Cakes and Climate change

Last Sunday environmental and development issues seem to have been a theme of the children's groups. My four-year-old returned from Scramblers with a poster about Creation, inevitably with a few Thunderbirds added and I couldn't quite fathom why the space for a picture of himself had been filled with a ladybird and a dalmatian. The Exclaimers were looking at the story of Dorcas/Tabitha. Ann used Tabitha's occupation making clothes for widows as an opportunity to look at recycled clothing and what happens to clothes sent to charity shops. This included finding out how rags are rewoven into new cloth in India. Meanwhile the Pathfinders have each been given £2 to make into more money for Christian Aid. Last week Johnny was selling crockery he'd decorated. This week four of the girls were selling cakes they'd baked. Next week we get to throw wet sponges at Josh and (I think) Johnny too.

This week's notices included a last minute plea for more action to make the Climate Change Bill a really meaningful document. Christian Aid want us to e-mail Hilary Benn and ensure the government don't renege on their earlier promise to ensure companies have to report their carbon emissions. Tearfund, A Rocha and Cafod are all trying to get more MPs to sign their support for amendments that will increase the target for reducing CO2 emissions to 80% (in line with scientific advice) as well as to ensure that shipping and aviation emissions are taken into account. The bill is back in the House of Commons this week - if you're reading this in time please click on the links and take action too!

Depressingly I later received an e-mail from Richard drawing my attention to a MORI poll which shows that most Britons doubt that humans are the cause of climate change.
My husband is currently reading William Hague's biography of William Wilberforce: I had not realised that having abolished Britain's slave trade the government then set about closing down the operations of other European countries by effectively buying them off. One of the actors in the film of Wilberforce's achievement, Amazing Grace, likens the abolition of the slave trade to abolishing oil today. If such actions could be taken then . . . ?

I also received a phone call after church from Alison about tomorrow's Panorama episode exposing Primark's use of child labour (9pm BBC1). If I can persuade my e-mail account to start working I'll alert other green team members to this.

I was pleased to note that Mates, Dates and Saving the Planet appears to have been borrowed.

Jubilee Debt Campaign - Pick up The Pace

Yesterday Chris gave the following notice:

Ten years ago many of us went to Birmingham to help form a human chain of 70,000 people around the area where the leaders of the G8 were meeting, to demand that the huge debts crippling the world’s poorest countries be cancelled.

In the last ten years, as part of the HIPC process, $88 billion of debt has been cancelled for 25 countries who have had to meet a whole series of tough conditions; but this only represents about 20% of the debt that needs to be dropped. 36 of the world’s poorest nations, suffering under a huge debt burden while millions of their people live in extreme poverty- have been left out of the HIPC process altogether.

Recently the focus at St Johns has been on Fair Trade and Saving The Planet, but as the tenth anniversary of the launch of the Jubilee Debt Campaign approaches, we have been asked to help to focus once again on getting un-payable debts cancelled for the world’s poorest people.

You can help to do this in 3 ways:
1. The easiest way is to take a postcard and send it to the International Development Secretary with your signature, saying that you want our government to lead the way once again and PICK UP THE PACE of debt cancellation.
2. Fast for a day to register your support for the 36 countries so far excluded from debt cancellation. If you can do this for one day this week you must take a slip of paper which gives the web address of the Jubilee Debt Campaign so that you can register your fast. YOU MUST REGISTER YOUR FAST
3. Join the JOURNEY TO JUSTICE event next Sunday at 2.30 p.m. at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham. Activities begin earlier at 12.30. Details of the event are on the Jubilee Debt Campaign website.

Interestingly, both Tom Wright and Rowan Williams in recent publications have made relevant observations: in Surprised By Hope, Wright refers in general to ‘the massive economic imbalance of the world’ and in particular Third World Debt, as ‘the Number One moral issue of our day (p228); Williams in Tokens of Trust (p128) says that the Church ‘is meant to be the place where Jesus is visibly active in the world’ and that sometimes, just sometimes, we are able to say ‘I have seen the church and it works’. Of the three examples he gave, one was the 70,000 in Birmingham.

All postcards were taken and eight copies of the website for registering a fast.

Christians Together on Climate Change

Last Saturday Ali and I were helping to run a workshop on Eco-congregation for the Christians Together on Climate Change day organised at Greyfriars Church by CCOW, A Rocha, Christian Aid, The Diocese of Oxford, Operation Noah, Reading and Silchester Methodist Circuit, SAGE and Tearfund. It was an inspiring day, beginning with a panel of representatives from South Africa, Jamaica and Alaska, with shocking stories to tell. Dr Ernst Conradi of the University of the Western Cape said the issue at stake was 'moral imagination' - the need to imagine a different world is possible. I was astonished to learn that South Africa's average carbon dioxide emissions per person are the same as those of the UK - about 9.8 tonnes annually. This is because the richest South Africans emit 41 tonnes each per year. Conradi says he claims to have 60 children because each of his two uses the same resources as 30 children in Uganda. Maggie Ross, an Anglican solitary who divides her time between Alaska and Oxford has posted her comments on her own blog: http://ravenwilderness.blogspot.com. Her inspirational, passionate and controversial call was for us all to reconnect with our core silence that would lead us to want to live more simply.

A second panel was chaired by Mark Dowd of Operation Noah who asked questions of the bishop of Oxford (the Rt Revd John Pritchard) and of Dudley Coates, past Vice-President of the Methodist Conference. The bishop described the right wing Christian notion that climate change was the desirable hastening of armageddon and the rapture as 'almost the sin against the Holy Spirit, calling bad good and good bad'. Mark Dowd suggested that the threat of climate change speaks to three major issues that are threatening the Christian church in our country:
our lack of young people (who care passionately about this), the tension with Islam (whose environmentalists share our concerns) and the science v religion debate.

