Church of the Wild: A Book Discussion Guide

When faced with an unraveling vocation, identity, and planet, Victoria Loorz went in search of a spirituality by diving deeply into the sanctuary of the natural world, eventually co-founding the Wild Church Network and Seminary of the Wild. Her book, Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred, is both a memoir and an exploration, through an ecospiritual lens, into biblical narratives of wilderness and community. Along the way, Loorz offers readers a fresh look at the community larger than our own species. Church of the Wild uncovers the wild roots of faith, and helps us deepen our commitment to a suffering earth by falling in love with it — and calling it church.

The practice of conversation is at the heart of Church of the Wild — conversation with the natural world, with the Divine, and with one another. Therefore, this guide, developed by Alison Cornish, Program Consultant with The BTS Center, is intended to stir, promote, and support conversation. Whether you are an adult education facilitator in a congregational or communal setting, a spiritual director, someone curious about the wild church movement, or a solo reader, we hope you will bring your own curiosity and questions to augment what we have offered here. This experiential guide includes prompts for reflection — written or verbal — as well as practices intended to draw you deeper into conversation, and therefore relationship, with your particular place in the world.