Eco Church

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it - Genesis 2:15

The Parish Church of St John Baptist stands out on Danbury ridge as a landmark whose spire is visible from the A12 and from many local vantage-points.

There has been a church here from at least 1233, and probably considerably before that. The present church is a Grade 1 Listed Building.

There is much of interest to see inside the church, but more importantly its location in a conservation area acts as a vital natural corridor for precious wildlife and plant species linking up with the national trust land and the Essex Wildlife Trust lands to the north and south respectively.

Worship

Since our current Priest in Charge, Revd Cannon Jacqui Jones, arrived at St Johns she has regularly preached on her wonder at the natural world and creation we are here to protect. This has led to several special services specifically to celebrate this creation. As well as some of our monthly less formal, lay led, Café Praise services being themed on the wonder of creation.

Buildings

With a beautiful grade 1 listed church, it is incredibly difficult but vitally important to try and reduce our impact on the world. We completed our goal to change all lighting to low energy LED by 2025 3 years early. This includes the spire lights and adjacent meeting rooms.

We renovated the kitchen in the meeting rooms in 2018, including installing a high efficiency water heater, replacing the one that was over 25 years old.

With the layout and structure of St Johns it is difficult to find ways to improve our footprint, but we have managed a significant improvement through installing a new circulation pump and adding a smart meter to our existing boiler. combined reducing our gas consumption nearly in half.

We are currently looking into new ways to heat the church. This includes looking at possibly installing solar panels, as Chelmsford Diocese has recently clarified its DAC procedures.

The meeting room is planned to have extra insulation put in after we had squirrels eat a lot of it, and replacing the existing storage heaters with more efficient heating we can control remotely.

Land

The land the PCC looks after

Maintaining a churchyard is vitally important. It is a place people come to visit the resting place of their relatives. But the local wildlife has been using this land before we got here, and will hopefully continue to long after we are gone.

Our Spring and Summer Wildflower areas

Since 2021 we have managed areas of the churchyard to allow wildflowers to grow and flourish. If you visit you will likely see these areas, signed with “Please mind the weeds, we are feeding the bees!”

our location as a nature Corridor

As shown from the above Defra map, St Johns church, church green and churchyard are a vital corridor for wildlife in Danbury.

We have a large compost heap that is used by the adjacent allotments, and several bird boxes across the churchyard as well as 2 bug hotels.

Community and Global Engagement

We are closely linked to our local sustainability group, Sustainable Danbury, many members of who are in the church family. They hold sustainability events in our meeting rooms, including with local councillors.

We are incredibly proud of our links to Ride and Stride, who raise money for the Friends of Essex Churches, while promoting a green message (even though it means everyone who visits St Johns on their events has had to walk or cycle up to the highest point in Essex!)

One of the charities we support is a school in Kinyamaseke village in South Rwenzori. They are on the front lines of climate change, experiencing droughts, floods and fires. We have supported them for many years and their reports to our congregation give us the understanding of the hardship we are all going to be facing if we do not do a better job looking after the world.

Lifestyle

Our monthly ley led service twice a year uses the theme of sustainability, climate change and the environment. This includes explaining and encouraging the use of carbon footprint calculators.

The Eco Church team is hoping to build on this, helping those who are less technological to be able to get involved.