Cop30, the UN Climate Change Conference, will take place at Belem in Brazil from Monday 10 November 2025 to Friday 21 November 2025. This briefing has been prepared for Eco Congregation Scotland and Interfaith Scotland to help raise awareness and encourage participation in environmental action across Scotland.

Context

The context for the conference is challenging.

• The US Government is openly hostile towards climate justice and, at the UN in September, Donald Trump described climate change as the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” . Other governments and the EU appear to be stepping back from earlier commitments.
• The process agreed at Cop21 in Paris to promote climate action is faltering. All countries that were signatories to the Paris agreement were supposed to submit updated ‘Nationally Determined Contributions’ (NDCs) to the UN by February 2025, but only 62 had done so by September. 2024
• Development agencies like Oxfam argue that financial support to developing countries hardest hit by climate change has not materialised at the scale envisaged at earlier Cops.
• Oil companies and banks are distancing themselves from commitments on climate change. The Net Zero Banking Alliance folded in October 2025 and development of new oil and gas resources continues apace.
• It’s not all bad news! In October 2025 renewables overtook coal as world’s biggest source of electricity. Emissions of greenhouse gases have been falling in the EU and USA. China, while still the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, excels in the production of solar panels, wind turbines and battery technology, and the cost of these technologies has fallen rapidly. Sales of electric cars are increasing and most of Scotland’s electricity now comes from low carbon wind power.

Events

Mass for the COP 30 Summit: Monday 10th November, St Andrew’s Cathedral & Eyre Hall, 196 Clyde Street, Glasgow, G1 4JY. Event Link

Christian Aid:
COP 30. Why we need to work for climate justice

SCIAF:
Afro-Colombian & indigenous leadership in loss and damage solutions

Tearfund:
Tearfund at COP30

World Council of Churches:
Faith leaders position COP30 as peoples cop

Prayer resource (from Christians in Edinburgh and West Lothian)
https://www.cop-prayer.uk/home

Greetings in the name of God the Sustainer, God the Word made flesh, and God the Wild Wind who blows-where-they-will. My name is David – I’m an ordained minister of Word and Sacrament in the United Reformed Church, one of the smaller UK denominations.

You might call me a “protestant”, though we actually avoid that word in our official documents. Christianity as respectful solidarity with the diversity of the friends of Jesus is quite sufficient.

Over the last seven years I’ve visited churches of all shapes and sizes, from the Borders to Shetland, and in every one, I’ve celebrated Pope Francis’ Encyclical letter of 2015, Laudato Si. To the church, and to the world.

Why? – because I work full-time with EcoCongregation Scotland, the ecumenical grassroots movement of churches committed to care of Creation. Which enriches and deepens our love for God.

The aim is not to convert any church to a particular way, but rather to encourage every tradition to make the most of the particular treasures which sustain and define your identity.

To discover what it means to follow Christ from an awareness of the sickness of the planet, and the causes of that sickness in knowingly chosen human injustice.

Green church,- I’m convinced, because I’ve seen it -green church is more church.

Forty-three catholic churches are among more than six hundred local churches, colleges and communities, from all over Scotland, who have joined in the twenty-four years since our movement started. Some of them can be proud they’ve achieved bronze, silver or gold awards for their combination of practical spiritual and global integration of faith and action – and of course, encouraging their neighbouring churches in similar initiatives.

Prayer and worship expressed as insulation, litter-picks, heat pumps and solar panels. Or maybe it’s all prayer, just “using words when necessary”.

This deepens our faith, and enriches our joy. With eyes wide open to the signs of our times, Christian faith as a resource for times of crisis, now makes more sense than when I was ordained thirty years ago this month. And there’s every encouragement to work more closely together to encourage the care of the common home.

In twenty-four years since the movement began, we’ve seen the rise of a global crisis of nature and climate. Truly, there is no precedent.