There were then a series of workshops to choose between - one for before lunch, another after. Over lunch most of us took the opportunity to walk round a series of displays by various interested organisations (we had helped with one for Eco-congregation) and to fill out Christian Aid postcards regarding the Climate Change Bill. Ali and I were leading one of the afternoon sessions. As part of this we set up prayer stations much like those used for the Sacred Space service back in November 2006 (see post on that). I had lost the original labels for the strings attached to pieces of clothing so made some more:

At the centre of the station a sign read:

"And wy do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these . . . " What strings are attached to the clothes we wear today

Then the following facts were attached to appropriate items of clothing:
Uzbekistan's $1 billion government-controlled cotton industry has taken so much water from the Aral sea that only 15% of it now remains and its 24 native species of fish are now extinct. Tens of thousands of children are taken out of school and forced to pick cotton during the harvest months. Some of these kids go temporarily blind due to the harsh pesticides used on the crop. If any UK shopper bought cotton items from ten different shops or market stalls, the chances are several will be of uzbekistani cotton.

In the past decade the price of clothes has plummeted due to cheap and expendable sweat shop labour in the developing world, especially following the 1999 collapse in parts of the Asian economy which made labour even cheaper.

Only 10-20% of cast offs in clothes banks make it to UK charity shops. The rest are sold off in the developing world, undercutting local textile manufacturers: in 1991 there were 140 textile manufacturers in Zambia, by 2002 there were just eight.

Conventional cotton production accounts for 25% of global pesticide use. Some pesticides contribute to global warming and depletion of the ozone layer.

20,000 litres of water are required to produce one T-shirt.

About 50% of all emissions of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide are derived from nylon production.

I also had a couple of new facts for the Taste and See apples from different sources:

The transport of food destined for UK consumers produced 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2002, of which 10 million tonnes was emitted in the UK, almost all from road transport. Local shops are more likely to stock local and regional produce than supermarkets.

The manufacture of fixed nitrogen for fertilisers involves large-scale use of fossil fuels for extracting hydrogen and heating it with air. A quarter of all natural gas consumption in the United States is devoted to making fertilisers. The nitrogen oxide emissions accompanying the use of fertilizers are also a potent source of greenhouse gases.

Ali set up the other stations
On rubbish/recycling for which she had bits of rubbish, recycling boxes and objects made of recycled rubbish, with the words:

When the five thousand had eaten their fill Jesus invited the disciples to
“Gather up the pieces left over so that nothing is wasted.” John 6 :12

Archbishop Rowan reminded us in his New Year message that God builds to last,
He does not give up on us and start again, God doesn’t do waste.


Here is some of my rubbish, what might we do with it?
How much of this could be recycled


and do you know where that can be done in your area?

On Water - with a bowl of water with glass stones by it:

“Water will be more important than oil this century”
Boutros Boutros Ghali, former UN secretary General


Remember a favourite lake or waterfall, recall the sound and smell.

Recall what it feels like to paddle your feet or
to turn on the tap for a glass of cold water when you are thirsty.


Drop a stone gently into the water and watch the ripples.

What ripples do I make across the world? Am I careful with the water I use? How often do I stop to be thankful for the water I have such easy access to?

Pray for countries that are water- stressed, with too much or too little.

Travel - with my four-year-old's bicycle as a prop

FOOTPRINTS

What sort of mark are you leaving behind on this earth?



Are there changes to your life style that would be more gentle to this planet and that you are prepared to make…for yourself, your family, your workplace?


Draw round your foot or shoe and cut out a foot print. Write a prayer or commitment that you would like to move towards making and leave it for others to consider.


Cars account for 15% of the carbon emissions produced in this country


71% of road trips by car are <5miles
46% are under 2 miles


20% of rush hour traffic is children being driven to school.


Car parking in Britain covers and area twice the size of Birmingham.


Develop good driving techniques, where safe, accelerate gently and avoid sharp braking, this can save 25% of fuel. Driving at 40-55mph uses 30% less fuel than driving at 70mph

We had far more people than we were expecting, which meant we had to move furniture and the space for prayer was not ideal, but I think it was still helpful. I was surprised that several people said the young people at church were fed up with hearing about climate change because they do it too much at school. There were a couple of people from other would-be Eco-congregations who were able to help inspire and contribute other ideas which was great.

After the workshops Martin Salter MP received questions. He told us that a Defra survey was told that only 3% of people are prepared to do things which cost more or significantly inconvenience themselves to avoid damaging the climate. He also pointed out that our demand for cheaper consumer goods from China and Inda is what is causing them to build more coal-fired powerstations.

Fishing on the Sea of Galilee

In Exclaimers we were looking at the calling of the first disciples and particularly at Simon Peter. We included various fishy games, discussion about following Jesus then and now, and a look at some photos of the Galilee and the church over Simon Peter's house now. We concluded by talking about fishermen today - even in Britain it is a dangerous and poorly paid job.
According to the Environmental Justice Foundation, on the coast of West Africa fishermen are starving as foreign pirate trawlers dredge up kilometres of sea-bed, only to throw back 90% of their catch dead into the seas. I showed them a can of 'sustainably fished' tuna as an example of the response we might make to this. We then discussed the plight of the fish themselves and other marine life around our own shores. I explained about the imminent Marine Bill. Following this Andy and Zach enthusiastically collared as many congregation members as they could over coffee, explaining about the need for marine reserves and asking them to sign the Wildlife Trust's petition on them.

