Congratulations to the Kidderminster West Team and also All Saints, Bromsgrove for recently achieving Eco Church Awards. All Saints in Bromsgrove along with St John’s and Holy Innocents Churches in Kidderminster have achieved their bronze award with St Peter’s Church in Kidderminster achieving silver.
In all of the churches, dedicated volunteers have been focusing on local environmental issues, working to help reduce carbon footprints, decrease consumption and to develop areas around the church buildings to support wildlife. To achieve an Eco Church Award, environmental issues also need to be at the heart of worship and preaching and congregation members encouraged to make changes in their own lives.
Assistant Curate of the Kidderminster West Team, Chris Henson, said:
“I am thrilled for the people of the Kidderminster West Team in their hard work to attain their Eco Church awards. This is a wonderful recognition of diligent research and an excellent implementation of a shared eco-strategy across the team of churches. These awards provide the team with joyful celebration and a future focus in sustaining and building on what has been achieved, and to strive continually as eco-church practitioners in creative and exciting ways for generations to come. Each parish has a committed team of volunteers working towards the awards, which continue to be part of PCC’s vision of sustaining and caring for God’s creation, with everyone playing their part in achieving Net Zero by 2030.”
Curate in Bromsgrove, Richard Sandland, said:
“We were delighted to receive the news from Eco Church that All Saints had been granted their Bronze Award. It’s the result of many years of hard work by many people; over the last year or so we have been measuring our progress against Eco Church’s criteria, and making tweaks and adjustments to how we worship, and how we are as Christians in our community. This has all taken place around a building with considerable challenges, like in so many Victorian buildings – but we have prayerfully discussed how we reflect our care for creation in this place, and have acted on those prayers, which has resulted in this award. None of us does what we do for any personal validation, it’s all done to try to reflect God’s grace – but this acknowledgement is nevertheless, very welcome and pleasing to us all.”
St John’s and Holy Innocents’ in Kidderminster and All Saints in Bromsgrove will now work towards Silver awards, with St Peter’s in Kidderminster starting to work towards Gold!
