Avenue St Andrews URC, Southampton

'Spiritual' activities:

• Discussion Groups 

  • Sunday 6th Feb 2005 Can Christians face the environmental challenges of the 21st Century?

  • Friends Together March 2006, ‘It’s the Ecology Stupid!’. This is a monthly social group on Tuesday evenings and was attended by 25-30 church members. The aim was ‘to reflect on the ecological forces which sustain us and to think deeply about the sustainability principle applied to our own lives’.

• Main Morning Services

  • 17th April 2005 ‘We celebrate the creation’ 

  • 8th October 2006 taken by the Eco congregation group. I It had about 15 adults taking part with the whole of the children’s and young people’s group (known as ‘Worm’) doing   a ‘rap’ so about 30 in all performing!  

  • 21st Oct 2007 taken by elders

  • Children’s talk on Waste 2005.  Had young people sorting waste on the dias in service and asking congregation what could be recycled?  Also reflected on facts on waste.

  • 4 Lent Children’s talks by the minister following a URC theme on ecology.  

• Worm  - As part of the run up to the Go Green Fair had a month making lifesize replicas of the ‘Dilemmas’ -  a family who had eco and non eco-aware members - and discussed the dilemmas like going on holiday to see relatives abroad –should they fly?

• Church Magazine (‘Jottings’) has regular ‘green corner’ feature – trying to be challenging without being off putting or preachy! 2 examples:

  • 19th March 2006 The car - an unshareable privilege 

  • 17th July 2006  The Energy Review  

• Church and Society Notice Board   has occasional green topics – like Climate Change using Christian Aid material

Practical activities:

•  Our church premises were totally modernised in a £1 million refit re-opening in 2003 so that the standard of lighting and heating and insulation were better than normal so there was a less scope for low energy light bulb type improvements.

• We have appraised the cleaning materials and chemicals used in the building and replaced with Ecover type low impact materials wherever possible.

• We are re-using as much paper, using recycled paper sources, using double-sided copying in the church office.

Reaching out:

• We had a massive event in November 2007 Go Green Fair which took 10 months to plan with many local groups on the planning committee and many more groups involved on the day.  It was attended by the mayor, local MP and over 350 members of the public, and given fantastic coverage by the local paper.