Carbon Fast

Tearfund are encouraging us all to use Lent to cut our carbon emissions with a carbon fast. Rosemary found 50 takers for Tearfund's leaflets which give one new carbon reducing idea for each day of Lent. Several congregation members are giving up meat for Lent as well. To quote from Tony Juniper's How Many Lightbulbs does it take to Change a Planet?

The World Bank concludes that the recent destruction of the Amazon rainforest has been 'basically caused' by cattle ranching. The UK is one of the biggest consumers of the beef produced there. . . In the EU 41% of all methane emissions are from agriculture, mainly from animals. To this must be added emissions of nitrous oxide (another powerful greenhouse gas) arising from the nitrogen fertilizer applied to grasslands to improve meat and milk yields from grazing animals.

Plans are now afoot to produce a vegetarian recipe book for the church to help with this. This Sunday also, Jane initiated a mini clutter sale - a table at the back of church with items she no longer needs, inviting us to take any we can use and put a donation in the refectory fund box. Whoever brings the stuff is responsible for taking the leftovers away again afterwards so we don't need to time it to coincide with a scout jumble sale.

Epiphany - journeying to Jesus

We had an informal Worship Together service for Epiphany including the following sketch about the wise men's journey:

We’re going to eves-drop on their journey, as told by David, Josh and Zach
Three figures in cloaks (one with bike, one with scooter)
Magi 1 (the littlest): Are we nearly there yet?
Magi 2: I have no idea. We are going to be SO late – it’s embarrassing. We should have just booked those Easy Jet tickets like I said.
Magi 3: Maybe we would have been on time, but I just couldn’t face kneeling before the King of all Creation knowing he knew I’d just sent a couple of tonnes of CO2 into his upper atmosphere. I don’t think he’d appreciate me helping flood Bangladesh just to get to see him a bit quicker.
Magi 1: Well I reckon motorbikes would have been much more sensible – we’d still have been on time and little boys love motorbikes.
Magi 2: I’m not sure this one’s quite like other little boys. Anyway, you’d have had to leave me behind – I get so travel sick. (make retching noise)
Magi 3: I still think that guy in the bazaar with the magic carpets was worth listening to.
1 and 2 look at 3 in disbelief.
Magi 2: Well this isn’t getting us any closer is it? Come on, let’s keep going.
Magi leave.

We subsequently approached our confession in the light of the wise men's mistake in discussing their journey with Herod:
The wise men had assumed that they should look for a king in the big city of Jerusalem. They had expected to find wisdom in the king’s palace. They were simply acting according to the logic of the world they lived in. But their detour to Jerusalem meant that Bethlehem’s baby boys were killed.
Living our lives according to what appears to make sense in this world can similarly lead to tragedy. The impending catastrophe for our climate is an obvious example, the apparent logic of free trade which nonetheless keeps the poorest poor is another.

Towards the end of the service we discussed what we need to pack for our own spiritual journeys. In considering both aids to prayer and things that bring us closer to God more generally, it was decided that opportunities to be outside in the natural world were valued by many of us (a pair of walking shoes was duly included in the suitcase).

Christingle

We began the Church's year this Advent Sunday with a Christingle service. As Suzanne explained the symbolism of the fruit, she observed that some of the oranges were already a bit mouldy - but then parts of our world are rather mouldy too. The four cocktail sticks for the seasons were well-loaded with fruit and sweets for the harvests we are given but my toddler had managed to consume them all before we got to light the candles above.
After the service our 'first Sunday' meal was to raise money for the Bangladesh Cyclone appeal.
Our microrecycling point for stamps, foil, batteries and printer cartridges, which we began at the Green Sunday in July, is working well.

WATCH THIS - Pathfinders' fabulous Christian Aid video "Climate Change, Jelly Babies and the Human Shrub"

Emma writes
the pathfinders went to a Christian aid weekend in the middle of October. the weekend was based on climate change and the problem of global warming. we were told we had to make a music video/mini film to show our views on the climate change debate. we made it about superheroes and saving the planet but ended it by being everyday heroes and talking about what we can do ourselves to cut the carbon. as well as making our film there were other workshops going on like drumming and a drama one. the weekend was a lot of fun and we learnt quite a bit about the climate.

Harvest time

St John's congregation includes a number of priests whose ministry is based elsewhere, including the chaplain of Queen Anne's School in Caversham. Consequently I was asked to give a talk for their harvest service this year. The chapel was wonderfully decorated so that even the tins had been arranged in colour-co-ordinated pyramids and fruits were balanced everywhere. I added a few conkers to my lectern before beginning:

5th October 2007 – Queen Anne’s School, Harvest service

My driveway is littered with conkers, spiky cases split open, gorgeous chestnut skins shining and rather a lot of squished creamy pulp where the car has driven over them. Conkers are one of the great emblems of autumn, abundant and gleaming. They aren’t particularly useful – not like blackberries or elderberries or all the cultivated harvests we celebrate, or even the scarlet hips and haws that the birds are stocking up on for winter – indeed, conkers are mildly toxic, but they are beautiful, they make life feel richer – conkers are a reminder that God’s creations do not have to be obviously useful to be valuable and treasured.

But the horse chestnut trees along my road have been looking sick all summer - leaf miner beetles which used die off in the winter are weakening the trees. Our conkers are falling victim to climate change.

