Welcome to the ‘Building a Caring Community’ guide, designed to get your community involved in caring for creation, split across several themes, and jam-packed with insights, resources, and inspiring stories, this resource serves as a great way to get you started in transforming the lives of our communities to help address the cries of the earth and the cries of the poor.
This website is divided into several different categories. Each of these categories looks at a particular area of life and provides some ideas for action for your community, whether it be parish, school, home or any place where people gather together.
How to reduce energy use and why it is so important.
Developing skills, sharing and using parish buildings for the good of all.
Could your parish enable us to change our wasteful lifestyles?
How can building our relationship with God sustain us and help us to show care in our actions?
How can we make sure all parishioners are able to join activities? How can our actions be a credible witness?
Today’s culture allows us to see nature and our neighbours as ways to get the things we want, or live the lives that we want. What is normal today is often defined by what is technically possible, rather than what is good for us, our neighbours, or our planet. As technology advances, we get used to doing things in a certain way and harmful attitudes become normalised.
On their own, people can be unaware of this self-interested way of looking at the world. Other people, when they have seen the damage done, want to break free from their habits, but are disheartened. They find it hard to believe that their small actions can make a difference against such huge problems as climate change.
With our faith as motivation, we can praise God together for the beauty of his creation, live in hope and gratitude, and break free from the need to consume more than is necessary.
With our numbers, we can come to realise we are not alone in our efforts and that together great things are indeed possible. We can find contentment and hope in community actions.
With our church buildings, halls, and gardens we have the physical resources to both serve and enable others to take action. A parish should be a place that equips people with all they need to flourish. It should be a place that enables great projects, provides education, and allows encounter with neighbours and nature; breaking us out of our little bubbles. Above all, a parish praises God, with appreciation of the gift of our common home and human family.
The parish is a shared space for our God-given creativity in reimagining our world.
Let us prepare the future!
Join one of the many Church Social action and environmental networks across the UK