2025 Conference
Building on the rock: shared resilience for stormy times
On Saturday 15 November 2025, we held our Annual Members Meeting and Conference at St Mark’s Church, Peterborough to hear from:
- Rupert Read, Climate Majority Project
- Jo Chamberlain and Adrian Fox, Church of England Environment Programme
- Rev Vanessa Elston, pioneering eco-vicar and chaplain to the Bishop of Kingston
The question we discussed was:
Climate breakdown is happening. How can churches help their communities prepare for what’s coming?
After decades campaigning for cuts to global carbon emissions, we have to accept an uncomfortable truth. We have failed to achieve the action necessary to keep humanity safe. We now have not one job but two – to adapt to climate change as well as to mitigate it.
Our keynote speaker was Rupert Read, writer, philosopher, environmentalist and co-founder and co-director of the Climate Majority Project. Its ‘SAFER’ campaign calls for ‘strategic adaptation for emergency resilience’. The UK’s first national campaign on adaptation, SAFER calls for climate resilience to be a national priority – practical, properly funded, and locally led. Green Christian is proud to support it.
This is not about ‘giving up’ on climate change – every fraction of a degree of warming avoided now will make a difference, so there can be no room for defeatism. However we must also plan for the consequences of failure – and as communities face the reality of climate change they can be galvanised to take action together.
Alongside Rupert Read we were joined by Jo Chamberlain and Adrian Fox, national officers for the Church of England Environment Programme, who shared their leading-edge work preparing congregations for climate resilience. Bringing perspectives from pastoral care and mission was pioneer priest Revd Vanessa Elston.
This conference launched a journey which Green Christian will help to lead, enabling churches to grow as sites of hope on the brink of collapse. As the title has it, we will be ‘building on the rock’, that underpinning of solidarity and strength which is ours in faith.
Climate adaptation is a defining challenge for Christian mission today. Let’s rise to it.
More about our chair and speakers
Melanie Nazareth – Chair
Melanie is Green Christian Churches Project Officer and lives in London with her family. She has a background in law but since 2019 her primary focus has been working to meet the climate and environmental crisis. She also works for Christian Climate Action.
Rupert Read
Rupert Read is co-director of the Climate Majority Project and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia (UEA). He is the author of several books focusing on the climate and ecological crisis, including This Civilisation is Finished, Parents for a Future, Why Climate Breakdown Matters and Do you want to know the truth? The surprising rewards of climate honesty. He said:
The climate crisis has reached a tipping point. … Adaptation must become the central focus of our climate strategy—not as a backup plan, but as the core of the way forward.
Jo Chamberlain
Jo Chamberlain is the National Environment Officer for the Church of England. She said:
Churches have always been places of hope and sanctuary. Climate breakdown means we are facing an uncertain future. Christians and churches need to fulfil that role of hope and sanctuary for today’s communities in a new way.
Adrian Fox
Adrian Fox is the Environmental Sustainability Officer at the Church of England’s Cathedral and Church Buildings Department. He said:
In responding to climate change with action that challenges prevailing norms, there’s real potential, not just for change, but for missional connection. We often find common ground with others whose values align more closely than they realise. That’s where opportunity lies.
Vanessa Elston
Revd Vanessa Elston is the vicar of St Barnabas, Southfields in SW London and part time chaplain to the Bishop of Kingston. She said,
Where does real resilience lie? If the answer is in a quality of relationship, a commitment to place and people, the Christian commitment to prayer offers a third strand to the cord of resilience we need. It is in this tri-fold depth of relationship that we can find the strength to inhabit these challenging times in courageous and prophetic ways.
Comments on "2025 Conference"
Sandie Stratford:
Thank you: a super inspiring day, resonating with our Lincolnshire Facing the Storm conferences. Rich input from all four speakers. Looking forward to the recordings do I can check my notes again.
Ruth Jarman:
Yes, of course, just come when you can :)
Rachel Tighe:
Is it ok to turn up at bit later as I have another commitment in the morning?
Ruth Jarman:
Yes, understand completely. We are recording the speakers and panel discussions and will put them up on our website.
Tina Quinn:
I would love to attend but to travel from Thr New Forest to Peterborough is cost prohibitive and would not be climate fry, please make the recordings available. Tina Quinn
Ruth Jarman:
Yes, we are planning to record the main talks and they will be put up on the website and our YouTube channel
Christine Walker:
Could you record the talks and make them available for members after the event. My mother is a member but at 92 she will not be making a day trip to Peterborough but we could help her later to view the presentations if they were on YouTube or Facebook or similar platform
Ruth Jarman:
Yes, understand - we will miss you.
Ruth Quinn:
Yes I'd love to join you but Peterborough is impossible from the North West.
Ruth Jarman:
Good decision. Yes, we are recording the speakers!
Drew and Annette James:
Peterborough is a long haul for us from Liverpool [close to 8 hours there & back by train] and there is a COP event that day in Manchester so sadly have decided to opt for that one. Will there be recordings of speakers to watch later ?
Les Parker:
London or Birmingham are no more accessible for many than Peterborough which is on the East Coast main railway line and the A1.
P M GRIMWOOD:
Peterborough is a very awkward journey for me and I have another "green" commitment that day. So sorry not this time.I am admirer of Rupert Read's writings.
Ruth Jarman:
So sorry, Mike, and others for whom Peterborough is not good. Peterborough is the best location for our speakers who are coming from Yorkshire, Norfolk and London. We will listen to the call to head west another time.
mike plunkett 01588 630018:
If this is a national conference, then it should be in London or Birmingham, Where is Peterborough ? A journey from South Shroposhire is impossible
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