In the fall of 2025, Joelle Wight, Elray Henrickson, and I facilitated a Wild Church weekend retreat. A dozen folks from six nations, some new to Community of Christ, gathered near Lillehammer, Norway.
We engaged in creation-based spiritual practices and shared our reflections and stories in evening fire circles. Each day we prepared and ate our meals together, recycled and composted, developed deeper connections with each other and the created world, and lived into sacred community.
It was an intense, joyful, crowded, holy experience. Like the depiction of Pentecost, the presence of the Spirit filled the whole house as we encountered creation in new ways, shared in table fellowship, and tended to our spiritual connectedness with God, each other, and Earth.
Understanding ourselves as part of a shared, living, breathing creation allowed us to expand our perception of the Spirit’s presence to include the trees, water, animals, and Earth itself.
Joseph E. Bush Jr., author of Worshiping in Season: Ecology and Christ Through the Liturgical Year, wrote:
Creation spirituality surrounds Pentecost spirituality, and the direction of Pentecost spirituality is toward the renewal of creation. It is the same Spirit of God that blows through the gathered believers that blew over the gathered waters at creation’s beginning.
As we share breath with creation, exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen, we exist in community with the created world.
At Pentecost, we see how the Holy Spirit moves in and through community, just as it moves in and through all of creation. When we see ourselves as an integrated part of creation, we no longer can ignore the plight of the environment. Air quality, clean water, and concerns around deforestation become critical to our community existence and to our shared well-being. At Pentecost, we are reminded of the divine Breath that hovers over creation, sweeps into our lives, and goes with us into the world.
Generously share the invitation, ministries, and sacraments through which people can encounter the Living Christ who heals and reconciles through redemptive relationships in sacred community. The restoring of persons to healthy or righteous relationships with God, others, themselves, and the earth is at the heart of the purpose of your journey as a people of faith.
As part of the Wild Church retreat in Norway, we adapted a practice of the Sami, Norway’s indigenous people. The Sami have a tradition: When the fire is lit for the evening, the people honor the good intent of the one who lit it. It is the firelighter’s good intent to bring light, warmth, and sustenance to the people.
Honoring that good intent is a practice that centers us in gratitude and connection with one another. In a similar way, we honor the Divine’s good intent in unleashing the Holy Spirit into our lives, households, and communities. We are grateful for the infusion of the Spirit as it lives in us and all of creation. This Pentecost and beyond, let us celebrate the swirling, amazing, unsettling Spirit as it ignites us and sends us out in mission to and with the world.
About Wild Church
Church of the Wild, Wilderness Church, and Forest Church are all versions of the movement to reclaim our spiritual center in and with God’s created world.
“Wild Church” is a Community of Christ experiment for this aspect of spiritual formation. Wild Church blends best practices from several wild or wilderness church expressions with Community of Christ Enduring Principles, focusing on Sacredness of Creation. Wild Church is not just worshiping outdoors, although many groups do so. Wild Church is engaging with the Divine through creation-based spiritual practices in and with creation. In this way, we move from identifying ourselves as stewards over creation to understanding our place as a sacred part of creation.
To learn more:
- Stanley, Bruce. Forest Church: A Field Guide to a Spiritual Connection with Nature, Anamchara Books: New York, New York, 2013.
- Loorz, Victoria and Valerie Luna Serrels. Field Guide to Church of the Wild, Broadleaf Books: Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2025.
