17.08.2016
Creation Time Encourages Christians to Care for the Environment
Churches in Ireland will join Christians throughout the world in celebrating Creation Time from September 1 until the Feast of St Francis on October 4 2016.
Creation Time is an opportunity for Christians of all traditions to reflect on the wonder and mystery of God’s Creation and to choose better ways to relate to the living earth, ways that reflect God’s ways of justice and peace.
Creation Time is promoted by Eco–Congregation Ireland (ECI) – an inter–church project that encourages churches to take an environmental approach to worship, lifestyle, property and finance management, children’s and youth work, community outreach and contact with the developing world.
In 1989 the Ecumenical Patriarch suggested that September 1, the first day of the Orthodox Church’s year, should be observed as a day ‘of protection of the natural environment’.
Ten years later the European Christian Environmental Network (ECEN) widened this proposal, urging churches to adopt a Time for Creation stretching from September 1 to the feast of St Francis on October 4 and this was endorsed by the 3rd European Ecumenical Assembly in Sibiu, Romania in 2007, which recommended that the period ‘be dedicated to prayer for the protection of Creation and the promotion of sustainable lifestyles that reverse our contribution to climate change’.
Since 2008 Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) has compiled a programme of resources to encourage and assist churches to observe Creation Time. These include suggestions on a variety of ways in which churches, groups and individuals could choose to focus on a creation theme at this particular time of the year.
Worship material for Creation Time 2016 comes from an ecumenical writing group, with contributors from the Church of Scotland, the Scottish Episcopal Church and the United Reformed Church. This year’s material follows the theme, ‘Followers of Jesus, Caring for Creation’, emphasising the readings from the Gospel of Luke which appear in the Revised Common Lectionary in September. These are available on the Eco–Congregation Scotland website.
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