Kerith Creation Care and Justice Team

I’ll never forget flying into Nairobi, Kenya, for work, with a previous job nearly 30 years ago now, and realising that the many little tiny round structures I could see out of the aeroplane window were huts where people lived. The small, fragile, basic wooden buildings, scattered across the dry, barren landscape were where people spent each day, trying to grow some basic crops from the land, walking miles to get water. Honestly, it changed my perspective on life forever.

If you’ve had the opportunity to travel many of you will have had similar experiences of seeing extreme poverty and need around the world. It’s a great privilege. But it’s also a responsibility.

Ever since then I’ve been challenged by what I can do to help improve the lives of those around us who are in such severe need.

Also, on the news at the moment, I don’t know about you, but when I see the images and news of events like the recent Bangladeshi floods my heart sinks. I want to turn over and not engage for fear of feeling helpless and depressed by the endless bad news about situations like this, and I wonder what else I can do.

But the fact is that we can all make a difference. Jesus calls us to bring good news to the poor, to love my neighbour as myself, to act justly, to love mercy. We are all challenged to act. We can all be part of the change that is needed to make the world a better place for everyone who lives in it.

But so much of the current suffering around the world is caused by the effects of the climate crisis. Weather patterns are changing, causing temperatures to rise, floods destroy communities, storms destroy crops, and other natural disasters impact drastically the lives of millions. So those people living in the Kenyan huts, and many communities like them, are now facing much greater difficulty and challenge than they ever did before.

When the impact of our behaviour happens far away it can feel easier to distance ourselves from the responsibility. Also we feel less responsible if the impacts of our actions now don’t directly affect our home region. But they will affect us all, and are beginning to. We are responsible for some of the causes of these problems and, as Christians, we must be part of the solution.

The Creation Care and Justice team at Kerith was set up following the ‘Creation Care’ series the church followed last Autumn. Our purpose is to help us think about the actions that we can take as a church and as individuals to help prevent climate change and the terrible impact it is having on the lives of over half the people in the world. We are a group of people with different gifts and interests, who are coming together to create a five year plan (it’s deep and wide) for our Kerith church sites. We are all motivated by different aspects of the issue, some out of a desire to look after God’s beautiful creation, as we were commanded to do in Genesis; some out of a desire to use the earth’s resources wisely, some, like me, to play our part in relieving the suffering of our global neighbours. We are a real mixed bunch. So far we have a horticulturalist, an architect, a social media expert, someone who works in sustainability, others interested in lobbying government, people keen to pray and think about a Biblical response to creation care issues, and others just keen to get on board and see what they can offer. We are already seeing that responsible choices are not that difficult - and some of our ideas are fun and will provide opportunities to make new friends and learn new skills along the way. We are all passionate about this issue and it’s fascinating how God is bringing us together to use us on this team.

So if this resonates with you and you would like to find out more or get more involved, please contact creation.care@kerith.church and come and join the Windsor CCJ team. We’ll be looking at all sorts of ways we can help reduce our carbon footprint.

God has clearly called me to get involved in this work and maybe he is calling you. Keep watching out for the CCJ social media posts and look out for steps you can take and news of our plans as they are unrolled and get behind what I believe God is doing amongst us.

Thanks for reading this.

Tracy