Welcome to our Eco Church page! We are an ‘A Rocha Gold Award Church ‘ as well as a Fairtrade Church!

“You will live in joy and peace. The mountains and hills will burst into song,
    and the trees of the field will clap their hands! ”

(Isaiah 55:12 New Living Translation)

A few of us attended a talk on ‘Sustainable Church Flowers’ It gave us lots of ideas for future arrangements in church. We hope to make this part of our ongoing Eco-Church work and in our Environmental Policy. SCF are Biodegradable, Local, Seasonal and Foam free – No more ‘Oasis‘. More information at http://suschurchflowers.com Church-flowers-and-sustainability.pdfhttps://share.google/CRuO2xaqgtdY1AX5l

Church Eco Team Update – November 2025

We had 2 very satisfactory mornings recently when the Garden volunteers did a few jobs.  We put up a bat box,  a lot of leaves were raked and stored, more rubbish collected, the wildflower ‘meadow’ was prepped for sowing (year 2), a hedgehog home (?) made and stage 1 of our dead hedge completed by the bus stop. It was great fun! 

The recycling station has been relocated to a new home in the Walker Room. We have smart coloured bins for all your used/old things that might otherwise end up in landfill.  Thank you to those who have already supported this, which also helps the work of Stroud Valleys Project https://www.stroudvalleysproject.org/

 We hope the new location, next to the Book Exchange in the Walker Room, will make it easier for all users of our premises to take part. Our new collection is your ‘no longer needed wearable bras’.  These will go to support Bra Recycling – at Against Breast Cancer https://share.google/f6npk7O8JGtaB6KsR via the local collection point in Stroud at Middle of the Hill Community Group. 

On Monday we had a very successful meeting with Eco church reps from Holy Trinity, Minchinhampton and St Mary’s in Wotton who contacted us to learn from our endeavours to reach Gold. We hope to get together again in the Spring to follow up. God is good. Jennie from Minchinhampton wrote: “What a wonderful afternoon yesterday! A huge thank you to you, and your enthusiastic and committed team members for making us Minch folks so welcome. We really appreciated your generous sharing of so much of Stonehouse Methodists’ journey to achieving a Gold Eco Church Award. We could see all those values expressed so clearly and naturally as soon as we walked into the church!”

We also had a nice thank you from Revd Rachel Leather after joining St Mark’s Eco Church team on zoom last week – “Just to say a quick thank you to you all for your wisdom and conversation on Monday. You’ve given us lots to think about and how St Mark’s can continue on our journey, and we all found your story inspirational.”

Thanks to all our church members and friends for their support, encouragement and help!

Ginny Young (Eco Church Co-Ordinator)

Our Eco Church Prayer Walk – October 2025

Celebrating GOLD!!!

We had a wonderful service at to Celebrate our Gold Eco-Church Award. Forty people joined us, friends from far and near – it was lovely to see Graham and Gaynor Miles, Steve and Jean Peck and Sue Peat – all helped start us off on the road to Gold with encouragement, help and support.  We looked back over 6 years of things we have all done to care for God’s Creation and how we must continue to do so – including saving the sparrows…The service was led by Revd Jimmy and included a presentation by Ginny of the church’s work to achieving the Gold Award. Revd John Kime gave a thought-provoking reflection and we sang hymns with a creation theme.

Revd Jimmy says: “Eco-church is part of our DNA at Stonehouse and as the whole congregation continues the work and encourages others, it is exciting to explore how our Eco-church ethos will help us to reach out to the schools and young people in our area as we follow the Holy Spirit with our continuing Eco-church journey.”

Flip Flip Hooray – 2011 revisited.  Thank you to all who came to our 2025 Big Brew for Transform Trade last Saturday, visitors from the community as well as church friends. Plenty of pancakes were consumed with many cups of tea and coffee as well as cake and scones.  Thanks too, to all the helpers who baked, set up, served, cleared up and organised the Raffle.

The total raised is £175.60 – Thank you!

👏Our garden eleves hard at work on the shop window of our church! Well done gang! November 2024 👏

👏👏 On behalf of the church our Eco Team, under the leadership of Ginny Young received A Rocha’s prestigious ‘Gold Award’ during worship on Sunday 3rd November 2024, our worship was led by the Revd. John Kime who is part of both the Gloucestershire Methodist Circuit and the Methodist Bristol District Eco teams

The Church Eco Team led worship on Sunday 9th June 2024 the theme was,
‘The Land is mine, says, The Lord’

(From left to right: Babs Cory, Ann Vale, Sue Alexander, Anne Langbridge, Fiona Chestnutt, Ginny Young, Karen Hulme, Chris Cory)

Eco Church Prayer Walk – April 2024

A select gathering enjoyed a lovely prayerful walk through quieter parts of Stonehouse in spring sunshine this morning. We paused to look at trees, a leaf and fungi, watch insects, listen to birdsong and notice rubbish. A heron looking for its lunch was a bonus. We were thankful for God’s creation and thought about what we can do to look after it. We live in a very beautiful place.

There has been a Methodist presence in Stonehouse for over 135 years. Stonehouse
Methodist Church was built on the Park Estate in 1955. In 1961, a Youth Hall (Douglas Morley Hall) was added, followed in 1965 by a new Manse and, in 1974, an extension to provide an improved kitchen and additional meeting room (The Walker Room). In 2019 a new commercial standard kitchen was installed after much fundraising and a generous grant from The Barnwood Trust. In 2024, a new air source heating system was installed in the Morley Hall, improving our energy consumption further.

We have been a Fairtrade Church for 25 years, sponsored a child in Kenya through Action Aid and supported the Toilet Twinning scheme. Stonehouse registered as an Eco-Church in early 2019 and achieved a Bronze Award from A Rocha UK in March 2020, followed by a Silver Award in March 2021. More hardwork and improvements to our property and land followed – making our garden a ‘shop window’ for the community and part of the Stonehouse Community Arboretum. We encouraged members of our congregation to make small changes to their lifestyle.

We incorporated the ethos of Eco-Church in our worship and community activities. In October 2024, we were delighted to be the 58th Church in England and Wales and just the 8th Methodist Church to receive the prestigious A Rocha Gold Award, joining one other church in the Gloucestershire Circuit.

We endeavour to encourage the care and good stewardship of
God’s creation in every way. Stonehouse Methodist Church continues to play a big part in the community by providing space for local organisations, including Stroud Foodbank, Short-mat bowls, Boxing, Mums and Toddlers, Youth Club and a monthly Lunch Club, as well as a sacred space for worship.