It is alarming that some in politics are trying to make capital out of denying this. Lies like that hurt the most vulnerable. It’s vital that churches continue to use their moral authority to support, in love, the truth we need to know to change direction – to embrace what Pope Francis called ‘environmental conversion’. The “transformation of hearts and minds toward greater love of God, each other, and creation.

It is a blessing that worsening climate events have been accompanied by a blossoming of scientific insight that these are not ‘natural’ but caused by human activity.

Caused above all by global injustice surrounding the burning fossil fuels, including in the everyday transport, industry and domestic use of our culture.

Our global north culture, which is only just beginning to transition to other ways of doing things. As all your bishops noted just before the COP conference last year, the urgency of this transition is matched only the requirement that it be justly conducted.

Transition is a must, but transition must be just! I observed first hand the science and the campaigning at COP26 here in Glasgow. COP drew people of faith and goodwill closer together in common prayer and purpose. Archbishop Nolan will remember walking through the November rain with the rest of us, to make these concerns visible.

At every level, from the conversations over the garden fence to the supportive lobbing of our elected representatives, we need to build on that togetherness, not let it slip away. Scotland is not alone in these responses. In the last two years conferences, in St Francis’ hometown of Assisi, have worked towards hard-wiring a day of prayer with Creation into the calendars of all the world’s churches.

Just for the conversation with delegates it was a privilege to attend.

Hearing from a leader of churches in the Middle East how “when the climate crisis is deep, the blessing within the church is abundant.” And Cardinal Fernandez affirming that Jesus … was in constant contact with nature, filled with affection and awe.“

I have met and spoken with sisters and brothers in faith who have already experienced the destruction of their homelands as sea levels rise; and other catastrophes in climate and nature. The gatherings around COP26 in Glasgow were such a great gift of knowledge and friendship. Not just in the Season of Creation, but throughout the Christian year. For speaking the truth in love, which sets us free to act and to change.

Over these seven years, I’ve spoken with colleges training priests and pastors who will be called to lead God’s people in the building of hope and resilience during the entirety of their pastoral and liturgical ministries. Your encouragement and support will be vital to their rising to this challenge. It’s in a renewed consideration of our scripture, tradition and liturgy that we find Good-News resources to enable us to face and respond to the very bad news, which we know will be with us for some generations.

As with other forms of prayer, by the grace of God: every small initiative is valuable.

But every neglect and denial does harm.

Pope Leo’s message at the beginning of this Season of Creation has also been very useful in my work, preparing resources for the Season and offering homilies and sermons in churches. The message recognised the causal linkage we can see in the major prophets of the Old Testament between knowing, chosen injustice, and environmental harm. Pope Francis and other major religious leaders have already asserted that to eradicate nature is sin, no ifs no buts.

And for the church this century, care for creation is the cake, not the icing!

The full selection of resources, including short versions of video reflections, can be found here https://www.ecocongregationscotland.org/creation-2025/
Bible Study on the global theme passage, ‘Peace with Creation” : Isaiah 32:14-18, written for a webinar with Student Christian Movement of India is HERE

Prayer: Rt Rev Rosie Frew: [G A Moderator, Church of Scotland] graphic text

First Sunday 7th September

***EcoChaplain visits St Andrews RC Cathedral Glasgow
talk following 10am mass
Notes and prayers: click HERE
Sermon-slot video click HERE
Poem: “My Church” by Chris Abraham: video HERE

Second Sunday 14th September

***EcoChaplain visits St Giles Cathedral Edinburgh, preaching in 11am service
Notes and prayers: click HERE
Sermon-slot video click HERE
Poem: “St Cuthbert’s Procession video, by Barbara Usher HERE

Third Sunday 21st September

***EcoChaplain celebrates 30 years in ministry at Augustine United Church
Edinburgh, 11am Communion Service
Notes and prayers: click HERE
Sermon-slot video click HERE
Poem: “Requiem for the bee” by Lorn Macintyre video, HERE

Fourth Sunday 28th September

***EcoChaplain preaching at St Andrews West Glasgow 11am
Notes and prayers: click HERE
Sermon-slot video click HERE
St Francis ‘Canticle of the Creatures;, illustrated by Christine Mailey video, HERE

