Sanctuary Church, Eco Church, Community Church

To read more about Sanctuary Church:

https://stmaryselinghill.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/sanctuary-in-the-parish-of-calmore-website.pdf

Eco Church

We at St Mary’s have a mission to reach out to our community, offering ourselves and our church as a living sanctuary in a world of crisis, anxiety and threat.

SANCTUARY is an objective that we must work towards in a practical, measured way. We shall do this by becoming both an Eco Church and a Heart of Community, the purpose of which is personal and communal transformation to a way of life that meets the challenges of a failing world.

We will become a Gold Standard Eco Church. This means more than simply having an environmentally sound building and nature friendly church grounds; it means a commitment to safeguard and celebrate creation in the life of the church and in the community of Eling – through worship, learning, social engagement and personal life choices.

WHY?

The greatest challenge of our age is the world crisis that includes climate change, environmental pollution and species extinction. Our consumerism and the workings of global capitalism are using more resources than the earth can support. World population has boomed from 200 million at the birth of Christ to 7 ½ billion today, rising to 9 ½ billion by 2050. The planet is degrading rapidly and can support less year by year. The gains of prosperity are unfairly hoarded by the few, lavished on the fortunate and withheld from the poor.

HOW?

We shall make our church a net zero carbon building.

We will make the building and paths accessible to everyone.

We will open the church and grounds to the community to become a sanctuary for the community.