In a flash of rare brilliance, the Church of England has found a new way to entice the next generation of Anglicans into its churches: the opportunity to do number two in a church supplied composting toilet. It doesn’t get any more seeker friendly than that.
I do think the church might still be able to go one step further, though; especially parishes with adjacent allotments.
From here:
In our office we have a large map entitled ‘Devon’s Green Churches’ which contains a series of dots and stars covering the county from Ilfracombe to Ivybridge. Each symbol represents a church with a composting toilet or solar panels, or has completed an energy survey, or is registered as fair-trade or an ‘eco-congregation’, or runs a wood-burning heating system, and so on. They are examples of church eco projects. In total there are more than 200 coloured symbols and we add more each few weeks.
This is a joke, right? Right?
David
You’re showing your age with this post.
As the original article says, none of the initiatives are perfect and all have flaws. But, they are an expected norm today… even here in oil-dependent Alberta.
While I personally prefer options other than compostable toilets, doing something is better than doing nothing. I would think that the vast majority of people under 45 would be turned off by a church that mocks attempts to be stewards of God’s creation. Get used to it – minimizing our environmental footprint, even if it initially involves small and symbolic gestures, is here to stay.
Maybe they should get back to preaching the gospel but I suppose that is just a little too radical for them seeing that most of them don’t believe it.
We are called to proclaim the Gospel, which is the Christ-event, the power of God (Romans 1:16). We can preach the Gospel by words, actions, behaviors and attitudes. Unfortunately, very often it is our preconceived judgmental attitudes, legalism, hypocrisy, insensitivity, and intolerance, not the Gospel, that turn people away.
” …a church with a composting toilet or solar panels, or has completed an energy survey, or is registered as fair-trade or an ‘eco-congregation” – Presumably these churches have been thoroughly re-ordered to facilitate the worship forms of the Church of Environmentalism, which has clearly been taking over many (formerly Anglican) church buildings. I suppose that beats selling them to Muslims, like ECUSA is doing.