At St Stephen’s Church we take seriously our God-given responsibility to care for his creation. We have been appointed stewards of the earth and all its creatures, and as individuals and as a church we seek to fulfil this role. Below you can find information about our work in this area.

Latest news! See some highlights of the work we’ve been doing by clicking this button:

A Prayer for God’s Creation, by Glenda

Father God, Saviour of the world, the world that you made for us in your glory: we ask Father that in your mercy you will look upon the suffering of the animals everywhere, here on earth, in the skies, and in the seas. We thank you Lord that there are kind people, stewards of the earth and all its beauty. They give their time and sometimes their lives in saving your beautiful creatures. Humankind can be cruel, selfish and thoughtless and your world suffers because of this. Teach us to protect your beautiful world. Make us courageous custodians who will do all we can to protect the blessings you have bestowed upon us. We pray for Animals Asia and their great work in saving the moon bears and other animals, and for all those in our country who care for animals and birds, saving, rehabilitating and educating for the future.

Amen

For more information about Animals Asia, please click here.

Monthly Blog Post - All Things Bright and Beautiful

For this article I wanted to talk about loos!

This relates to our ongoing Eco-Church commitment as within it they ask us to support an environmental charity which is based abroad. We agreed to be part of the Toilet Twinning programme (you can find them at toilettwinning.org). It essentially involves twinning our very own St. Stephen’s toilet with one in a country where there is poverty and deprivation.  The company who organises this says “dirty drinking water, unhealthy hygiene and unsafe sanitation cause the deaths of 1.4 million people every year and over 1000 children under the age of 5 every day”.  The programme funds hygiene education and helps communities build their own toilets.

Some of us will have had the bad luck to visit toilets at festivals and we know they can be grim. But imagine if you didn’t even have these facilities. Imagine not being able to wash your hands or have a private space – which is even more important for young women.  We are lucky enough in the UK to have indoor toilets and access to clean safe drinking water, but imagine having to walk miles for safe drinking water? Some of us will remember outside toilets before inside toilets were deemed (correctly) as a necessity. Some will have read in history books of the men who used to come through alleys to empty the contents of them. But thankfully all of this is confined to history in the UK. Sadly, it isn’t confined to history in many other much poorer countries.

St Stephen’s picked South Sudan out of a list of available countries which struggle with basic sanitation. The next time you use ‘the facilities’ in St. Stephen’s hopefully you can appreciate them a little more and be grateful that we all have easy access (as well as thanking those who keep our facilities in tip top condition).

If you to wish to twin with a toilet you can with Toilet Twinning - Find your toilet’s other half

Debbie