Kings Church Cockermouth is set just outside the Lake District National Park and is a wonderful place to live. Except that every few years, we have significant flooding, which badly affects the town, and which we as a church have responded to as part of the flood recovery programme. It is only over the past 2-3 years that we have really seen this as part of a wider climate change issue, and to which we are now responding.

In the early part of 2020, we were approached by a member of the church and asked to take the climate issue seriously, and asked us to respond in a positive way as a church. The leadership of the church was approached, and they readily agreed that this should be a major issue for us as a community. We initially met and talked about what our approach should be, and as a result, met with concerned members of the church – from which a small working party was formed in the middle of the year.

We attended the ChristCentral/Tearfund course, which has informed much of our journey since then. We are getting close to presenting the church with a declaration of intent, which will also go public, and have started various initiatives to help our church members think about the issues. These have included:

1.     Adding books on the climate to our regular Sunday morning book reviews
2.     Shooting videos in our online Coffee Theology series
3.     Adding information to our regular e-news which includes short thoughts, ideas, and a ‘Did you know…’ section
4.     Offering our small groups the Tearfund small group teaching series
5.     Doing an audit of our church's carbon footprint, so that we can a) see how we are impacting our environment and b) respond in an informed way
6.     An eco treasure hunt for our young people

 As COP26 approaches, we are hosting a creation Sunday on Nov 6th, 2021, and asking our church members to join in a walk to church morning, and we are also hosting a pop-up COP 26 café on November 13th using food destined for landfills to show that we throw too much away, and how we can use food that would normally be thrown out.

 We feel we have a long way to go, and much to learn, but are taking as many steps as we can, as quick as we can, and without alienating members of our congregation (we are learning that words such as should, must, ought etc do not resonate with our values of grace and mercy and looking for softer ways of saying the same thing!).

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