Green Anglicans attend a “Change Makers Design Shop”
Green Anglicans joined around 30 change makers from around the country gathered to co-design campaigns tackling socio- economic issues from the roots up.
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa’s Environmental Network addresses environmental issues in the province by supporting churches and Dioceses with the goal of becoming eco-friendly and fulfilling Gods call to Earth Keeping. However this will not be successful unless we have a strategy to bring this vision to the churches.
Jonathan Hobosch and I attended the “Change Makers Design Shop”, a week long workshop designing campaigns to tackle issues that are undermining peace and environmental justice at the root in the context of Southern Africa. One of the issues that we find as a challenge in the Anglican Church is to encourage sustainable ways of living in our churches including the use of water and electricity and incorporating care for creation in our worship.
The challenge of earth keeping within scripture and the reality of environmental factors involves understanding the injustice of the depletion of natural resources in the country but also recognising the impact caused by churches.
“Change Makers” equipped us with skills and resources we can use to find solutions to our issues in the church. We were able to draw up a diagram that will give us a guideline towards our goal, to find out why we need to bring about change and what are the issues that need assistance.
We learned the theory of change which is a process which includes outlining the building blocks required to reach our goal and also evaluating our mandate. At the end of the workshop we realised that all of this can be achieved if we are rooted in faith and shaped in scripture which shows us how we need to take care of creation.
-Ncumisa Magadla