It’s time to share your stories of all the eco projects going on in your patch. We’d love to share them in the Bulletin and on our social media channels, and the national Church is keen to share in a new Green Church Showcase.
The Church of England is collaborating with the Church Times and the Roman Catholic Church to launch the “Green Church Showcase.”
This will be a hunt for inspiring church initiatives to protect and preserve the planet and builds on earlier successful collaborations: the Green Church Awards and the Green Health Awards.
Participating churches, church schools, dioceses, and Christian groups of any denomination, are invited to submit details of work that they have undertaken to combat climate change, protect nature, and involve their communities in making changes.
A judging panel chaired by the Bishop of Norwich, Graham Usher, the new lead bishop for the environment, will sift through the entries at the end of July. They will be looking for projects that are most easily reproducible by others, so the whole Church contributes to the reversal of climate change.
These selected projects will feature in a specially commissioned video — the ‘showreel’ — to be launched during the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow at the start of November.
Participants will be encouraged to include information about:
- Building projects moving towards net-zero carbon, such as energy efficiencies, pew heaters, heat pumps, and solar panels
- Building projects that balance conservation and the environment, such as maintenance programmes, sympathetic retrofits, and using low-carbon materials
- Courageous advocacy and community engagement
- Nurturing the natural world, and using church land to develop health and wellbeing
- Involving young people at every level
- Diocesan initiatives that break new ground
- Simple but effective gains on a shoestring
Past winners of Green Awards, eco-congregations, and groups from any denomination are invited to tell their stories.
The showreel will be launched during an online debate about the Church’s response to the climate crisis in early November, hosted by Church Times. The selected projects will also feature in a booklet, published at the same time. Advice will be available online, to give other churches and groups the tools they need to replicate the successful projects.
Timetable:
Launch: 4 June
Closing date for entries: Wed 21 July
Judging w/b: Mon 26 July
Creation of videos, booklet, and dossiers: August-October
Launch event and publication: w/b 1 November
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