Over 500 churches, including 50 United Reformed Church congregations, are now registered with the Eco Church scheme launched last year by Christian environmental charity, A Rocha UK. The 500th local church to register was Great Chishill United Reformed Church, south Cambridgeshire.
As the successor to Eco Congregations in England and Wales (Eco Congregations continues in Scotland), Eco Church is based on a simple online survey. Users register for free and can revisit the questionnaire as often as they wish to report on their eco efforts in areas of church life including worship, building management and community engagement. The website keeps note of their progress scores and indicates when they qualify for an award.
With five full members and a congregation rarely exceeding 50, Great Chishill URC was in no position to embrace a demanding new initiative. Yet to newly-appointed church secretary Angus Gent, Eco Church registration seemed a natural step to take.
Angus said: ‘I stumbled across it online. It has a nice “hit list” to work through and it is very user friendly. I just started filling it in and then, because it was easy, I wasn’t put off.’
When it comes to eco ‘brownie points’, Gent considers his church ‘as good or bad as any other.’ It has no eco committee, solar panels or other special credentials and, like so many other small churches, would struggle to rally an army of green volunteers. But this has not been a problem – Angus simply logs in to report ordinary activities like the recycling and composting of garden waste and the gradual replacement of light bulbs with greener alternatives.
‘We do not have an endless supply of money so it has got to be slowly, slowly,’ Angus added. He hasn’t got as far as considering any policy implications, and insists: ‘Ask me to provide a policy and I wouldn’t know where to start.’
Nonetheless, the normal tasks of church maintenance and upgrades will naturally demand policy decisions from time to time. When it comes to upgrading the churchyard, for example, Angus said: ‘I will be wanting there to be a green element to our policy; what sort of stones and plants we might use, and so on.’
In other words, signing up for Eco Church can encourage the church into more environmentally-responsible thinking, without it becoming an onerous burden. To anyone wondering about signing their church up for Eco Church but worried about the implications, Angus is encouraging:
‘Just give it a go. There is no harm done if you register and then realise you are way off the mark, that you have too much to worry about with membership or church funds at the moment. It doesn’t matter; you can come back to it. When I signed up I was thinking about how much we have to do, but you get a positive vibe back in the feedback and that has encouraged me.’
It’s a message strongly backed by Grace Pengelly, the URC Secretary for Church and Society, who hopes more local United Reformed churches will join the Eco Church scheme. She says: ‘I would love more people to know that reducing your carbon footprint doesn’t always require us to install solar panels on our church roofs; sometimes it’s the smaller actions that start to add up.”
To find out more about Eco Church visit https://ecochurch.arocha.org.uk/
