Annual Gathering
The Eco-Congregation Scotland Annual Gathering 2010 took place in Stirling Baptist Church on 20th March 2010.
Ewan Aitken, convener of the Eco-Congregation Scotland Board of Directors, gave an introduction to the event:
This is the third annual gathering of eco-congregations in Scotland and again it was a full and crowded event. Over 80 delegates met to celebrate the work of eco-congregations in Scotland, the continuing growth of the movement, and its incorporation as a Scottish Charity. The meeting also offered the opportunity to consider the continuing challenges posed by climate change: both practical and spiritual. In this we were immensely fortunate to have Alastair McIntosh and Roddy Hamilton to inspire us. This report gives brief details of all these contributions. We have also taken the opportunity to highlight some of the challenges and opportunities emerging from the day.
2010 is the year Eco-Congregation Scotland became your charity. This is great milestone and we now need your help to build and grow Eco-Congregation Scotland as a charity: details of how you can help are given at the end of this report. We look forward to hearing from you!
He then explained what Eco-Congregation Scotland's becoming a charity means for congregations involved in the programme:
All congregations will be invited to nominate a representative who can become a member of the company who can vote at the AGM.
• We need up to 12 directors to manage the charity – you are invited to consider becoming a director. The first AGM (early in 2011) will appoint a new board of directors.
• We urgently need to raise funds to grow and develop – can you help?
• We are also looking to fill three volunteer posts: treasurer, fundraiser and mentor.
His presentation can be viewed here (ppt, 63kb).
Alastair McIntosh gave the keynote address: Towards a Spiritual Response to Climate Change:
Eco-congregations have a special role to play in responding to climate change. We must work on the practical challenges to reduce our carbon footprints but we must not lose sight of the spiritual dimension. This is of the greatest importance: we need a spiritual response to challenge the materialist culture in which we live and the idolatry of consumerism.
We are all complicit in the idolatry of consumerism. We plunder the earth’s resources in order to sustain our high level of consumption and at the same time condemn a large portion of the world’s population to poverty. We continue to exploit nature and people in other parts of the world. This is sustained by a consumer economy and political system that panders to our greed and avarice. Retail therapy may offer us a short term high but it creates more craving and fails to offer any real depth of satisfaction. We become individual consumers and lose our sense of community and ability to feel for others. This greed leads to violence, both against the earth and against each others: to sustain our current level of consumption we need to plunder the resources of others.
We need to challenge the illusions by which we live, to disillusion ourselves of the idolatry of consumerism and to face up to its consequences. We are like the Israelites who failed to listen to Jeremiah and his warning of Babylonian captivity.
Eco-congregations can cultivate the spirituality that helps to fill the gap in our lives. Eco-congregations may feel that their achievements are modest in practical terms but they can be God inspired in aspiration. This work lays the spiritual ground to live in peace with the earth and with each other. This in turn will rekindle the inner life and its fulfillment.
Roddy Hamilton, Minister of Abbotsford Church, Clydebank, responded to him, giving a presentation on ‘A Slice of the Action’
The bible is full of stories of the earth but too often they have lost their power to move us or have been sanitised into incoherence. We need to reclaim these stories with all their significance and power. For example the story of Noah is the story of God’s covenant with the earth and with creation as a whole; the story of feeding the 5000 is about the abundance of the earth and of sharing its wealth. We must rediscover these truths and their meaning.
Our loss of these stories has created a vacuum that has been occupied by secular environment NGOs. They have understood the human need to identify with the earth and to care for it but without a religious content. We must take practical steps to accompany this spiritual rediscovery. The Church of Scotland General Assembly instruction calling on congregations to reduce their carbon footprint by 5% a year sets a framework for this – a series of small steps can help put this challenge into effect.
Workshops
Alastair McIntosh: Spirituality and climate change
How do we deal with the spiritual? This is a difficult concept for many congregations in Scotland. Yet without spirituality the Church can become dry and dead; this may be one reason for the decline of religion in Scotland in the twentieth century. Reason and spirituality are difficult partners yet we need both. Discernment can help us identify the truth; by arguing, working and worshipping together. Ask for example: how do we make technology serve us or how do we become enslaved by it?
