Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Christians Together on Climate - the event

Over 60 people turned up on a rainy evening to St Laurence's church for Reading Area Green Christians' event to help empower churches to act on climate change. Highlights included our school striker, Francesca, who inspired everyone with her story and her commitment; University of Reading doctoral researcher Lydia Messling whose workshop on finding the right words to communicate about climate change clearly taught people a lot; and a final act of worship/lament before we took our ideas home to act on. 

We were especially grateful to those who came with information stalls - notably https://readingenergy.coop/ who are still looking for public buildings with high daytime usage to put solar panels on as well as offering opportunities for green investment; and https://readingcan.org.uk/ whose strategic plan for Reading's response to climate change will be out for consultation early next year. 

One of the key reasons for holding the event was to advertise the energy audits available to churches - Oxford diocese are providing financial incentives for CofE churches doing this, but the company will work with any churches - more information here: https://www.oxford.anglican.org/mission-ministry/environment/resources/church-energy-audits/

There's more information/resources on the extra blog page here for Christians Together on Climate, including some of the information sheet I produced to report back on the event at the Diocesan Synod last week. For just five days you can also still catch Paul Coia interviewing me on BBC Radio Berkshire's Faith programme the Sunday before the event!