Issue 43 Expressions of churchBlog | Outside church
Outside church
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 16.06.25
She arrived stony-faced and bluntly stated her position. It was the early days of A Rocha UK, and we were a Christian environmental organisation based in a diverse, multifaith area. She worked for a national secular environmental charity and was suspicious of our motivations. Was our environmentalism simply cover for evangelism? Why were we bothering with nature when Christianity was about going to heaven when you die?
Or so she thought. As she talked to staff and volunteers, learned about the environmental education and practical conservation we were engaged in, and discovered we believed God cares for the natural world and we should too, she began to open up. It turned out she’d grown up in church, dragged along to a grey building with small windows to hear about a distant God, when she longed to be outdoors in the mountains and valleys of her South Wales home. She’d walked out on Christianity and become a pagan, seeking a spirituality that valued the wonder and mystery she found in the natural world.
She left with questions, and she left me with plenty too. How many others reject Christianity as a nature-denying indoor religion of rules and words? How many are drawn to the glory and beauty they sense at the heart of the universe? What would it look like to develop a worshipping community centred on Christ and based in nature rather than a building?