Of course they’re not the only ones. Let me tell you about Risolat Muradova. She is 18 years old and a member of Tajikistan’s national basketball team. This summer she came over to the UK to start Christian Aid’s 1,000 mile Cut the Carbon march. The march ended in London last Tuesday when they petitioned the government to commit British businesses and government to a radical reduction in our carbon emissions. Risolat made the journey here from Tajikistan because she can see the devastation climate change is already causing – so many poor harvests are driving the farmers of Tajikistan to abandon their homes and become builders in Russia. Ironically the average inhabitant of Tajikistan only produces just over half a tonne of carbon each year, whereas here in Britain we produce about 10 tonnes. Risolat’s fellow marcher, Mohammed Adow comes from Kenya – his neighbours only produce one fifth of a tonne of carbon each, but droughts are destroying their land – it’s not uncommon for women and girls to have to walk 30km in a day to find water – that’s like having to walk from here to Wokingham and back for water - it always is the women and girls who are hit hardest in such crises.

And yet, my latest post from Friends of the Earth began – ‘climate change could life better for you’. The need to act on climate change could be the catalyst we need to build a cleaner, fairer future with stronger local communities and a healthier relationship with the land. What I’d like you to take away this evening is a conviction that we can do this – that God has given us all that we need, and that we are the Noahs of this day with an ark to build.

On some levels the Christian response to the climate crisis must be the same as that of any person with a conscience. Christ called us to love our neighbour, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked; to do all we can for those girls walking 30km a day to fetch water.

But there’s more to it than that – the God who made us and loves us takes delight in this whole planet. There’s a great passage in the otherwise rather depressing book of Job where God demands
‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? . . .
‘Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail? . . .
‘From whose womb did the ice come forth and who has given birth to the hoar-frost of heaven? . . .
‘Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the deer? . . .
‘Is the wild ox willing to serve you? Will it spend the night at your crib?’

Here God reveals a passionate continuing involvement in Creation, a care even for the mountain goats giving birth. If we can see our efforts to look after our planet as working alongside God’s continual creating it becomes a good deal more hopeful, even joyful, sharing in this task.

That’s why I chose the first reading this evening from Proverbs – God’s Wisdom speaking of her childhood participating joyfully and playfully in God’s act of creation. We don’t tend to think of God as a child very often, but God is all ages of man and woman. Wisdom tells us that she was ‘At play everywhere on this earth, delighting to be with the children of men’. ‘Delighting to be with the children of men’– this is so important.

So often in environmentalism humans seem to be simply the bad guys – inevitably destructive, by our very nature at odds with the needs of the rest of the planet.

Yet Christianity’s most famous ‘green hero’, St Francis, had a rather different take on it. He wrote that
‘We bless the earth with each step we take.
And the firmament too needs our touch’

Passages like that in Proverbs or even the Genesis Creation story had convinced St Francis that human beings were designed to be good for the Earth, to work in a positive relationship with life on Earth. And we know we can be – just look up into the skies above Caversham or along the road to Oxford – and almost invariably you will find somewhere en route a beautiful bird of prey with russet red feathers and a distinctive forked tail – it’s the red kite – once extinct in England, but now flourishing thanks to human effort.

A few months ago a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on my door and asked me what worried me – I told them climate change and they said ‘Ah yes, it is such a great problem that we cannot possibly do anything about it, we must just trust in God to sort it out’. I was so surprised I couldn’t think of a response at the time. I wish I’d remembered the story of Joseph and Pharoah – you know how Joseph was the favourite younger son, sold to passing camel traders by his jealous brothers so he ended up in Egypt interpreting the Pharoah’s mysterious dream about skinny cows eating healthy cows. God had sent the dream to warn Pharoah that after seven years of good harvests there would be seven years of famine – forewarned with this knowledge Joseph and Pharoah carefully looked after Egypt’s harvests and saved enough to feed the people through the famine. If Pharoah had just said ‘Oh dear, we’ll have a famine, never mind I’m sure God will sort it out’ the people would have starved. Today we’ve got scientific predictions instead of dreams, but the situation is the same, we know what we’ve got to do and we can do it.

On a smaller scale we have done it before – when I was at school the environmental crisis of the day was the hole in the ozone layer – this was a thinning of the ozone in the earth’s atmosphere caused by gases used in fridges and aerosols that was likely to give us all skin cancer. Environmental campaigning led to political action to stop the use of these gases. Scientists say the hole is now in the process of mending as a consequence of these actions.

It is easy to imagine as individuals that we cannot achieve much – so I take heart from one of my great heroes – Anita Roddick, who died last month. She started the Body Shop simply because she needed a way to earn money for herself and her daughters while her husband cleared off for two years to ride a horse from Buenos Aires to New York. But her passion for the environment and for social justice shaped a new way of doing business that has influenced so many high street shops. Of course while Anita Roddick was the visionary her family and all those who worked for the Body Shop were what made it happen. We don’t all have to be the visionaries at the front, indeed it won’t work at all if we all try to be that – it’s the working together that achieves most.

That’s why development agencies like Christian Aid are trying to get us all on board with their Cut the Carbon campaign. Thousands of people are petitioning the government to commit to drastic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions – Anita Roddick added her name to Friends of the Earth’s part of the campaign just two months before she died. Jude Law, James Blunt, Thom Yorke and Darcy Bussel are among other famous figures you’ll find talking about it on Friends of the Earth’s website. If you would like to join them, you can pick up one of the Christian Aid postcards at the back of chapel and fill it out – we can post them off together.

