Well, what a summer we have had! We’ve said thank you to Felix for his work with us last year. We’ve prayed Ian into sitting down – which he will be doing from his new permanent home in the Scottish Highlands. The circuit team have worked hard together, and we have welcomed Dr Joseph Muwanzi and his family to Manchester from their home in Harare, Zimbabwe. God continues to have great plans for us all!
We have also enjoyed sunny weather, incredible thunderstorms, a solar and lunar eclipse – did you see the photos from Manley Park, where over 150 gathered on their community garden to look to the skies and share a barbecue together, and several heatwaves – a reminder that the ambition for the circuit to be an eco-circuit is prophetically vital as the world warms up. As I’m writing this, the collapse of the Himalaya Glacier has caused devastation at the Tibet-Nepal border. We are in a time of climate crisis, and as a Church we are entering a formal liturgical time of CreationTide (for which resources are available on the Methodist Resource Hub, and in Roots).
The world we live in is a beautiful place: concrete and coastline, field and fencing – are all part of the beauty and joy we have been gifted by God. It is all part of the amazing ecology that God declared to be ‘good’ and asked us to celebrate and look after.
This Creation Season – how might you (personally and a church) lean into Climate Action?
- You might want to encourage your church councils to sign up to Eco Church, and see what adaptations you need to gain a Bronze award. The circuit remains ambitious for an eco circuit award, so everyone has a part to play!
- If you have an eco award, how about putting together an action plan for the next award.
- Encourage those leading worship to include creationtide resources as part of your services and small groups.
- Engage with climate change materials available through the Methodist website, All We Can, and from our Global partners. You might want to explore twinning with another Methodist Church in the Pacific region, or hearing from their lived experience.
- Consider what personal adaptations you can make in your daily life as a response to God’s call to practice this season.
As the President, Revd Mark Slaney, has said, ‘I invite you to contemplate deeply what solidarity you and the church to which you belong both practice, and might be called to practice, in local contexts and in relation to the cries of justice and mercy worldwide.’
May God bless you and your communities this Connexional year, as we look to the skies and beyond to see the Kingdom of God brewing all around us.