Bev Playle is our new joint Huddersfield area Environment Champion, working to help our churches become greener and better care for God’s creation.
We’ve asked Bev to say a few words about herself.
Bev says: “I live in Honley, a village in the beautiful Holme Valley.
“I worship at Holy Trinity, Huddersfield where I am a Licensed Lay Minister and also lead our ‘Green Steps’ team.
“This is the team we put together to take forward our Eco agenda and we recently achieved a Bronze award in the A Rocha Eco-Church scheme.
“My background is with the NHS; I’m a Learning Disability Nurse by profession and spent much of my career in strategic management roles, working with the Department of Health in service improvement for families of disabled children.
“I’m married to John, and we’ve lived this side of the Pennines for 10 years, having both studied at Huddersfield University for our Nurse Teaching degrees many years ago.
“Our four kids have flown the nest and blessed us with 13 grandchildren between them!
“As you can imagine, family life is somewhat full on at times and involves much travelling and hosting of sleep-overs – all great fun!
“I’ve always had a passion for social justice – one can’t work in the disability field and not be aware of the damage that discrimination can do.
“But it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve joined the dots between the issues of inequality and climate change.
“It was the Black Lives Matter movement that made the penny drop for me – how can we possibly say those lives matter if we are damaging the very habitats of the most disadvantage people?
“I can see clearly now just how much humanity has wrecked the beautiful world gifted to us by our amazing Creator God and caused so much inequality on the way.
“It seems to me that we can’t say we’re disciples of Jesus and not be willing to do everything we possibly can to halt the damage of climate change and to commit to being loving, effective stewards of the Earth.
“This world matters to God – it’s His creation – “the Earth and all in it”.
“To love Him is to love His creation and to care for it.
“We have a job to do!
“And I am delighted to take on the role of Champion, working alongside Debbie Plummer in our Episcopal Area.
“I am certainly no expert but I am willing to share my passion and lessons learned from our ongoing journey to being a Net Zero Church – and I’m a great cheer-leader!”