Achieving change at a political level is part of building the ark. The other is how we live our own lives – did you know that a tonne of your carbon emissions is a result of the manufacture and care of your clothes? Buying fewer clothes and buying them second hand or organic makes a big difference – yes I did say organic – manufacturing pesticides produces extra greenhouse gases and a quarter of all the pesticides in the world are used in cotton growing. Making sure washing temperatures are as low as possible helps too. Buying organic food and food that hasn’t travelled miles is another basic step. Farmers’ markets and farm shops are a beautiful way to shop. One of the biggest but easiest changes you can make is to get your family to switch to a green energy supplier like Ecotricity – the ones with that magnificent windmill near junction 11 of the M4 – check Christian Aid’s website to see how you can get Ecotricity to give Christian Aid a donation when you sign up. Another biggie is cutting down on your meat and dairy foods because cattle emit an awful lot of greenhouse gases, not to mention the vast destruction of precious, precious rainforests for their grazing - and for growing chicken feed.

Once upon a time harvest festivals were primarily a time to pray for our farmers and their care of the land. Now they need our prayers more than ever. But also we know we all have a responsibility to care for this beautiful, precious, fragile earth and its inhabitants, our neighbours. We have been told just as clearly as Noah was – if we join Risolat from Tajikistan and the thousands of others campaigning and changing their lifestyles – we can build that ark with God.

Green Sunday

On 1st July 2007 we properly introduced the morning congregation to our Eco-congregation plans with a Worship Together service - the order of service used Iona Community Wild Goose Worship Group and Christian Aid materials (some significantly adapted like the confession to include confessing to younger people what we've done to our world), a sketch taken from a link to the Eco-congregation website, a Creation drama I had written and a powerpoint presentation on the crisis in the environment and our response.

We started horribly late because we couldn't get the loop system working but that gave time for everyone to arrive and for us to organise the children who were doing the drama. One member of the congregation said she was almost in tears during the powerpoint, despite the unintended comedy moment when an image of a mountain gorilla appeared on the screen just as I said 'As Christians'. For others the highlight was the Creation drama - the pantomime dinosaur was a hit and it took everyone by surprise when the two dads who'd carried on closed cardboard boxes so nonchalantly lifted their toddler son and daughter from inside. Stuart had spent hours adapting the powerpoint presentation specifically ensuring that the rotating image of the earth was how our planet had looked earlier that very morning (luckily he noticed it was rotating the wrong way before we started).

Order of Service 1 July 2007

On screen at the front as people come in – image of the Earth with ‘The Earth is the Lord’s and Everything in it’ - Becoming an Eco-Congregation written below it

Light a candle on the altar

O God, who called all life into being
The earth, sea and sky are yours
Your presence is all around us
Every atom is full of your energy
Your Spirit enlivens all who walk the earth
With her we yearn for justice to be done
For creation to be freed from bondage
For the hungry to be fed
For captives to be released
For your Kingdom of Peace to come on Earth

Please sit. This morning’s service is a part of our commitment to becoming an Eco-congregation. Becoming an Eco-congregation is about bringing care for creation into three areas of our church life – the spiritual, the practical and our relationship with the wider community. At the end of this service we would like to invite everyone to help develop an action plan for this process.

As an all age worship I’m hoping all you children will find the whole service interesting, but just in case there’s the odd brief boring bit, we have prepared an activity sheet for under twelves – if you don’t have one please pick one up from the tables at the back of the church. These sheets tell the story of Joseph great grandson of Abraham whose story we’ve been looking at in Exclaimers. Joseph was sold as a slave to passing camel traders by his jealous brothers and ended up in Egypt – on the activity sheets you’ll find the story of how God warned that there would be no harvests but that Joseph and Pharoah were careful with the earth’s resources so that the people of Egypt did not starve. It seems a good story to bear in mind as we think about the threat of global warming.

This service is about our relationship with the natural world and the implications of that for our relationships with God and with all of God’s children. Inevitably we’re going to be thinking about the threat of climate change to our planet and its people. But we want to begin with a celebration of the goodness of God’s Creation.

We begin with a hymn that celebrates that goodness and what it tells us of God
Hymn – How Great Thou Art

Please sit. Jonathan and Naomi will read a story of the Creation

Voice 1. In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, there was nothing. And God said
Voice 2. Y’he cymbals crash Let there be
Voice 1. Through the Word all things came into being and the Spirit of God swept over the face of the void. In the first minute of time, the universe stretched a million billion miles across. Two minutes more and God had made 98 per cent of all the matter there is or ever will be.
Perhaps about 9 billion years passed.
And God caught up a swirl of gas and dust 24 billion kilometres wide and from almost all that gas and dust God made our sun. But around it still spun the dust grains that became its planets. God spent two million years fashioning this planet earth.
Throw the planet ball back and forth across the central space.
And God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning. The first day.


Voice 1. About 500 million years later, God said
Voice 2. Let there be life
Voice 1. And beneath sulphurous vapours in boiling seas bacteria swarmed. And some became blue-greens who could photosynthesize. And God saw that it was good.
Two children walk on covered with blue and green crepe strips and blowing bubbles.
The blue greens sent up bubbles of oxygen - like beads of silver on the surface of the deep - and over millennia these transformed the atmosphere and built the ozone layer.
And there was evening and there was morning. The second day.
Children sit to the side

Voice 1. And God said
Voice 2. Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures.
Voice 1. Plants grew in the seas. Corals and sponges formed.
Children with white crepe jelly fish outfit or worms on sticks walk on wiggling them
Worms and jellyfish swam, then trilobites and ammonites.
God made fish about 160 million years after the ammonites.
And there was evening and there was morning. The third day.
Children sit to the side

Voice 1.And God said
Voice 2. Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed and trees of every kind.
Voice 1. And it was so.
Child wheels in wheelbarrow of plants to set around the bottom of the altar
God planted mosses and liverworts along the shoreline. And sowed the horsetail and club-mosses that would become our coal.
God planted the ferns that waved among them and the pine trees and the cedar that towered above.
Child walks off with wheelbarrow
And God saw that it was good. And God said
Voice 2. Let the earth bring forth creeping things and insects that fly
Voice 1. And it was so.
Children bring in insect mobiles (made previous week at Exclaimers)
Millipedes crept through the mosses and silverfish slid across the ground. Amphibians, some of them four metres long, dominated the earth for about hundred million years. Grasshoppers chirped and the blue dragonflies hovered over head.
And God saw that it was good.
And there was evening and there was morning. The fourth day.