Fifth Sunday 5th October

***EcoChaplain at St Andrews Episcopal Cathedral Inverness, 11am
Notes and prayers: click HERE
Sermon-slot video click HERE -Includes exciting walk to An Teallach
Poem: “Jelly in July ” by Marian Pallister video, HERE

Rev David J M Coleman

Environmental Chaplain, EcoCongregation Scotland [A special category ministry of the United Reformed Church]

This year’s Season of Creation/Creation Time/Creationtide  resources, written and curated by EcoChaplain Rev David Coleman combine attention to the global Season theme of ‘Peace with Creation’ and a celebration of David’s 30 years in ordained Christian ministry, seven of which have been as EcoChaplain.

As Chaplain, David receives far more invitations to be present for Creation Time/Season of Creation than can be fulfilled: the videos are one way of reaching more congregations with something really unique and special.

IMPORTANT NOTES: we are working towards updating our website: please note that for now, initial loading may be slow. Put the kettle on: it’s worth a few more seconds wait to access what’s there.

FREE USE  material is offered free for devotional use.  We gratefully acknowledge the support of the George MacLeod Trust in preparing this project this year. We do love to hear how you use it.  chaplain@ecocongregationscotland  for feedback.  Please do continue support us as a charity in any way you can. It makes a difference!

Enormous thanks to our diverse contributors to these  resources.

For each of the 5 weeks  

[Sep 7, 14, 21,28 and October 5th]… 

Under “LECTIONARY NOTES, PRAYERS, VIDEO”

-there are notes on every single lectionary passage, with prayers which can be used and adapted for local use.

“Five sermons for the Season” are the scripts for the  full-scale, location VIDEO REFLECTIONS  [all under 15 mins] which some churches may choose to use in the sermon-slot, whilst others may prefer viewing it in a ‘study-group’  situation.  NB: Study questions are also in preparation

SHORT VERSIONS – under two and a half minutes, are also provided, whether for use as a ‘taster’ or to fill a gap in worship.

Under“OTHER VISUAL

” there’s a link to our popular ‘STILLING VIDEO “ catalogue with a variety of 2-minute items, mostly in natural settings, with slow action, and without words.  There’s also a selection of video location readings- interpretations of the lectionary texts in various places, including Assisi, and larger  European cities. The “Meme Collection” is an online collection of about 130 freely shareable quotes and pictures, and there’s a photo album too, but please consider the added value of sharing  your own local photos and videos, which people can identify with.

We’re delighted to include original creative and reflective writing in the column labelled

“LITURGY, PRAYERS, POETRY”,

original poems mostly presented as text and stylised video, with the writers’ own voices as soundtrack, as well as throughful writing on theology with a bearing on how we present and receive the green commitment which arises from our faith.

Under“GLOBAL CREATION LINKS”

we celebrate our involvement in global churches’ commitment to care for Creation, with other movements and personal connections with friends around the world. The perspectives of the Global South, in particular, are a vital enrichment to our outlook.

Under“ARCHIVE”

we keep visible links to previous year’s ‘Season’ material, and to that from other seasons of the Christian year.

Pentecost Sunday on Colonsay
(a denominationally diverse island parish)

Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs– in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

`In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'”

Quite a few of you have learned at least something of a language additional to one you started out with. We sometimes call these ‘foreign languages’ – the tongues of aliens, though the more you get a feel for it, the less alien a language is. And a language is visceral. The shape of your mouth and the muscles of your throat are incarnately involved.

Some of you may enjoy that great gift of being bilingual. Giving you an overview of the way-more- than-rainbow of expression in any one language too. Idioms accents, dialects.

Have a look at the online parallel Bible hub – thirty or so versions of thirty-one thousand verses, even in English.

This diversity in unity of the Bible reminds us that our interpretation of scripture in every place and time is an active adventure, rather than just being passive consumers.

Sometimes you have to risk being thought drunk, even if you’re sober. Or a treehugger, when you’re a serious student of scripture. Today we need to be both.

