebrating the Season of Creation

Season of Creation is celebrated annually all around the world, in different denominations, and many parishes in the Anglican Diocese of Wellington joined in this year. Read about the different ways Season of Creation was celebrated this year around the diocese, including an intergenerational pet celebration service, beach clean-up, eco-theology sermon series, and waste workshop.

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Pāuatahanui Parish: A legacy of restoration and hope

At Pauatahanui Anglican parish, one of our four core values is legacy. For many years prior to the launch of Eco Church, a group called God’s Earth Our Home operated within the parish, fostering a deep spiritual sense of ecological responsibility within parishioners and nurturing environmental action. This provided a natural launching pad for the parish to join the Eco Church movement at the start of 2021.

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Blessing of the animals

At St. Peter's Anglican in Kaikōura we had our Blessing of the Animals service on Sunday. In addition to blessing the nine dogs and one cat present (and the domestic animals not present) we blessed, at a distance, the wild animals that call Kaikōura home, including the dotterels/tūturiwhatu, hutton's shearwaters/tītī, little blue penguins/kororā, and hector's dolphins.

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Making a difference - How one small church focused on sustainability during the Season of Creation

When it was decided that we were not holding a church fair this year, we saw an opportunity to do something different – a Sustainability Fair! We imagined the church hall full of stalls that offered advice and connections, rather than jams, books, and cakes. And we set out to make it happen.

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