Voice 1. And then God created the great land monsters that were the dinosaurs and also the tortoise and the snake and then the opposum.
Dinosaur with two Exclaimers under it walks on
And 180 million years ago God said
Voice 2. Let the waters under the sky be split into smaller seas and dry land spread around the globe
Voice 1. And God split the plates of the earth asunder and the continent of Pangea broke up and moved about the earth.
And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning. The fifth day.

Voice 1.And God said
Voice 2. Let these lands be filled with wild animals of every kind, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky; let plants bring forth flowers and great whales swim the seas.
Voice 1. And all this was so for God created the wild animals of the earth and the birds of the air, the flowering plants and the giants of the deep.
65 million years ago the climate changed and the earth grew cold and the dinosaurs died. And then God made many more wondrous creatures.
And perhaps just 3 million years ago, or perhaps less than a hundred thousand, God said
Voice 2. Let us make humankind in our own image and likeness, that they too may delight in these works, and create with us, and share in the husbandry of the fish of the sea, and of the birds of the air, and of every living thing that moves upon the earth.
Two dads carry on large boxes marked as if posted and lift their babies out
Voice 1. So God created humankind, male and female, in God’s image. God looked at everything and indeed it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning. The sixth day.

And on the seventh day God rested.

But God’s creating had not stopped nor were the plates of the earth stilled. And in their scriptures people celebrated a God who watches over the calving of the deer and helps the lion hunt its prey, who fathered the rain and gave birth to the ice, who gave the horse its might and by whose wisdom the hawk soars.
And God so loved this world that ‘he became flesh pause and dwelt among us’

This is the world of the Lord


Leader: Thank you.
What do you love most about Creation? Please take a couple of minutes in threes and fours in your pews to share with others the things that are most precious or wonderful to you about the created world.

Let us come together to give thanks to God for Creation and for our place within it in the words of Psalm 8. Please stand.

Psalm 8
ALL: WONDERFUL GOD, CREATOR,
THE WHOLE EARTH DECLARES YOUR GREATNESS
women: Your glory glows in the heavens.
It is babbled by babies and sung by children.
men: You are safe from all your enemies;
Those who oppose you are silenced.
women: When I look at the sky which you have made,
The moon and the stars that you set in place:
men: Where do human beings fit in the pattern?
What are we, that you care for us?
women: You have made us only a little lower than yourself;
And crowned us with glory and honour.
men: You share with us responsibility
To care for sheep and cattle, wild things, birds and fish,
Everything that lives in the sea:
To work with you, within creation
ALL: WONDERFUL GOD, CREATOR,
THE WHOLE EARTH DECLARES YOUR GREATNESS

Please sit. We need a doctor

Richard and Rosemary's Planet doctor sketch

Extinction/climate change powerpoint
Our planet has entered the sixth great extinction event of its history, triggered not by natural phenomena but by human actions.

Ever since the introduction of farming 10,000 years ago we have been changing the balance of life on our planet

But in the last two hundred years things have been changing rapidly. Today tens of thousands of species are under threat because we are destroying their habitats – for our food, for fuel, for tourism, for gold and jewels, for hardwood furniture, for cheap clothes, by accidental pollution, to build roads and so on.

For instance, in the last 150 years 93% of tiger habitat has been destroyed – there are probably only about 6,000 of them left in the wild.

The Wind in the Willows is James’s favourite book – the hero Ratty is of course a water vole

In the course of the 1990s the British water vole population dropped by 88 per cent. Modern farming practice, water pollution and escapee mink from fur farms have made ratty our most endangered mammal

As Christians we are called to prioritise the least. To cherish and protect the vulnerable. In today’s world perhaps that is not just the widow and the orphan. Perhaps it is also the mountain gorillas of whom only 700 now remain.

Now we understand just how interconnected life on earth is. Now we know that the rainforest trees are the lungs of our planet.

Now we know also that plants in these threatened habitats can be crucial to our lives – the Madagascan Rosy Periwinkle can increase the chance of surviving childhood Leukemia from 10% to 95%.
Perhaps it is fair now to understand the rainforests as our neighbours.
And it is not just distant wildlife that is precious. Scientists are now associating some mental health problems, particularly in children, with a nature deficit disorder. Physically, mentally and spiritually we need a better relationship with the rest of God’s Creation.
But now an even greater threat looms – on top of this current extinction event, there is the emerging catastrophe of global warming

Global warming is already happening. This graph shows temperatures suddenly rising up to the year 2000 but the trend is continuing – 2005 was the hottest year on record, but last April was the hottest April on record.

The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are directly contributing to higher global temperatures, and that humans are responsible for this increase in carbon dioxide levels. In the past 150 years we have burnt up fossil fuels that took 200 million years to produce.

The consequences of continued warming will be catastrophic for many species. And humans too are already suffering. Higher temperatures mean more extreme weather conditions
In 2003 Europe was hit by a heatwave that killed 39,000 people
In 2004 there were more tornadoes in the US than in any other year in history.

