Eco Church featured in an article on stuff.co.nz - Green churches tackling regeneration and carbon (20 April 2023)

The local green space at Oxford Street, Masterton was starting to look like a party. Live music, balloons, lawn games and the smell of sizzling sausages could all be observed last Sunday as we celebrated Neighbours Day Aotearoa.

Members of St Michael’s Eco church group in Kelburn, Wellington have been supporting the Pukehinau Reserve biodiversity restoration project and were excited to be part of the opening of the new Pukehinau walking track between Kelburn and Aro Valley in November 2022.

Since mid-2017, Flagstaff Community Church in Dunedin has been working to restore School Creek (that runs alongside the church). This includes a creating a public track alongside the creek, so that the local community can explore and enjoy the beauty of creek and bush environments in the heart of the city, and extensive clearing and planting efforts with natives.

A Rocha hosted an Eco Church Kōrero about plastic waste with a focus on the UN Global Plastic Treaty in Nov 2022. The kōrero also included discussion on ways our faith communities can be part of this global initiative. The kōrero featured guest speaker Dr Trisia Farrelly from the Aotearoa Plastic Pollution Alliance (APPA). Read on to find out more including a link to the recording and further resources to explore.

Hannah Blumhardt and Liam Prince of The Rubbish Trip presented a talk on how to reduce waste during the Christmas season at Ngaio Union Church recently. Topics discussed included gift giving and gift wrapping, Christmas dinner and table settings, decorations and travel. Read on to explore the tips…

In April 2022, 120 solar panels were blessed and commissioned on the roof of Oxford Terrace Baptist Church, Ōtautahi Christchurch providing around 25% of the church’s energy needs. A strong motivation for the church in installing the solar panels was recognising the importance of creation care as an act of worship to God. Since the church has been generating their own renewable energy, carbon emissions from church activities have dropped significantly, enabling the church to more sustainably steward the resources God has generously entrusted to them.

It is wonderful to use elements from God’s creation in worship. Using shells or stones or other things from nature enables people to engage with God using other senses. An Advent koru points to the new life that Christ’s birth brings here in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Advent koru is made up of shells which portray our kiwi summer, along with stones, bird’s nests, feathers, flowers, and other natural things we can find.

Kāpiti Anglicans did the Eco Church self-assessment exercise as part of a church service in October. The super-creative Rev Fee Thompson, the Assistant Vicar, designed and built these amazing boards as the basis for the exercise.

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.

All Saints Ponsonby recently organised a Market Day which included a dedication of their new community garden that has been in development since late last year.

Soon after Chartwell Cooperating Church joined the Eco Church whānau, they arranged for Paul Murray from Para Kore to come and share about the Para Kore kaupapa and gave an introductory wānanga about zero waste to the church.