This website was started as a project by the Eco Church group at St Andrew's Laverstock for the benefit of the whole village. Everyone is welcome to contribute and take part in Wild About Laverstock whatever your beliefs and we won't fill up the site with churchy stuff! However on this page we thought we would explain why this is important to us and how it fits in with the rest of what we do as church.

The Bible tells us that 'The heavens declare the Glory God' and many of us will have found ourselves thinking about the idea of a creator, and possibly feeling closer to God as we go out into the countryside, away from the hustle and bustle of life, and amid the beauty of nature. As Christians we also believe that it is one of our responsibilities to take action to address climate change and the bio-diversity crisis, both as an act of stewardship for God's creation, and because we know that the impacts of ecological disasters will affect us all, but particularly many of the most vulnerable people around the world.

We have therefore set up an Eco-Church group where members of the church work together to look after our land and buildings and to take action and raise awareness on some of these issues. We are part of a nationwide scheme for churches of all denominations run by the charity A Rocha UK. If you would like to get involved in our group or if you are part of another church and would like to find out more about our experience of Eco Church, please do get in touch.

We are also part of the Church of England and caring for creation is part of it's five marks of mission (what we try to do). The five marks of mission are-

• To teach, baptise and nurture new believers

• To respond to human need by loving service

• To seek to transform unjust structures of society,

• to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation

• To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth