ABOUT

Earth be Glad is the umbrella title given to work at St John’s in developing environmentally responsible living. The environmental crisis is the biggest challenge facing humanity today and poses a huge challenge to our faith, theology and lifestyles. At St John’s, we are engaging with this challenge is a number of ways, co-ordinated by our Green Ginger Group.

For many years now, the Green Ginger group has co-ordinated a wide range of environmental activities at St John’s. The focus of the group is on ‘gingering’ (hence the name) individual members of our congregation as well as those responsible for making decision making in the church. That is to say the group does not exist to do the work for people, but to encourage them to find ways of living responsibly and more sustainably for themselves.

St John’s is a member of Eco-congregations Scotland and also works in partnership with our Church of Scotland neighbours to promote and engage with action relating to the environment.

In January 2022 the Green Ginger Group undertook a church audit and made recommendations to Vestry of actions that could be taken to improve the way our life as congregation reflects our commitment to living and working in ways that minimise our impact on the rest of creation. Vestry approved this report, with a couple of questions, and recommended we send copies of the relevant sections to different church organisation, which we did. You can download a copy of the report below.

In September 2022 we launched the Big Green Recipe Book at an ecumenical event with our Together partner churches.

Creationtide is a concept introduced by the late Ecumenical Patriarch, Demetrios I, in 1989. Since then, September 1 (chosen because it is first day of the Orthodox ecclesiastical year) has been adopted as the start of Creationtide. This is the season, running to St Francis day on October 4, when churches and congregations are called to pay special attention to the responsibility of humanity for the Earth and for all that lives upon it. Its start and end dates reflect that it is a shared idea between Western and Eastern Christianity.

We at St John’s have marked Creationtide by having a specific focus on an aspect of caring for creation and this has influenced the liturgy, music and preaching during our worship throughout the season.