We are a church that is aiming to be passionate about Jesus and part of our passion for him is expressed in being passionate about his creation and caring for it.
In July 2022 an EcoChurch team was formed at St Matthew’s & Cheltenham Minster to focus on reducing our carbon footprint as a church and to encourage our individual members to do the same in their homes and businesses.
Using the A Rocha EcoChurch Scheme we qualified for the Bronze Award (in December 2022) and the Silver Award (in November 2023). We are now focused on achieving our Gold Award.
This Scheme has enabled us to examine our behaviour in 5 areas of church life:
Worship and Teaching
Buildings
Community & Global Engagement
Lifestyle
Buildings and Land
We are a Town Centre based Church Community with two large “listed” buildings. St Matthew’s has limited open-space - mainly kerbside and car park – and whilst The Minster has a valuable green space in the centre of town, these are managed by Cheltenham Borough Council, who we are trying to work with to improve eco-diversity.
Our biggest challenge now is to move towards achieving Gold Status, which we hope to be able to apply for by December 2025. During 2024 we are planning to review how our church buildings operates and acquire plans and costings to make a drastic improvement to the Carbon footprint. At the end of 2024 we plan to bring to the church a route plan for implementation during 2025.
In the meantime, we have held several Community Engagement Activities:
1. A regular Parish Litter Picking Event (next one planned for 16th March 2024)
2. A Christmas Craft Sale (held on 26th November and 3rd December 2023)
3. A Clothes Swap Event was held on 20th January 2024 (2pm to 4pm)
The EcoChurch Group meet 3 to 4 times a year for an hour online using the Church Prayer Meeting link.
The next meeting is planned online for 17th April 2024 at 8pm.