Because as it says in the introduction to King James: even an ‘Authorised’ Bible must not aspire to be a finally definitive translation for all places and times. With increasing frequency, the twentieth century idiom of the world-before-climate crisis isn’t helping us as it might on this planet now. It inhibits us from the opening of our minds to understand scripture for today. Because it narrows the Spirit-scope!

I don’t doubt that every scholar involved in every single Bible version brings professional conscientiousness into play. But it still remains for you, in a local church, to discern through what sort of slant bias or accent is the Spirit is speaking to the church today.

Foreign or familiar? I think we need both. One of the delights of this “preaching-station” of Colonsay is that you’re always aware that Christ’s
Church, with a big C is culturally and theologically diverse.

So long as you’re awake, You never don’t discern. And that’s a blessing. Because that diversity is depth and enrichment. As in the motto of the Edinburgh Zoological Society: Biodiversity is the wisdom of God.

Some churches today will enjoy the story of the Tower of Babel [Gen 11] – and I’ve heard it suggested that God acts less than worthily in
frustrating the noble – or perhaps domineering?- human unity of purpose when God peevishly frustrates their monocultural unity, and everything that relied upon it fall apart.

But maybe that suggestion is part of the fanatical human centredness of the twentieth century which has bullied us out of a more truly Pentecostal relationship with Creation.

Instead, read Babel as the story of ‘ Make Babel Great Again’ – of monolithic power irresponsibly exercised. Then not only the wisdom, but also the love of “God the Tower Vandal’, becomes rapidly apparent. God, who, for the health of the Earth as a whole, insists on diversity.

The gift of languages to speak is forlorn without the gift of languages to hear, the gifts of minds and hearts to ponder and act. And “Mission” is Good News from God for all Creation, not browbeating your neighbour about Jesus without giving them the chance to teach you too.

As in that phrase from the Book of Job -“Speak to the Earth and Earth will teach you! “

And I wonder what St Francis did learn from those birds to whom he preached? Quite a bit, I think, goingby his 800 year legacy of praise of God alongside fellow creatures. That spirituality of personal solidarity with “our Sister Mother Earth, rather than just exploiting her, stewarding her as a means to an end. Even to a good end. The gift of language is the gift of relationship. With give and take. I have a degree in German – what do we have here in the church? or online.

You might know: When you’re immersed in a different language, funny things happen. You get to the end of a sentence in one language and find the word lurking there in the other. Or you dream dreams in the other languages. And you know that you do need to be a poet in one language to translate a poem from another.

You can’t translate unless you interpret. Which is what Christians have relied on with their scriptures for countless centuries.

In the natural sciences there’s now a growing appreciation of the languages of whatever creatures, which are part of how the Earth lives. Pentecost takes this further. In the last days, the Spirit is poured out upon them.

And we find the word of God in this, that you and I depend on the dance of a pollinating bee when they come back to the hive with the location of nectar. Jesus said to look at the fig tree and all the trees. And you and I, knowing this, can also bless both the black bees of this island. And all the bees.

General, in order to be specific.Specific in order to be general.

The trouble is, when faith loses confidence, we wait on permission from science, to believe what may have been obvious to poets for millennia. And prophets too.

Like Joel, recycled in the New Testament with the recognition that whenever we experience what fits the bill as ‘the last days’ then we should hearken to God’s voice not only the dreams of the disregarded elderly, and the visions of trafficked young women, but in all those signs of the times attendant on the pouring of God’s spirit over all flesh. Over what God chose incarnation into. The Word made flesh. Particular flesh to ‘save’ “all flesh”.

All flesh.

That phrase which, allowing for translation, defines God’s Rainbow Covenant of Genesis 9, so abundantly contextualised that it takes an exceptional pig- headedness to present it as applying only to our species. But some do.

I don’t know how much more we could ask for to recognise this present day and age as ticking the boxes for a serious iteration of End-times. Last Days. No longer is this the ludicrous lunacy of a street-preacher. No longer the plaything of ivory tower theology.

