When people are asked where they feel the most connected to God, they often respond by saying that they sense the Divine in nature. Creation, as the site of divine encounter, is seen throughout the Bible.
In the stories retold during Holy Week, Jesus appears to his followers in a garden, by a lake, and on a mountain. On Palm Sunday, the crowd follows Jesus through an olive grove and their worship ironically ends when they reach the Temple, where Jesus stages a direct-action disrupting practices that exploited the poor.
Over the past decade, a growing movement has led many to leave buildings behind as they take their worship outside. The Wild Church movement originally began as Christians became increasingly disturbed by the Church’s denial of the climate crisis and lack of concern for environmental justice.
Wild Church services take place at various outdoor locations and include singing, storytelling, and purposeful wandering. The Celtic Christian tradition has long held that God reveals Godself through two books – the book of scripture and the book of creation. Instead of a sermon, Wild Church invites people to read the book of creation by embarking on a contemplative walk.
Many suggest that humans must move from an extractive and exploitative relationship with creation to a symbiotic and loving relationship with the natural world. To paraphrase Senegalese environmentalist Baba Dioum: We won’t save places we don’t love, we can’t love places we don’t know, and we don’t know places we haven’t learned. Wild Church takes Jesus’ command to learn from the birds of the air and flowers of the field seriously and invites people to follow Jesus’ greatest commandment to love all our neighbours, including more-than-human ones, well.
An internet search for Wild Church will list options in B.C., and all are welcome to join Estuary Church for Wild Church gatherings on the first Sunday of every month.
