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Energy Audit
We have now received the report back from the Diocesan Energy Audit that was carried out on 12 October. It is hugely useful and positive. It includes 17 practical suggestions for actions with details...
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Registering the Climate Emergency
Six months on from our first Climate Sunday service on 6 September 2020, we held another one in Lent - 7 March 2021 - and this time we read together a statement recognising the Climate Emergency and...
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Creation Season 2021
This year we are following the official Season of Creation more closely - just the Sundays from 1st September until the Feast of St Francis on 4th October - and using resources from the ecumenical...
View ArticleGood COP, Bad COP
In case you missed church today (as I did - in Covid isolation!) here's a report from Rosemary on some of what happened before the church lunch: Good Cop, Bad Cop!This Sunday we sat down with our mugs...
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Sunshine, wind, and not much rain
Having put into practice many of the 'quick wins' suggested by the energy audit that Oxford diocese have subsidised for us, we've been looking at some of the more challenging tasks to improve our...
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Climate Hero - calculating our emissions
Some months ago, members of the green team recommended using the Climate Hero website to calculate our carbon footprint. I have to confess, I never got round to it myself - until today, when it popped...
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Reading-Düsseldorf Churches Interchange
Yesterday afternoon St John's hosted a meeting for the Reading-Düsseldorf Churches Interchange - part of a week long visit. The afternoon was themed around Climate Change and Creation Care and started...
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Taking the Jump in Creationtide
As usual we are marking Creation Tide through September and the first weekend in October. We've decided to encourage the actions suggested by takethejump.org in the notices each week, not least...
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Travelling light
In last week's service the 'green tip' from TaketheJump was to opt for greener travel - that meant taking two of TaketheJump's themes - one on avoiding cars and the other on avoiding planes. We chose...
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Creation Sunday
Last Sunday's service was given a special focus on Creation and the sermon will, as usual, be available on our church website in due course. In the intercessions it was fortunately easy to lead from...
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End Clutter
The green tip for last week's service was from TakeTheJump's End Clutter suggestion - they highlight the climate and ecological impact of electronic items which are often replaced very frequently. The...
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Harvest Festival
Yesterday's service was our Harvest Festival, followed by a shared lunch to raise money for Christian Aid's Harvest Appeal for the East Africa Hunger Crisis. As the final service in Creation Season it...
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Praying for COP27 as Kingdom Season begins
It feels rather appropriate to be hoping for miracles, praying for a world in which the rich and powerful finally put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first, as we enter Kingdom Season. This week's...
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Campaigning for action at COP27 and in the Lords
Representatives from St John's have been at demonstrations calling for real action at COP27: this is Richard B on yesterday's march. Christine was in London at the prayer vigil on Wednesday. The...
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The Letter: A Message for our Earth
Before Christmas, a couple of members of our EcoChurch team watched The Letter: A Message for our Earth. It is the story of Pope Francis's Laudato Si' encyclical and some of the many many people who...
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Many of us joined the Big Garden Birdwatch at the weekend, including the young people at Forest Church who saw pigeons, robins, crows and a woodpecker as well as kites overhead.A couple of congregation...
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Green Meetings and Mothering Sunday Flowers
It's been a week of 'green' meetings - last Saturday the Berkshire Area of the Third Order Franciscans were here at St John's and I was asked to talk to them about our EcoChurch journey. Some of them...
View ArticleDiocesan Report
At last week's deanery synod the report of the diocesan synod was all about environmental issues. Reading deanery's motion to make it easier to put solar panels onto churches was passed, as was a...
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The Big One
Over the weekend thousands of campaigners, including several of our congregation, joined a protest in London, calling for meaningful action to tackle the Climate and Biodiversity Crises. Although...
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Enjoying the Sunshine and Christian Aid Week
Over the past two weeks we have had plenty of opportunity to enjoy the gorgeous weather. On May 7th we took our Family Service out to the front of the church for the first of outdoor service this year....
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Campaigns, Courtyard Garden and Collecting Litter
The Climate and Ecology Bill was reintroduced to Parliament earlier this month, so a couple of weeks ago we sent postcards to our MPs encouraging them to support the bill. We used cards with images...
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Environment Sunday
Today was both Trinity Sunday and Environment Sunday and our focus was on the former, but we were outside in the glorious sunshine and the sermon slot talk - which involved a scavenger hunt and much...
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Equipping Churches to Care for Creation
On a day when any sane person would be taking a flask of iced tea and a good book to the nearest shady bench, I chose to take the green travel option to Wokingham (bike/bus/more bike) and so arrived...
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School Fair and Churches Count on Nature
Last Friday was St John's school summer fair and we again ran an EcoChurch stall. This time we had plants for sale, courtesy of Lawrence (plus some extra sunflowers that had germinated in the pots...
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Creation conscious crafts
One of the most difficult things to be rigorously environmentally sensitive about often seems to be craft work with the children - it is so tempting to potter round Hobbycraft and return with lots of...
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