Extinctions at a thousand times their natural rate. A million species seriously endangered. Sensible respectable scientists at the World Meteorological Organisation raise the prospect of 1.9 degrees of warming and ice-free days in the Arctic by 2030. Sea levels face unstoppable centuries of rise.

Let alone the callous thoughtlessness which casts all that crap into the sea that washes up and that you tidy up from your island beaches.

This, then, our day, -whether or not it has happened before or might happen again – this is a time to take advantage of what we do hear from the old, the young, the poor, the despised, and indeed, not only from indigenous humans with their deep-wisdom relatedness to fellow creatures. A time to respect the prophetic voices of Creation-self. That wisdom of Solomon who spoke of trees, animals, birds, creeping things and fish.

To take advantage of the historic holy wisdom of the interaction of saints with animals, trees and birds. That serious authentication of God at work in the lives of Columba, Mungo, Bridget and all the rest.

Today we do, in climate and other sciences, have some amazing interpreters of the voices of the Earth and all their creatures. The flesh on whom, in days which look like last days, the Spirit is poured out.

Telling us how trees – as well as clapping their hands in praise in the Bible – trees talk, argue, look after each other. After their fashion, not after ours.

I think I can generalise with some confidence: the Bible is less hung up about including personalities and voices of Creation than respectable grown-ups have felt permitted to be over the last couple of centuries.

To take note of these voices in a personal way is not to insult them by pretending they’re more like us than they are, but to give their God-given prophetic message a chance to be heard, be tested, and be acted upon.

Global North culture dazzles out of existence our human faculties to see stars, find water, and trace a path across a wilderness without a mobile phone. So we struggle to value the treasures we have been given, alongside the treasures of other life around us.

Earlier in the year, inspired by God’s question to Abraham: – can you count the stars? – I began to appreciate a little more the languages of the personalities of Creation, looking at the darkest sky I could find. Seven years into this job, the surprises and the rewards haven’t dried up.

Nor the challenges to languages and ways of thinking which come bundled with an entitlement they believe is proper to definitiveness.

The miracle of Pentecost is that God’s message does not presume or require to dictate the medium. The Gospel is valid in Gaelic, in Welsh, in Phrygia and Pamphylia. In Glasgow and Colonsay. In the scent trails of ants, the buzz of the black bees, the cacophony of the birds at Pig’s Paradise.

And the Gospel, in our day, has a high component of warning. If, as George Macleod put it, “God is in nature”, then God is screaming. How do we discern what God is screaming?

With eyes and ears wide open? So that we do respond. In prayer, in action. In change of heart and mind. The global tragedy is that this year we have more illustration than ever we might wish of the environmental and spiritual evil caused by monolithic domination; harm caused by the suppression of difference, rather than the blessing of dialogue. Dialogue which goes beyond the genteel naiveté that both sides will always be right.

Because beyond 1.5 degrees, it’s dishonest to say ‘everything’s going to be all right’.

It’s way past time we started looking more intelligently at God’s command to humanity in Genesis 1 as to “fill” and to “govern” the Earth.

Even to the extent that humanity’s noble calling might be described as ‘rule’ the only God-blessed government is one for which justice is paramount.

And the myriad habitats which humanity shares with those creatures to whom the land has also been given as a home require adaptation for survival. To fill the Earth, then, is not to dominate, but to adapt. Perhaps to shepherd. Fill the gaps, not bulldoze the hills.

I’ve heard churches present Pentecost as the healing of supposed ‘damage’ done at Babel, but it’s not putting anything back the way it was. There have been attempts to reverse engineer the Greek of the Gospels into an Aramaic which Jesus and his friends may have spoken by choice, but God does not restore. God recycles, repurposes.

For which you need the energy of the Wild Wind, the Spirit, falling like flames on the treehuggers, beach cleaners, the churches, the people of faith, and the animals, birds, fish and other creatures who, by God’s spirit, are our teachers. Now and in days to come.

AMEN