Church in the Wild

Like many Christians, I have learned to view the spiritual journey as a dichotomy between two places: the wilderness and the promised land. The wilderness – where the Israelites were lost for four decades – is the site of suffering and struggle, loss and loneliness, deprivation and depression.

The promised land, in contrast, is the land of plenty and provision, of joy and justice. In the promised land, all of our needs will be met. Our bodies, our finances, our relationships will all be healthy and secure. The church will be a vibrant community of diverse people who live in ecstatic union with one another and with the Divine. All of our actions will be directed by the Holy Spirit. It’s going to be glorious. Of course we want to live there! We desperately search for the church or spiritual movement that can point us to the signs of the promised land.

Our view of the promised land is highly romanticized, even in Scripture. In reality, the land that was promised to the Israelites was inhabited land; it was someone else’s home. Arriving there meant that the Israelites were committing land theft and that the land would always be contested. That part of the story – and not the part about YHWH promising the land – is similar to what it means to live in the United States, this land that was stolen from Native Americans, that was forcibly cultivated by kidnapped Africans, and that White Christian nationalists want to reclaim as belonging only to them. Indeed, as the US backtracks on civil rights for women, Black people and other people of color, immigrants, LGTBQIA+ persons, disabled persons, and laborers, I am increasingly convinced that the Christian quest for the promised land is misguided. For those of who refuse to say “Peace, peace” when there is no peace, there is no promised land. There is only wilderness.

There is no promised land. There is only wilderness.

A few years ago, I stopped searching for the church of the promised land. I decided to do instead what my ancestors did – learn to find God, community, and myself in the wilderness. And I have. In fact, I have encountered God more in the wilderness than in the institutional church. It has not been easy. It requires me to acknowledge and release the chains that keep me bound to the pseudo-promised land, to risk going into unfamiliar territory, and to free my theological imaginations so I can recognize when God shows up in unexpected ways.

Encountering God in the wilderness has meant not just deconstructing our faith but also decolonizing it, learning how the poisons of White supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, and capitalism have infiltrated my ideas about who God is and what God wants in the world. It has required me to find new forms of spiritual community.

It is hard to find community in the wild. Church in the wild does not gather weekly at fixed places and times. There is no liturgy and there are no staff to ensure and shape community gatherings. There are no sermons or rehearsed songs.

The wilderness journey is highly individualized. We may be headed to the same destination and our paths may cross from time to time, but we may not be taking the same roads or traveling at the same place. Wilderness people are always on the move. Sometimes we only stay together for little while – perhaps even building something beautiful for a time – before we take off again, following Spirit wherever they lead us.

Wilderness people are always on the move.

I agonized over the difficulty of finding stable community in the wilderness until I learned to look for it differently: in online meetings, meditation groups, conferences, walks or meals with friends, artist gatherings and exhibits, group texts, Twitter threads, and living room conversations among spiritual sojourners. Some of these happen only once; others can be more often with a little intentionality. What has been stable is not the people, place, or time, but the Spirit that forms the through line of our journeys. And for now, that is enough.