More CHurches sign up

Great News. We now have 37 URC churches in the West Midlands Synod who have signed up with A Rocha. Of these 9 have received a bronze award and 2 a silver award. All these churches were commended by the Moderator at the Synod Meeting at Sutton Coldfield URC on 16 March 2019.

For churches that have not signed up, can I encourage you to do so. The process cannot be more simple. This is all you have to do:

1. Go to your search engine on your internet and type in the name ‘A Rocha’. This will take you to their web site.
2. One of the choices you will then have is enter the area ‘Eco Church’. Enter on this.
3. You will then see an option ‘Inspired? Register now to get started’ Enter on this.
4. You can then enter information about your church. Once you have done this you have registered.
5. Once registered go back to the previous page and enter in on ‘Interested: Try the Eco Survey Now’ and start completing the survey.
6. You will see that the questions come under 6 headings:a)Worship and Teaching b)Buildings c)Land – (for most churches this is not applicable) d)Community and Global e)Lifestyle f)Additional Information.
7. The whole questionnaire should not take more than 15 minutes to complete. As you start to answer the questions you will see in the top left hand part of the page 5 semi circles. They will gradually change colour as you provide positive answers to the questions. They will move from nothing to bronze, to silver and possibly gold. This indicates how well your church is doing environmentally. If they all turn bronze, you will be entitled to apply for a bronze award. If they all turn silver, a silver award and gold a gold award.
8. The questionnaire will hold your information at any time and you can return to it at a later date. You can download your information and each time you change the answers you will receive an email from A Rocha giving the information you have provided.
9. What you may well find is that you may not feel in a position to apply for an award straight away. You may feel that you will want to produce an action plan of things to be done. This is a really good idea as you will find that some of them can be achieved very easily.
10. Please have a go and if you want any help do not hesitate to contact me. Email: [email protected] (John Davey)

 
There is just one more suggestion I would make. I would encourage all churches to contact Mark Rudhall at Green Energy Consulting.  Mark will come to your church free of charge and will undertake a survey to see how energy efficient the church is. He will then produce a report of recommendations. This will tick boxes on your A Rocha Survey especially if you decide to change your energy suppliers to ones that are more environmentally friendly.

Mark can be contacted through Green Journey on 03330 067 177 - Email [email protected] or go to their web site www.greenjourney.org.

John Davey 22 March 2019