The Capellania Anglicana de Ibiza y Formentera, (also known as the English Speaking Church on Ibiza and Formentera) is a bronze-awarded church in the Diocese of Europe. Hear their story of how they connected with creation during Lent:
Our Creation Care Group loved the suggestion from A-Rocha UK to use the season of Lent to encourage people to focus on God’s creation. With permission from A Rocha UK, we adapted their material to make it more applicable to life on Ibiza and created a sheet explaining the specific focus for each of the six weeks leading up to Easter. On the reverse of this sheet, we also provided suggestions on how to live a life with zero waste.
On the first week, as part of our Sunday service, we gave out seeds of local varieties of vegetables for people to plant at home. Over the remainder of Lent, we also organised a walk through the forest and along some almond groves where we heard about the endangering effect of climate change on those old trees; this was followed by a community picnic. Our Creation Care group also arranged litter picks and gave other suggestions as to how to engage with God’s creation around us.
We promoted the weekly themes on social media and in our Sunday services, together with using them to fuel our corporate and individual prayer lives. During Lent, we also asked for people to submit photos and reflections of what they discovered, and although most of these came from those living on Ibiza, we also had contributions from as far away as Singapore! Many of these images were later made into a short video running through each week’s activities, which was shared on social media and available to watch here.
We particularly enjoyed how we could adapt the A Rocha UK material to our context and that it enabled people to take part and engage with God’s creation in fresh ways regardless of where they were. The feedback we received was very positive, and it is definitely something we will do again.
