Wild Churches: reconnecting faith, soul and soil
Wild Church is a growing global movement that reimagines faith, community, and spirituality outside traditional church walls. Rather than gathering inside sanctuaries with stained-glass windows and wooden pews, Wild Churches meet in forests, parks, deserts, beaches, and local watersheds.
Field Guide to Church of the Wild is a lovely guide to plant your own ‘wild church’. Which is like a normal church, but usually services are held in nature, with stories and prayers, inspire by nature and native wildlife and birds.
Meet wild church communities and meet the movement’s leaders and participants, both human and not-human! And find wisdom from hundreds of wild churches already planted around the world.
Each chapter includes stories and practices including liturgies, prayers and prompts. Plus ways to listen to the land, and one another. Take this field guide with you into the fields, and join an emerging yet ancient spiritual practice. To remember our place in the holy web of interconnection.
Victoria Loorz is a wild church pastor and eco spiritual director, and host of The Holy Wild podcast. Read more at Wild Church Network.
Valerie Luna Serrels is also co-founder of the Wild Church Network and holders a master’s degree in peacebuilding and conflict transformation. She lives in Virginia, USA.
Reimagining Community with Nature
Traditional church settings can sometimes feel intimidating, overly formal, or exclusive to newcomers or those who have experienced religious trauma. Wild Churches create a lower-barrier, highly inclusive environment:
- Informal and Welcoming: Gathering in a public park or nature reserve removes the physical and social pressure of a formal sanctuary. Dress codes disappear, and the atmosphere is inherently relaxed.
- Intergenerational Connection: Outdoors, children can move freely and explore, making wild gatherings naturally child-friendly without requiring separate childcare or Sunday school programs.
- Inclusivity for the Unchurched: Many who attend Wild Churches are “spiritual but not religious,” deconstructing traditional dogmas, or seeking a space free from rigid institutional hierarchies.
Cultivating Local Ecological Literacy
Attending a Wild Church regularly encourages participants to become intimately familiar with their local ecosystems. Worship often changes with the seasons, weather patterns, and local flora and fauna.
If bringing dogs to the service, read up on toxic plants and trees to avoid (including mushrooms, conkers and all spring bulbs).
- Seasonal Awareness: Participants learn to align their spiritual practices with the natural rhythms of the earth— migrations, and seasonal blooms.
- Bioregional Rootedness: By gathering at local streams, forests, and fields, members develop a strong sense of place and a deeper appreciation for the unique land they inhabit.
- Ecosystem Kinship: Learning the names of local plants, trees, birds, and animals fosters a sense of kinship and responsibility.
Protecting England’s Forgotten Churches
St Olaf’s church, Cumbria (Katie Grosvenor)
England’s forgotten churches are small and quiet, not like grand cathedrals for royal weddings. Some stand in fields with no remaining villages around them, others on the edge of market towns, half-hidden by trees, worn paths and old stone walls. A few are open each day, some need to borrow a key from a nearby cottage, for a rare hour when someone remembers to unbolt the door.
These churches deserve care, attention, and affection for many reasons. They tell local stories, but they also tell national ones. In a country crowded with grand houses, famous castles, and well-known city landmarks, they offer something more human and with more meaning.
They Preserve Vanished Communities
Many forgotten churches outlast the villages, farms, or estates that once sustained them. Sometimes the settlement shrank. Sometimes enclosure, plague, flood, or changing roads altered local life so fully that the church remained as the clearest trace. They can be the last map of lost communities.
A church can show where people gathered, how land was organised, and what forms of labour or wealth shaped the area. A lonely church in open country may point to a medieval village that faded centuries ago.
They Reveal Local Ancient Crafts
England’s lesser-known churches are full of work made by local hands. Not every carving comes from a famous workshop. Not every bench end or rood screen belongs in a glossy art book. Still, the quality can be startling, and the character is often stronger because it isn’t over-finished.
A mason may have left a face in a corbel that feels oddly alive. A carpenter may have shaped a roof that is practical first, beautiful second, and beautiful because of that practicality. The stained glass may be simple, yet catches the light with a delicacy grander churches may lose.
Local craft also roots a church in its region. Flint walls in East Anglia, warm limestone in the Cotswolds, sandstone in northern counties, cob in the South West, each material carries a local accent.
They Protect Quieter Sacred Spaces
Not everyone comes to these churches for faith. There is a certain kind of stillness in an old church that differs from ordinary quiet. It comes from repeated use, from long habits of gathering, mourning, marking seasons, and speaking words that have outlasted those who said them.
Grand monuments to local gentry certainly appear in old churches, and some are fine things. Yet much of the emotional force comes from smaller traces. A brass to a tradesman. A row of plain headstones. A hand-cut inscription with spelling quirks. A list of church wardens. A simple memorial to a child.
Churchyards Give Wildlife Homes
England has almost 40,000 churches, many of them ancient buildings with old eaves and barns, and thick-leaved trees with big branches. These are ideal natural habitats for England’s bats and owls.
Both species are at risk, due to lack of natural habitats. All need food, shelter and habitats to hide, breed and sleep (bats hibernate in winter).
One bat can eat thousands of midges and mosquitoes each night, while owls naturally keep rodent populations under control.
As ancient hedgerows and old barns have disappeared, old churches play a huge part in providing sanctuary to wildlife. You often have exactly what these lovely creatures want! And then some!
From churchyards to belfries and from cemeteries filled with trees, places of worship provide ideal quiet sanctuaries for birds and mammals.
Churches are pretty quiet also during the week, and can act as proper wildlife corridors for both rural and urban areas.
Did you know that yew trees are toxic to horses and livestock?
