Schöpfungsfest 2026

Sue Adeney and Andrew Sillis recently attended a Creation Festival as guests of our partner diocese of the Evangelische Kirche in MittelDeutschland (EKM – aka ‘Magdeburg’). Church members from the EKM and ecumenical friends attended to worship, celebrate and learn about environmental projects across the region.

Andrew and Sue were able to speak about the Church of England commitment to becoming net zero carbon by 2030, and about the practical steps taken by parishes through the EcoChurch scheme (for which there is currently no equivalent in Germany). 

There was much to learn at the festival and a good number of projects with which you will be familiar in the UK – such as Bread-baking Church and Forest Church, and a ‘Green Rooster’ project to install environmentally sustainable energy systems in churches.

As is the case in all partnership exchanges, Andrew and Sue returned with new ideas and connections to share, as well as having contributed ideas and principles from our own work in creation care.

Andrew said:

“The key thing that we found was a shared commitment to seeing the climate crisis as not just a problem to be solved (and we absolutely must solve it, of course), but also as an opportunity for effective mission and growing disciples.”

Pictured alongside Andrew and Sue are Landesbischof Friedrich Kramer and Regionalbishofin Bettina Schlauraff.