Net Zero Journey

A little bit about us:

We are an urban church with limited resources running a large, listed Victorian building and a well-utilised community centre with a large hall, kitchen, meetings rooms and offices. The site is busy, well-used & active seven days a week. 

We are an inter-generational Christ-centred community, seeking to love, follow, serve, care and thrive together. Our mission priorities include:

• Growing in discipleship and worship
• Serving vulnerable people, including those facing hunger, homelessness and isolation
• Providing warm, welcoming and accessible spaces
• Caring for creation and stewarding our resources well

Our desire to move towards Net Zero is held within these priorities and within God's mission, and we are intrigued and inspired to discover what it looks like to be wise stewards of the buildings as places for worship, hospitality, community action and daily activity, whilst also taking steps to care for God's creation through significantly reducing our consumption of non-renewal resources and encouraging delight in nature. 

Small and Significant Changes

Since 2022, we have become intentional in taking steps to significantly reduce our use of gas and electricity. And we began with small steps. You can read about it the blogs below, but let me summarise a few things:

• We tapped into the passion, knowledge and skills of people in the congregation (it's amazing how when God calls he also provides, though often in unlikely places) - Amongst the volunteers we had a engineer who liked numbers, an archaelogist who knew about historic building, an environmentalist who could inspire people, and willing pairs of hands who could construct scaffolding
• We gathered information: about our gas usage, about our electricity usage, about individual appliances, about weekly and monthly patterns, and this information shaped our decision making
• We focused on one theme or issue at a time: the first year was electricity (and we switched light bulbs, then tackled urns, fixing the immersion heater) etc), the second year we addressed gas (and we paid attention to timing of heating coming on and off, and then lowered the ceiling in the office)
• We realised the keeping things going was not easy, and some tech didn't last long (like chair heaters... which we mended) and so there was need to keep reminding and reiterating habits.
• We celebrated the good things and the successed and tried to capture people's imaginations, even if folk weren't buying in to the whole thing (so we did 'The Great Light Switch' and had summer themes of being 'Nature Champions' and sharing photos of enjoing nature

Time for Bigger Changes

It's time now to look at bigger changes, and with the help of the national Church of England we want to explore what is possible, and what help is available to get there. And we want to share our journey to help inspire others to see what we can each do.

Something we've done so far include:

• Create a 'Site Tour' that provides the basis of discussion and shared learning, and helps us hear from various stakeholders.
• Write a 'Brief' that ensures all interested contractors and advisors understand our context, our needs, our limitations and our hopes.

We plan to bring you some blogs to share our learning and experience and to offer you stories and practical tips. And if you'd like to visit us, do contact Andy, our fantastic site officer (sitestdenys@gmail.com)