Waitakere Salvation Army Eco Church launch

By Eric Walden, Eco Church Kaihāpai, Waitakere Salvation Army.

We had our Eco Church launch on Sunday 22 September at the Salvation Army church building on View Road in Henderson. Members of the Eco Church team at WSA participated by taking various parts of the service.

We started with a call to worship considering the Māori concept of kaitiakitanga and how this is similar to many Biblical principles: The gift of the earth to humankind in the creation story, and human’s responsibility to care for it; Moses' rules for society including instruction related to care of the land and to sanitation; and the New Testament call to steward of our gifts and resources. We followed with a prayer for the Season of Creation in te reo Māori, and a time of sung worship.

Then the younger children gathered at the front of the church where they listened to the book Somebody Swallowed Stanley by Sarah Roberts. It’s a sad story about a plastic bag in the ocean being mistaken for a jellyfish by several sea creatures. It was surprising to see how easily the children understood the problem, and a good reminder for us all that we need to deal with garbage responsibly so it does not end up in the sea.

We talked about our first project looking at food waste and how to reduce and use the waste productively. This is an easy first step as we planned to bring containers for food waste to services where food is served so these can be taken home for composting or be put out for the Auckland Council curbside collection. We also want to encourage families to consider food waste in their purchasing and serving of food at home, and we have discussed this since in a later service.

We read the story of creation from Genesis and had a quiz with all the adults about NZ nature - identifying birds, bugs, sea creatures, trees and pests. Although this is not a normal Sunday service activity, most of the adults participated and seemed to enjoy the quiz, coming up with some good answers, but also learning some new things!

Mike Bryan (Director, The Salvation Army, Epsom Lodge) talked about why we as Christians should care for creation and why we’ve become part of Eco Church. He stressed that while we may focus on caring for the environment, this is not what we worship – we worship God the creator, not the creation. Care for God’s good creation is an act of worship.

Mike had packets of three varieties of vegetable seeds that he had harvested. He encouraged every family to take a packet and try to grow some vegetables at home. There were few if any packets left over as many people were keen to give this a go.

We ended with a benediction and then a church photo with our Eco Church certificate.

We were pleased with the congregation's participation, enjoyment and acceptance of the concepts presented. We have a variety of people from different backgrounds so of course there are differing views on the Eco Church concept, but several people have since mentioned to me that they are pleased that the church has taken this step and that the concepts of care of creation are important to them.