Field Guide to Church of the Wild

            This book is about conducting worship outside, in the “wild.”  I resonate with the idea because I have conducted many outdoor worship services in my pastoral career.  On internship in Vail, Colorado, I did worship outside at the mountaintop restaurants.  Before I took my first call, I helped the Outing/Remer parish discover how to reach out to summer visitors.   I suggested, and they built, an outdoor worship setting in a grove of pine trees in back of the Outing church.  In my first call at Bigfork/Effie parish, I conducted outdoor worship in the summer at Scenic State Park.  When I conducted seasons of creation liturgies I tried to do them outside as much as possible.

            So I can resonate with the idea behind the authors of this book when they say: “Church of the Wild, practiced as a personal spirituality or in communion with other people, is more than a novel way to do church outside.  It is an emerging yet ancient spiritual practice of reconnection with the rest of the world as kin.”

            This book is a ‘field guide’ as companion to Victoria Loorz’s book, Church of the Wild, that introduced the concept and the network that has developed around the world.  The wild church concept goes much further and has greater intentionality than my conducting a worship service outside.  There is offered a general guideline of elements as part of the gathering.  It can be Christian in focus, or ecumenical, or simply a spiritual gathering.  There is choosing the location, gathering with elements such as prayer, song, or poetry, time set aside for ‘sauntering’, a re-gathering for sharing, an offering and benediction; parts having special meaning as part of the wild church movement.

            After the initial gathering, participants are instructed to ‘saunter’ individually, out in the outdoor space.  ‘Sauntering’, according to Henry David Thoreau means reconnecting with the wildness, the the inner freedom to be led without an agenda.  When people gather back together, each is invited to share what they experienced during their ‘sauntering.’  The offering is sharing a gift of what was meaningful to the person, or how one will actively engage in helping the environment or volunteering to a non-profit organization, for example.  The benediction is described this way:  “Essentially the message is “go in peace.”  It’s a blessing with the encouragement to take the peace of God you’ve experienced inside the church and bring it “out there” into the world.”  An example:

       BENEDICTION

            May the spirit of the Abundant Earth

            Awaken you to live in the knowledge that

            You are of the earth, from the earth, and returning to the earth.

            May the tree of life

            Rise up in you,

            Root you deeply into the ground

            And nourish you to extend your branches out into the world

            Blessings of the earth,

            Of the great conversation that holds all things together

            Be upon you with boundless gratitude.   Amen.

The book concludes with field notes of how to start a wild church.  There are stories and practices in each chapter, members of wild church organizations sharing their insights.  Of course, those in northern Minnesota may not be able to meet outdoors in the winter months, but there are plenty of ideas in this book to help guide and structure outdoor gatherings that bring spiritual insights and renewed awareness of our connections to the earth as God’s gift.

John Hanson