WGNC and sustainability

Scientists now declare that planet earth is in serious trouble. The global warming process is at a threshold where, without drastic action by all peoples, we will reach a point of no return where it will not be possible to save the world from decending into climatic, economic and eventually military turmoil. It would appear that our lifestyle is not sustainable in the developed world. Any serious investigation in to sutainability deals primarily with the subject of community. Some academic texts on the subject sound almost like an exegesis on scripture except that there is no scripture. In buildings, singificant savings in energy can be made from forming communities which benefit from common sources of energy and common lifestyles. In a bid to eliminate our adiction to travel, a focus on local community life is eesential. So what for WGNC? What would be the ultimate service we could make to our God and to the cause of sustainability which would protect God's creation and prevent suffering around the world, particularly in the third world? It is hard to get away from the obvious change that all of us should be moving to our local church and not travelling away from our own communities (burning oil in the process). As the persecuted church of the first century spread the good news around the known world so WGNC could serve in established churches making contact with their own communities in many ways including in the spiritual realm.

Posted on: 2006-11-09 00:00:00 by Douglas

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Category: General

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  • Wait a minute. If you lot all move to your local church, we'll be left here with 5 other people and a couple of dogs! Of course you could all move to Kelvindale and the property prices would rocket. Anyone want to buy a house? Or maybe a few bikes? (The usual superficial nonsense from Clark).


    1 Year, 5 Months, 3 Weeks, 4 Days, 2 Hours, 48 Minutes ago by

  • • I think we need to do a lot more than merely save on the Sunday commute. All of us as individuals have our part to demonstrate sustainability in our lifestyles as part of our living out the Gospel. Its the Mon-Sat that really counts. Not having a building in the first place is a good start. The school is a shared asset, and hence shared energy consumption, with the community already - we've seen the tennis and swimming classes taking place at times close to our services. This embeds us as a community activity. Finally, isn’t it a touch arrogant to imagine that we could teach established churches about a new Christianity. Don’t we have much to learn?


    1 Year, 5 Months, 2 Weeks, 3 Days, 5 Minutes ago by

  • I think the idea of the church as community in this respect could, as a start, mean supporting one another in changing our lifestyles. Instead of implicitly encouraging one another in our environmentally profligate lives, we should help each other to do the opposite. That is why I think the Church Carbon Monitoring scheme is worth joining.(Douglas Jack has joined!) It allows us to quantify together how we are contributing to Global Warming, and over time encourage us to improve our record. Contact Robert Goldie robert.goldie@oracle.com if you would like to sign up, or for more information.

    There has been a fair amount of writing recently about Christian responses to environmental issues. Here are a couple of websites that I found interesting.

    http://www.ecocongregation.org/ http://en.arocha.org/about/index.html

    ...and a couple of excellent ones with no particular Christian focus if you want to get clued up on Climate Change.

    http://www.monbiot.com/ http://www.realclimate.org/


    1 Year, 4 Months, 2 Weeks, 1 Day, 6 Hours, 34 Minutes ago by

  • Not travelling to Church one day a week won't save the planet if nothing else changes. In many cases it would be fairer to target Braehead shopping centre which seems to demand an average 3 vistits a week. Would it be 'right' to blow it up ?... haha wee joke

    But community is an issue. If we could live our whole lives (schools, shops, clubs, friends, church .. even jobs) without transport then it would be better all round. But it would be really hard even then to give up the holiday / pleasure travel we all have become accustomed to Maybe we will just wait till they invent carbon neutral personal transport. Then the only worry will be our physical condition due to lack of exercise


    1 Year, 3 Months, 3 Weeks, 4 Days, 5 Hours, 58 Minutes ago by