Eco Church: Clifton Church's Commitment to "Going Green"
What we are doing as a parish
Clifton Parish is committed to become greener. This means we want to take practical action to care for God’s earth, and to understand better God’s purposes for the whole of creation.
Across our three churches, Clifton Parish Church, St Mark’s Rawcliffe and Clifton Moor Church, we have signed up to the ARocha Eco Church programme, which commits us to taking what action we can to combat the current ecological crisis and work towards being net zero. This means we are looking at how we manage our buildings and our land to reduce carbon emissions and encourage biodiversity; and also ensuring our teaching, worship and community activity embrace the need for environmental change to care for God’s world.
Why Christians should care
Christians believe that responding to the climate crisis is an essential part of our responsibility to safeguard God’s creation and achieve a just world. We believe that “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1). We have no right to treat the earth (or any of its people) casually or worse, exploitatively and destructively. Rather, we have a duty to care for the earth, to safeguard its integrity and to strive to bring about God’s pure and perfect will for the whole of creation.
Two Groups
In 2024, Clifton Parish set up two groups to help bring about these purposes. Both span all three of our churches and congregations.
One is the Net Zero Working Group, a practical action group which meets
regularly and works to make our buildings, land, practices, community and worship greener, implementing new practices and standards. We are always happy to have new members: if you would like to inquire about this, contact the curate, Rev. Helen Jones at helenj@cliftonparish.org.uk
Our other group is the Clifton Parish Green Forum. This wider, informal group meets two or three times a year bringing together people from across our parish and beyond to discuss issues that concern us, to share good practice, and to enhance our understanding of why Christians should care about the planet, and what we can do to respond to the current ecological crisis. Forum meetings are open to everyone and are regularly advertised here and in our parish notice sheet, Info2You.
In May 2025, Clifton Parish Church achieved our Bronze Eco Church Award.
