Tenants of the King - North Bedford Churches Together Lent Course 2024
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and God saw that it was good”
Tenants of the King is a four session bible based course to explore a Christian perspective on the environment and to consider the practical implications on our daily life and witness. The course is put together by Operation Noah, a Christian charity working to inspire action on climate change. The course was run for four weeks in Lent 2024 and our hosts were St. Mary’s Goldington on Wednesday afternoons, repeated at Priory on Wednesday evenings and our praise and gratitude goes to the volunteers who led the sessions. Each enjoyable session comprised an icebreaker chat to warm us up, a bible reading to give context to our thoughts, a short video from a different speaker each week followed by an activity and a discussion and then a short act of worship to conclude. The speakers (Bishop Graham Tomlin, Revd. Mark Melluish, Dr Ruth Valerio and Dr Justin Thacker) all had experience of different Christian environmental initiatives and were inspirational.
So what did we learn? In week 1 we learned that God intends creation to reflect His glory and that, when we pray “Thy will be done on Earth”, we are addressing the whole ecology of the world.
In week 2, we reflected on our broken world and where we can see creation groaning today.
Week 3 had a very uplifting message – that we can all make significant, though small, changes to improve the environment and that Jesus will be alongside us in the journey.
Week 4 encouraged us as churches to speak up for the environment and “speak truth to power”.
As well as helping us to focus on the Christian response to climate change, the course enabled us to share with others from local churches; the coffee and the fellowship were an important part of the experience. As we take away the messages to eat less meat, switch off appliances and travel by train rather than plane, we look forward to further opportunities to share our faith with our neighbours.
“What a wondrous temple this world is, for in truth it is the temple of God’s building wherein men ought to worship him”.
Text: Sue Allen.
Videos: via Operation Noah's YouTube channel.