But those hit hardest are the poorest.
Tens of millions of people in low-lying nations such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Egypt will be threatened by further sea level rises caused by ice sheets melting.

But in countries like Senegal droughts are rendering land infertile.

A staggering 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone could die of disease directly attributable to climate change by the end of the century.
The Red Cross has estimated that already 25 million refugees (58 per cent of the global total) owe their displacement to climate change. Christian Aid fears there will be a billion more.
Climate change threatens to undo all of the progress made by development agencies in recent years – that is why organisations like Tearfund and Christian Aid are urging us passionately to do all we can to stop this catastrophe and why the Church of England is committed to cutting it’s carbon footprint to 40% of its current level.

Again it is a matter of our obligations to the poorest and those already most vulnerable. At the moment the energy hungry lifestyles of those who live in rich nations are condemning the poorest to lose their livelihoods and their lives. While each of us emits almost 10 tons of carbon dioxide every year, those in sub-Saharan Africa emit less than a ton.

To help us address this personally, Christian Aid have produced a carbon calculator so that we can make an estimate of our own CO2 emissions and consider our response. Our home group have already used these and found the results surprising. If you would like a copy please let me know after the service. To avoid catastrophic climate change scientists estimate that each of us should emit no more than 2.5 tonnes. That is a hugely ambitious target.



With all this in mind, we turn to our confession. Please stand. Can I invite Andy and anyone else under 25 who wants to come up to the front at this point to do so – we will need you for the absolution
Let us confess our sins
Creator God
Your fertile earth is being stripped of its riches, your living waters are being poisoned, your clear air is dark with the smoke of burning oil and forests
Open our eyes to see

Creator God
The rich plants and wondrous animals you gave us to care for are under threat – orangutans face extinction so that we can have palm oil, tigers are dying out so that we can have coffee, rainforests are burning so that soya can be grown for chicken feed – a million species will be lost in just fifty years if we cannot stop our climate changing
Open our eyes to see

Creator God
Our sisters and brothers are losing their sources of food and fuel, the poorest in our world are being made poorer, drought and floods threaten to make millions of refugees and to undo all the progress that development agencies and debt cancellations have made. Our sisters and brothers are dying because of the way we live
Open our eyes to see

To all the children and young people we make our confession too. All those over 25 saying together
We confess to you that we have sinned through thoughtlessness, through idleness and greed, by the destruction we have caused and the actions we have failed to take.
We are truly sorry.
We repent of all that we have wasted and the bounty we have squandered, knowing that the world will be poorer for your generation.
Inspire us to turn back the tide and work to heal this broken planet. Challenge our complacency, nag us when we fall short and keep us accountable for your future.
Amen

Children: May God forgive you, Christ renew you and the Holy Spirit guide us all to rebuild this world.

(thank children and send them back) Please remain standing for a hymn from the Iona community –
Hymn: Inspired by Love and Anger

Joanna: Please sit. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis in Creation which faces us and to feel burdened by humankind’s responsibility. Our homegroup recently watched the film The Matrix which is a futuristic nightmare of a computer dominated world. In one scene the computer generated Agent Smith argues that people are not really mammals because all other mammals regulate their population according to the resources of the land they inhabit, humans, he says, are more like a virus that devastates its host.

Christianity doesn’t see it that way. Humankind is an integral part of a very good Creation. More than that, humankind is made in the Creator’s image. One of Christianity’s most famous ‘green’ heroes is St Francis and I recently came across a poetic translation of some of his words which celebrate the mysteriously beautiful relationship between humans and the rest of God’s Creation.

We bless the earth with each step we take.
And the firmament too needs our touch:
Someday your tenderness will reach it.
Look how the birds climb some invisible staircase
and lay their hands upon Him.
Of course I am jealous, when I too cannot do that.
The seas waited long to sing. Not until we leaped out laughing
Was their birth of us complete.

We have a huge task ahead of us, but St Francis’s words encourage me that we are mentally and spiritually equipped for it, even designed for this task, to be good for the Earth, to work in a positive relationship with life on Earth. And we are not alone – the Holy Spirit who breathed over the waters at Creation is with us, making things possible.

But where do we begin? Clearly it is something to be worked at on so many levels – in prayer and political action and our everyday lives. For different people different aspects will be easier and I think it is crucial to feel ourselves working in community with others and with God because otherwise our efforts can easily appear too small to make any difference.

That is where becoming an Eco-congregation comes in. Those of us who have been meeting up over the last few months have sent off a preliminary action plan to register ourselves with Eco-congregation but would like to use this service to build on that. The idea is that once we feel we’re really quite a green church we apply for the Eco-congregation award, a bit like being registered as a fair-trade church, and our efforts will be assessed by someone associated with Eco-congregation.
Please think about what you would like to change in the life of the church and in your own lives? Wild daydreams are allowed at this stage but we’re especially keen on actions that you are prepared to set in motion!

This is a summary of our action plan so far:

Powerpoint summary

Joanna. In the gallery there are large sheets of paper on the tables – at some point between now and when you leave the church please write your ideas on these sheets – all ideas: crazy and practical, about the spiritual, the practical and the community focussed – and preferably put your name beside your idea. If someone has had the same thought, please add your agreement so that we know which ideas are most popular.
And what about our lives beyond church? It makes sense to start with just one issue and build on that. To start empowering ourselves for that we thought it would be helpful to break into discussion groups on certain themes and for each group to put together a poster of ideas that others can look at over lunch – hopefully there’ll be no more than about 10 people in each group so everyone gets to talk.
We thought the young people would prefer their own discussion groups, so Ann Morrison will co-ordinate under 10s . . . and Alison will co-ordinate the over 10s
For adults we’ve come up with five issues to talk on –
If you’re interested in questions of food and shopping – see Ali, Helen or Josie
For questions of transport see Richard
For energy and water use see Alex or Nigel
For recycling and re-using Rosemary
And for political action – me


Joanna: Please can we return to our seats to offer up all that we have been discussing in our prayers.

