We are a church that is aiming to be passionate about Jesus and part of our passion for him is expressed in being passionate about his creation and caring for it.

In July 2022 an EcoChurch team was formed at St Matthew’s & Cheltenham Minster to focus on reducing our carbon footprint as a church and to encourage our individual members to do the same in their homes and businesses.

The PCC agreed an EcoChurch Policy in May 2025.

Using the A Rocha EcoChurch Scheme we qualified for the Bronze Award (in December 2022) and the Silver Award (in November 2023). We are now focused on achieving our Gold Award.

This Scheme has enabled us to examine our behaviour in 5 areas of church life:

  • Worship and Teaching

  • Buildings

  • Community & Global Engagement

  • Lifestyle

  • Buildings and Land

We are a Town Centre based Church Community with two large “listed” buildings. St Matthew’s has limited open-space - mainly kerbside and car park – and whilst The Minster has a valuable green space in the centre of town, these are managed by Cheltenham Borough Council, who we are working with to improve eco-diversity.

Our biggest challenge now is to move towards achieving Gold Status, which we hope to be able to apply for by December 2026. DDuring 2025 and 2026 we are planning to review how our church buildings operates and acquire plans and costings to make a drastic improvement to the Carbon footprint. By the the end of 2025 we plan to bring to the church a route plan for implementation during 2026.

In the meantime, we have held several Community Engagement Activities:

1.      A regular Parish Litter Picking Event (normally held at the end of the Gold Cup Festival in March each year)

2.      A Christmas Craft or Cake Sale (normally held on Advent Sunday)

3.      Clothes Swap Events held at various times of the year

The EcoChurch Group meet 3 to 4 times a year for an hour or so. We are always looking for extra volunteers to help with various one-off or ongoing projects – for further information please contact the church office and one of the EcoChurch Facilitators will get back to you.