Season of Creation

This webinar explores what some of the key New Testament themes say about the material world. What are the implications for our missional understanding of creation care when we consider Incarnation, Resurrection, Creation and Redemption, New Creation, and Creation and Christ?

Speaker: Revd Margot R Hodson is Director of Theology and Education at the John Ray Initiative, an educational charity with a vision to bring together scientific and Christian understandings of the environment. She is also Associate Vicar of the Shill Valley and Broadshire Benefice in West Oxfordshire.

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We are living through a time of crisis for the climate and for nature. This is the world in which the Church lives out its ministry and mission. This webinar explores how creation care and evangelism need each other in this context.

Speaker: Revd Steve Hollinghurst works for Lichfield diocese as Evangelism Enabler with an Environmental focus.

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We might all be in the same storm, but we are not in the same boat. Climate change is having a disproportionate effect on women, indigenous people and people of colour. This webinar shares the stories from some of those marginalised communities.

Speaker: Maria Andrade is Theology and Network Engagement Global Lead for Tearfund. She is an Ecuadorian theologian and sociologist. She has spent more than 15 years accompanying Christians in engaging with justice and development in different places around the world.

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The theme for the Season of Creation in 2022 was ‘Listen to the voice of creation’. In this webinar, we see where the Bible shows us creation itself speaking in worship of God, and what the implications of our environmental destruction might be on that worship

Speaker: Dr Cherryl Hunt is Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Department of Theology and Religion, University of Exeter and Tutor on the South West Ministry Training Course. Cherryl is a former molecular biologist who metamorphosed into a theologian. She will explore with us biblical texts where creation cries out or glorifies God.

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Many people say that their more profound encounters with God occur outside, as they engage with God’s creation. Forest Church takes this as the starting point for worship, gathering outdoors, with engagement with nature at the heart of our prayer.

This webinar covered the ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ of Forest Church.

Speaker: Cate Williams is Environmental Engagement Officer for Gloucester Diocese, a Forest Church facilitator and author of the Grove booklet on Forest Church.

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Our practical efforts to combat climate change are undergirded by our theology - a belief in a creator God and a hunger and thirst for righteousness, whilst our ability to connect the 'ecological crisis' to our faith is helpful in terms of evangelism and pastoral care.

In this webinar, we considered the theological resources at our disposal and how we might constructively reflect on the context of the Anthropocene from a variety of starting places.

Speaker: Revd Ruth Newton, vicar of St John's Sharow, a silver Eco Church. She is a member of General Synod and involved in environmental training in the Diocese of Leeds.

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Worship, prayer and the environment. This webinar helped us to bring together God's beautiful creation and our worship and prayers

Speaker: Revd Canon Dr Vicky Johnson, Canon Precentor at York Minster. Vicky oversees the worship, liturgy and music at the majestic York Minster, and is a member of the national Environment Working Group.

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This webinar explored how climate action fits with all five Marks of Mission, and inspired us to see how this can be part of your church's mission outreach.

Speaker: Revd Grace Thomas, curate at Moss Side, St James with St Clement, and Whalley Range, St Edmund, and one half of the shared Diocesan Environment Officer role in the Diocese of Manchester. She is also the author of a newly published Grove Booklet on this topic.

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Creationtide, now more commonly known as the Season of Creation, is a concept introduced by the late Ecumenical Patriarch, Demetrios I, 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.

Churches Together in Britain and Ireland adopted the concept in 2008. In 2016, Pope Francis declared 1 September an annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creationtide.

While its adoption was in part driven by the complex environmental crises the human race faces, the Season of Creation draws on much deeper roots in Scripture and in older Christian traditions of the relationship between God, humanity and the created order.

The timing of the Season of Creation means it is an excellent way of rooting traditional harvest festivals in wider issues and firm theological ground.