Project Description

Church Operations and Programming

Note: The following lists are by no mean exhaustive. They are instead the starting points to stimulate thinking for possibility and feasibility in your church settings. Any link external to A Rocha Canada and its sister organizations does not represent our endorsement to the particular organizations, their agendas, programs or materials.

General Principles and References

Purchasing and Zero Waste Principles at Churches

In this guide, Reduce: Purchasing Principles for Churches, a variety of topics are covered, including:

    • Biblical Principles for Reducing Waste
    • The Stewardship Principle of the Waste Hierarchy
    • Principles for Choosing What to Buy
    • Review and Plan
    • Setting a policy for your church

This infographic, Z is for Zero Waste: A-Z fun practical pointers for churches, lists 26 easy-to-remember tips for environmentally friendly practices in church operations.

Sources: Eco Church NZ Resource webpage, A Rocha Aotearoa New Zealand.

The following are some action suggestions for churches on:  

Sources: Green Churches Network Canada (a Canadian Catholic organization with resources on greening churches that could be applied by any denomination).

Become a cycling-friendly church

To ensure your church is cycling-friendly, here are some things your church could consider doing:

    • Provide good quality and ample bike parking at church.

    • Provide lockers or hooks inside your church to accommodate biker’s gear like helmets, outerwear, and water packs.

    • Provide a bike map of safe routes to and from the church on your website or on a notice board.

    • Provide a bike repair station at your church.

    • Support a local bike-share program and consider sponsoring a station at your church.

    • Organize a Bike to Church Sunday. Here are some ideas.
    • In case electric bicycles are considered an acceptable option, this story of “e-bicycle for church leaders” from Parklands Baptist Church in Christchurch, New Zealand, would be an inspiration.

For more, the Church of England Diocese of Manchester has a web page, Cycling to our churches, which provides many useful tips on how to organize.

Click to enlarge

Other Suggestions and Examples

Run a Repair Café at your church

We throw away vast amounts of stuff. Even things with almost nothing wrong, and which could get a new lease on life after a simple repair. The trouble is, lots of people have forgotten that they can repair things themselves or they no longer know how. Knowing how to make repairs is a skill quickly lost. Church premises provide an ideal hub to engage church and local communities to run Repair Cafés. These Repair Cafés are free meeting places, and they are all about repairing things together – people with broken items and repair specialists coming together to repair and learn or just enjoy a cup of tea or coffee. Valuable practical knowledge is getting passed on. Things are being used for longer and don’t have to be thrown away.

Repair Cafe International provides supports to local groups around the world to start their own Repair Café. Meanwhile, under the Visit page there is a map showing the local examples of Repair Café across Canada.

On Transportation

    • Organize a Bike-to-Church Sunday (Here are some ideas), Car-Free Sunday, and/or Car-Sharing Sunday
    • Arranging car-pooling for congregants.
    • Establish a transit-friendly posture for the church, by providing the numbers of the bus and/or tram / streetcar routes (or subway stations) that passes closest to your church and print it in your church bulletin and website.

Here for more ideas.

On Food

    • Organize Farm-to-Table “pot luck” gatherings for church functions or small groups
      • These could be organized as a small contest among the dish contributors, with rules of using only locally sourced and seasonal ingredients in the dish prepared, and the telling of the reasons or stories behind the ingredients chosen. This is a fantastic and proven way to raise awareness about sustainability on food and eating.
    • For church functions with food and drink, consider to replace single-use tableware – plates, cups, cutlery – with reusable  / washable ones. If possible, upgrade the kitchen dishwashing facility to accommodate larger volume.
    • Consider to move away from the prepackaged communion packets and disposable/single-use communion cups, and replace with more sustainable choices, such as washable / reusable communion cups.