Let us pray
Creator God, take our feet off the path of destruction. Help us to treasure and conserve the resources of the Earth. Help us to share your bounty fairly. Teach us to find joy in living more simply and to love your world.
Amen

Please stand for our final hymn
Hymn: The Servant King


Let us remain standing to bless one another in the words of a Celtic blessing
Blessing
Deep peace of the running wave to you
Deep peace of the flowing air to you
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep peace of the shining stars to you
Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you
Amen

Supper and Clutter Sale

On 21 April several members of the congregation arranged a Supper with Friends at the Warehouse in aid of Tearfund's Work a Miracle campaign for those suffering with HIV and AIDS. Music was provided by the Scamping Rogues and the dinner raised £1,506.10.
The following month the focus moved to Christian Aid with the traditional house-to-house collection and on 13 May the Exclaimers (8-11s) helped to arrange a sale after the morning service of second hand goods brought in by congregation members. The sale raised £233.05 and the leftover clutter we were able to pass on to the Scouts for their jumble sale.

In the Beginning

Report of meeting held on 3rd October 2006 to discuss Eco-Congregation

Why did people attend?
We agreed that those present share the passionate belief that respect of and care for God’s created universe is fundamental to a right relationship with God Himself and with our fellow human beings.

We are deeply concerned about the current threats to the natural world. This is an abuse of a most precious gift from God and in distancing ourselves from the rest of Creation we distance ourselves from ways of understanding God. Moreover, to quote from Tearfund’s latest publicity, ‘Climate change is not just an environmental issue – it’s a threat to people living in poverty’.

We are conscious that Tearfund, Christian Aid, Cafod, Oxfam, WDM and other development agencies have joined the Stop Climate Chaos coalition precisely because the most vulnerable people on this earth are those whose lives and livelihoods are already being destroyed by climate change. It makes little sense to support fair-trade initiatives without also responding to the impending environmental catastrophe. We are also aware that the Church of England has launched a national environmental campaign, Shrinking the Footprint, endeavouring to reduce the Church’s energy consumption by 40%.

We take heart from the fact that experts in the environmental field assure us that meaningful action can still be taken. The substantial reduction in water consumption in the Thames Valley this year is indicative of people’s willingness to act for the greater good in such matters. The Church of England’s website cites the feeding of the 4,000 (Mt 15:32-39) as an apt parable: ‘At Jesus’ request, the disciples gave up what little they had (which was still more than the rest) for an apparently impossible task. In the end it was more than enough.’


What is Eco-Congregation?
Eco-Congregation is ‘an environmental toolkit for churches’ produced by ENCAMS and Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. Becoming involved with Eco-Congregation entails undertaking their ‘Churches environmental check-up’ and producing an action plan as a result which endeavours to develop environmental awareness in three areas;
Spiritual – linking environmental issues with faith eg through worship
Practical – eg energy consumption, recycling
Community – working with or through the local community on environmental issues eg litter pick, project with a school or similar, getting positive publicity.
When this threefold environmental commitment can be demonstrated we can apply for an Eco-congregation award.
Eco-congregation provide a range of resources which we can use if we find them helpful.

Summary of issues covered by environmental check up:
1. Life and Mission of the Church – does care for the environment have sufficient weight within the church’s mission? This is assessed by looking at the five marks of mission formulated by the 1988 Lambeth Conference -
a. To proclaim the good news of the Kingdom
b. To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
c. To respond to human need by loving service
d. To seek to transform unjust structures of society
e. To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation; to sustain and renew the life of the earth

2. Worship
3. Theology
4. Children’s work
5. Youth work
6. All-age and Adult education
7. Church property
8. Church management
9. Church land
10. Personal lifestyle
11. Community outreach
12. Overseas concerns
This document is available in full on the eco-congregation website

Do we think Eco-Congregation would be good for St John’s?
St John’s is clearly already environmentally aware, obvious examples being last Sunday’s Harvest Service, Oasis’s contribution to the forecourt garden and through our overseas interests – Rosemary brought along Tearfund’s latest campaign card which calls on the government to play its part in stopping climate chaos. Nonetheless, there are many other things we could do and which the Eco-congregation ‘tool-kit’ would help with.

We feel it is particularly useful right now as we embark on the ‘Lost for Words’ course. Getting involved with the wider community on green issues would be an obvious ideal opportunity for conversations with non-church goers in which we can begin by explaining that our involvement is inspired by our faith.

We are conscious that young people especially see much of church as irrelevant to the real world. However, they are concerned about what is happening to the planet and would be attracted to the church if it was seen to be engaging with issues whose importance they understood.

Observing the enthusiasm in the room, Jo commented “this is what it means to be ‘energised by faith’” – this is something that would be good for St John’s as a congregation.


What next?
Sacred Space – use 19 November’s Sacred Space service to explore ideas about Care for Creation and to distribute Tearfund’s booklets For Tomorrow Too (on ways to reduce our impact on the climate). This would enable more of the congregation to discuss these issues.
A planning meeting for this service will be held on 7th November.


PCC – Give a copy of this report to all members of the PCC and ask them to consider a proposal to work towards an Eco-congregation award at their 20 November meeting.