Progress Update
Currently, St Nicholas and St Barnabas have a Bronze Award from A Rocha. We are continuously looking at how we can become more eco-friendly in the different aspects of church life.
Worship – our key priority
On 31st May we are going outdoors for our 10 am service! All ages are welcome as we celebrate God’s creation on Trinity Sunday. It is a while since we have had a service outside – as you can imagine, it involves some logistics including a working sound system, safety aspects, and appropriate seating. It also requires good weather! But we are blessed with beautiful surroundings and we are looking forward to worshipping God there together.
Our church’s aim is for eco-friendly themes to be seamlessly integrated into our worship lives. This already happens a good deal in our prayers during services and we are continually thinking about how we can incorporate more of these into our services, without losing our main focus of worshipping God.
Café Sunday is a family service that takes place once a month at St Barnabas. As a matter of course, our Families Worker, Heather, often introduces activities that are eco-themed.
As far back as we can remember, every Autumn, St Nicholas has held a harvest service. The church is decorated with flowers and homegrown fruit and vegetables. The congregation donate food items – these days, we give our collection to the Trussell Trust for distribution.
In addition to this, we’ve now introduced a Creation Day service, so the church can focus on taking care of our planet. In the 2025 service, the Eco Church team took the opportunity to explain a bit more about what we are doing and how the whole congregation can get involved.
Home groups: our on-line home group completed an A Rocha study on creation care and is currently looking for another suitable study that combines Biblical themes and ecological concerns.
Children and families – a focus on the local community
In August 2025, our Families Worker, along with many volunteers, ran a Festival of Play for children with their parents/carers. This consisted of eight afternoons of different activities based around the theme of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, but with the added inclusion of pirates (!). Many of the craft activities were nature inspired, for example, reproducing miniature landscapes in recycled egg cartons, painting with wet soil and chalk, creating animals out of pine cones, and making wild-flower seed bombs. In addition, much of the crafting material was re-use too: one activity was decorating old plastic plant pots with scraps of coloured paper. It was an inventive use for those little pots that are normally thrown out – now they pencil holders, gifts, or house-plant containers.
On the August Bank Holiday Sunday, a community street festival took place on the High Street. Our Families Worker set up a nature trail around the churchyard, which was a fun outside activity for children on a beautiful sunny day.
These aren’t activities solely for church-going children and their families, by the way. We want everyone to feel at home at St Nicholas and St Barnabas.
Buildings – reduce and recycle
Several years ago, we installed LED lighting and better heating systems in both our church buildings. We have now altered to a green electricity supplier and we are more careful in how and when we heat and light our buildings. We’ve recently completed a study of our carbon footprint to see where we can make further improvements and have opened a Carbon 360 account.
For some time, we have been looking for ways to reduce our consumption of materials in our two churches, the church hall and our parish office. Some of the recent initiatives include: re-using the candles from our Nine Lessons and Carols service at Christmas at other services; re-using order-of-service booklets, where possible, and using a screen for family services; using china mugs rather paper cups for tea and coffee, and so on. In addition, our weekly newsletter and the church magazine is mostly on-line, with just a few paper copies for those without the internet.
We are fortunate to have keen recyclers amongst us to keep us on track when it comes to recycling as much as possible. For example, in St Nicholas Church’s servery, even the coffee grounds are kept for the garden flower beds; in the church office paper is carefully recycled, and a recent load of shredded paper went to a firm in Coventry to be made into recycled kitchen towel; we also have green bins outside for garden material.
In November 2025, the eco team took a heat camera into St Nicholas and St Barnabas to complete a thermal analysis of both buildings. The aim was to investigate where most heat is lost. A full report is available, but to summarise: in St Nicholas, the primary causes of heat loss are through windows and doors, rather than through the roof as we had thought might be the case; in St Barnabas, the primary causes are through the walls and doors. Given the unique qualities of each church, there are no easy or immediate solutions to put in place. However, now we have the relevant evidence, we will be able to consider what actions might be taken. This is a really exciting and positive step forward.
Outside spaces – taking care of nature
In June 2025, we took part in Churches Count on Nature, and eight volunteers spent time in St Nicholas Churchyard counting types of birds, insects/bees/moths, etc., and wildflowers. The figures go on a national register and we will do the same each year to monitor numbers. As the churchyard now has fewer mowed areas, we expect to see changes in wildlife.
In the same week we ran three events for Cherishing Churchyards: a working party with the Friends of Abbey Fields; an evening where the local group of Scouts, Cubs and Beavers came as part of their Big Help Out; and a name-the-herb quiz at the Open Gardens church teas.
A few years ago, we developed a small herb garden on a piece of empty ground at the edge of the churchyard. It was one of our first projects as an eco-church designed partly for bees and insects, and partly as a quiet space for people to sit and reflect. Nearly all the soil for the plant beds was given by a nearby pub, as it was left over from their landscaping work. Many herbs were donated, and we are now propagating when we can. A little while later a bench was given – sustainable wood and made by a very small English company.
At St Barnabas, there is a patch of land being used for allotments, with gardeners successfully growing a variety of fruit, vegetables and flowers there. St Barnabas is hoping to develop a peace garden in an adjacent area in the near future.
Lifestyle – conversations and communications
Eco church is looking forward over the coming months to having conversations where we ask our congregation what they think our church can do better. We recognise that, as individuals, people are often doing the best they can – they might cycle (we have installed a cycle rack) or walk to church, if they are able; they might buy an electric rather than a petrol car; they might share a lift to church. These are all great, though they are individual actions rather than corporate. We want to ask (and answer): Is there anything we, as a church, could do now to have a positive sustainable impact?
At the same time, we acknowledge that there is a lot already going on in our town in terms of eco and sustainability projects, and church members are already active in some of these. For instance, Kenilworth Lions run a very successful shop selling second-hand furniture and goods, while Friends of Abbey Fields hold nature talks and regular litter picks. So, our aim is to work on linking better with existing groups, rather than ‘reinventing the wheel’.
A lot of this is to do with effective communications. In all the busy-ness, we sometimes forget to share information. To combat this, we are now including eco tips in our church’s weekly newsletter to which we encourage everyone to contribute. We are also submitting more in-depth articles for each edition of the Grapevine, our church magazine. Recent pieces have been about fungi in the garden, better ways to do the laundry without harsh chemicals, and a visit to the new recycling centre in Coventry.
