St Mary Longfleet Becomes An Eco Church

St Mary Longfleet is the latest church to celebrate receving an Eco Church award, in this case a bronze.

The Central Poole church announced on Monday that it become the latest parish in the Diocese to receive an Eco Church award. It isn’t resting on its laurels, however, and will now work towards taking the step up to becoming an Eco Church Silver award-holder.

The Revd Justin Tomkins, Associate Vicar at St Mary Longfleet (SML), Poole, said, “Working towards the Eco Church Bronze award has helped us at SML both to celebrate what we have already been doing and to take steps forward.

“We have celebrated our involvement in the Living Churchyard Scheme and on opportunities for a focus on creation care within our worship and teaching. We have been spurred on and have now twinned all our toilets in the church and the Church Centre with others around the world through the work of Tearfund.

“As we now look ahead to working towards a Silver Award, one thing we have already been prompted to do is consider the source of our energy supply and its use.

“We are grateful to the eco-church scheme for enabling us to celebrate what we are doing and to identify next steps for further growth in creationcare. Thank you!”

The Diocese as a whole is coming closer to the goal of winning the first ever EcoDiocese Bronze Award.

This will be achieved if only a relatively small number of parishes registers for the EcoChurch award scheme, and an even smaller number achieve the EcoChurch Bronze Award. Chair of the Diocesan Environment Group, David Morgan, would be glad to discuss how to take things forward with any parish considering whether it wishes to take part.

Bishop Nicholas said, “Christians want to steward the gifts of God and care for his creation. It is great to see so many of our churches putting Christian teaching on the care of creation into practice.

“Climate change, the loss of species and a lack of care in the way we use resources  is already damaging lives, especially in some of the world’s poorest communities. Well done SML. I hope other churches in the in the Diocese will follow as it would be good for Salisbury to be the first eco Diocese. We need to care for the earth. There is no Planet B.”