Five weeks in September were set aside to gently celebrate creation at Hemi Tapu. From green-decorated worship spaces and home-made communion bread, to kids’ church exploring trees, birds and worms, and community activities like a coastal wander and local wine tasting, the Season of Creation was marked by joy, creativity, and connection. By focusing on celebration rather than crisis, the parish laid thoughtful groundwork for deeper engagement with creation care in the seasons ahead.

Across September and October, Alexandra Corps joined churches across Aotearoa in celebrating the Season of Creation, reflecting on the theme Peace with Creation. The Corps community embraced practical care for the environment — from a Kids Church worm farm project to a community planting day at Eden Gardens — and joined fellow Eco Church, Alexandra, Clyde and Lauder Union Parish for outdoor worship in the gardens. Together, they expressed their ongoing commitment to caring for God’s creation.

During the Season of Creation, Taranaki Cathedral embraced the call to care for creation in creative and meaningful ways. From lamenting ecological loss to sharing a spring feast around a flower-lined table, the community discovered new expressions of hope, connection, and renewal.

During this year’s Season of Creation, All Saints’ Anglican Church in Dunedin demonstrated its ongoing commitment to caring for God’s earth through hands-on community action. Parish members joined with the Student Christian Movement to plant 145 native trees on a South Otago farm, helping regenerate native forest and restore riparian habitats. Later in the month, a smaller group took to Te Awa o Ōwheo (the Leith) for a local river clean-up, reflecting the parish’s deep connection to this waterway and its place in the church’s story. Together, these actions embodied All Saints’ vision of faith expressed through stewardship, community, and hope for creation’s renewal.

Lower Hutt Anglicans marked this year’s Season of Creation with a sustainable twist – replacing balloons and single-use decorations with community-made bunting crafted from repurposed fabric. Parishioners of all ages decorated pieces with images of faith, nature, and care for creation. The finished bunting now hangs in the church, a colourful symbol of creativity, sustainability, and shared responsibility for our common home.

Holding a photo competition during the Season of Creation this year was a great way for St Matt’s Anglican Church in Taitā to encourage people to explore God’s Creation in their local neighbourhood with new eyes.

Anne Albers shares her reflections from the Season of Creation Retreats #1 and #2 to mark the beginning and the end of the liturgical season. And Rebecca Webb shares a poem she wrote from the first retreat.

During the Season of Creation, Ruapehu Anglican Parish hosted a successful community working bee, transforming a wetland area adjacent to St. Mary’s Hall on Seddon Street in Raetihi. The initiative, aimed at rehabilitating the local environment, brought together 20 volunteers, including students from Ohakune Primary School’s William Pike Challenge programme.

Waitakere Salvation Army shares with us what took place during their Eco Church launch service in September during Season of Creation and how the church is tackling the issue of food waste as their first Eco Church initiative.

Nestled in the hills of Dunedin, Opoho Presbyterian Church has become a beautiful example of how a faith community can embody Christian hope through practical action and environmental stewardship. With a strong commitment to creation care, the church is carving out a unique identity as a hub for sustainability and creation care in its community.

Tied into Sunday’s Service of Creation service, was the introduction of Eco Awards presented by Tim and Anna Cox. The Eco Church awards are an acknowledgement of the actions by members of our parish towards environmental change and improvement.

Having joined in the Eco Church movement in 2023, St Mike’s are continuing to look for ways to support local whenua. As the recent Season of Creation kicked off, each member of the church whānau were invited to consider making a fresh pledge for creation: one act which they would personally commit to in response to the call to be kaitiaki of God’s world.

The annual Blessing of the Animals service at St. Peter's Anglican Church was delightfully chaotic. Human voices rose up in song alongside dog voices and cat voices.

Rachel Doragh, Eco Church kaihāpai at Tawa Anglicans created a beautiful altar panel art for Season of Creation 2023 using the theme of the year: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! (Amos 5: 24)”

“…by putting these images in front of us as we worship it will help us keep in mind that we are joining our voices in worship with those of all creation, and also to ponder on the image of the river and what justice and righteousness might look like for us in our world right now."

Season of Creation is celebrated annually all around the world, in different denominations, and many parishes in the Anglican Diocese of Wellington joined in this year. Read about the different ways Season of Creation was celebrated this year around the diocese, including an intergenerational pet celebration service, beach clean-up, eco-theology sermon series, and waste workshop.

Soon after Chartwell Cooperating Church joined the Eco Church whānau, they arranged for Paul Murray from Para Kore to come and share about the Para Kore kaupapa and gave an introductory wānanga about zero waste to the church.

At Pauatahanui Anglican parish, one of our four core values is legacy. For many years prior to the launch of Eco Church, a group called God’s Earth Our Home operated within the parish, fostering a deep spiritual sense of ecological responsibility within parishioners and nurturing environmental action. This provided a natural launching pad for the parish to join the Eco Church movement at the start of 2021.

At St. Peter's Anglican in Kaikōura we had our Blessing of the Animals service on Sunday. In addition to blessing the nine dogs and one cat present (and the domestic animals not present) we blessed, at a distance, the wild animals that call Kaikōura home, including the dotterels/tūturiwhatu, hutton's shearwaters/tītī, little blue penguins/kororā, and hector's dolphins.

When it was decided that we were not holding a church fair this year, we saw an opportunity to do something different – a Sustainability Fair! We imagined the church hall full of stalls that offered advice and connections, rather than jams, books, and cakes. And we set out to make it happen.