Iain McFadzean: Promoting community involvement at Bankfoot
Bankfoot offered the opportunity to build a new church on a new site when the old church burnt down in 2004. The building includes space for elderly care, young people, mothers and toddlers – it is an important new community facility. The building is 1400 m2 and cost £2 million to build. It is open 16 hours a day and 7 days a week with running costs for heating and lighting are about £5,000 a year. The new building has inspired greater community activity locally and has been an inspiration to others: 97 other congregations have visited the building in the past 19 months.
Ewan Aitken: Growing the Movement
The workshop identified 5 ideas to help local groups to start:
• Introduce the issue in worship and keep doing so (also bible study groups help)
• Get the minister and senior elders on board
• Audit the buildings and explain the savings
• Start with the children when talking about lifestyle changes
• Run and Eco Day that includes to community as well
And 5 ideas for giving support nationally:
• Support links between congregations
• Think about a mentoring scheme for congregations
• Help congregations develop their press profiles
• Develop education of ministers on the issues (especially those in training)
• The website and accessibility to that site are key
Ben Murray: Earth be Glad Project
St John’s Episcopal Church in Edinburgh was recently awarded a grant from the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund to develop their Earth be Glad carbon monitoring project. This workshop, run by the project’s lead consultant Ben Murray, focused on how to engage individuals in a climate-oriented project. Those of us who are naturally concerned about the environment can easily lose sight of the fact that most people do not think this way – instead, they need other incentives, such as saving money, to get them to engage in projects such as Earth be Glad. Ben discussed the Values-Modes model (for more information go to http://www.cultdyn.co.uk/valuesmodes.html) and how it can help us to bring about positive behaviour change in a wide range of individuals.
Alison Boyes: Eco-Congregations in rural communities
The workshop discussed the advantages and disadvantages of being an eco-congregation in a rural setting and how to work positively to exploit the advantages. A real advantage is that members of congregations will know at least one person in every group and organisation in the community. Developing ways of working with other organisations (e.g. schools, gala committee, Fairtrade groups) is essential. The take-home message was ‘network, network, network!’
Mike Adam: Church buildings/heating
The workshop examined different ways of reducing energy use, drawing on the experience of St. Ninian’s Old in Stirling, examining different approaches from the very simple to the most sophisticated technology.
The workshop came to a number of conclusions:
• Share information on the Eco-congregation website: this can be developed a s resource for congregations to draws on.
• Publish information on church energy use to show how much different energy saving measures can cut energy use.
• Help congregations identify the most appropriate approach for their circumstances.
Conclusions and Next Steps
There are a number of important points emerging from the annual gathering. Our response to the challenges needs to be both spiritual and practical. These challenges include the following.
Practical Challenges
The future development and growth of the programme is dependent on the financial success of the charitable company. In order to flourish it cannot be dependent on external funding, whether from denominations or from other sources. For it to be successful congregations must take ownership and responsibility for the charity. This means
• eco-congregations signing up as members
• members of congregations being prepared to serve as directors and taking on roles of office bearers such as treasurer or fundraiser
• eco-congregations raising funds to support the work of the charity and ensure its future growth and sustainability.
Caring for the Earth
Caring for god’s creation: the earth and all its inhabitants is at the heart of eco-congregation’s work. This includes a number of themes such as protecting biodiversity (this is the international year of biodiversity) and reducing our wastes. At the annual gathering we focused on our response to climate change. The failure of the Copenhagen conference poses tremendous challenges. Can eco-congregations take spiritual leadership in Scotland? This means:
• challenging the idolatry of consumerism in worship and in our lives
• taking essential practical steps to cut our own consumption of energy
• being active in communities and contributing forcefully to the national debate
Alastair McIntosh has prepared an article based on his presentation that may help you. This is available here (doc, 1MB).
Can you respond?
How can you respond to these challenges in your worship and in your lives? We will be preparing guidance for congregations in the near future but would welcome the views of congregations and networks on these issues to help us shape that guidance. Please get in touch and let us know your views.
Please send your views to:
Anikó Schuetz, Eco-Congregation Scotland, 121 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 4YN,
t. 0131 240 2274; e-mail: scotland@ecocongregation.org.