Rewilding Faith and Church: Following the Wild Messiah

Switzerland: Too Manicured?

When we moved to Scotland over 10 years ago, we met a Swiss lady walking her dog. She told us how she had been living for a number of years in a caravan in quite a remote location. When I asked her if she missed Switzerland and if she planned to go back, she said, Oh no! Switzerland is much too manicured. I like the wild.

I think I understood what she meant. Not a blade of grass out of place! But isn’t that what so many of us like about Switzerland? It’s the picture on the calendar or chocolate box!

Recently Eleanore and I were travelling through a wild, mountainous area of the Scottish Highlands. The scenery was beautiful but it was barren – classic highland landscape. Then suddenly we came into an area where there were lots of young trees, – native trees – birch, rowan, Scots pine. And I realised we were going through an area of rewilding.

Understanding Rewilding: Nature’s Radical Strategy

Rewilding is a radical strategy that allows nature itself to reshape the environment. It is very different from conservation which is so often the preservation of man-made landscapes. A lot of what we cherish as wild, natural landscape is actually man-made, if not manicured, and really quite a desert compared to what would occur if nature was allowed to have its own way.

The Scottish Highlands are a good example. The grazing of vast areas of upland by sheep and deer has created closely cropped hills and suppressed the regeneration of the native forest. The scenery is very beautiful but it is man-made and managed by wealthy landowners to facilitate shooting and fishing.

It is nothing like the temperate rain forest that the forces of nature would create if unchecked. Fortunately we do still have a few pockets of that rain forest and in those pockets there is incredible biodiversity.

Jesus Says: Look to Nature for Spiritual Wisdom

In our reading from the Sermon on the mount, Jesus tell us to look at the birds and consider the flowers of the field. The scriptures also tell us to go to the ant and consider its ways, to contemplate the well-rooted tree growing by the river. In fact, the Bible is full of allusions to the natural world offering metaphors for life, faith and character.

When Jesus told us to look at the birds and consider the lilies, the words he used mean fix your eyes on these things or take a really good look. As John Stott pointed out the Bible tells us that birds have lessons to teach us.

I find it sad that the theology of creation has been so neglected. We are meant to look to nature as a source of revelation and inspiration. Martin Luther wrote: Whenever you listen to a nightingale, you are listening to an excellent preacher. Psalm 111:2 in the Message version – God’s works are so great, worth a lifetime of study – endless enjoyment.

Two Crises: Environment and Church

Increasingly, we hear the word crisis used in relation to the environment – with climate change, pollution, habitat destruction and loss of biodiversity. Our appetite for extracting, exploiting and managing has led to this environmental crisis.

But we also hear the word crisis used in relation to the church – certainly in Scotland where congregations are shrinking and churches are closing. I find it really interesting that there’s a lot of good research demonstrating that many of the people who disengage from their local church, do so, not because they have a crisis of faith but because they are frustrated with institutional ways of following Jesus.

Somehow the Spirit-empowered movement which once rocked the Roman Empire has become domesticated, reduced to a predictable, ordered and safe institution. Following Jesus and creating institutions do not fit easily together.

Maybe it’s time to rediscover the adventure of faith. Because the one we seek to follow is, in the words of the Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, wild, dangerous, unfettered and free. Following Jesus is an adventure.

Rewilding Faith: Breaking Down the Fences

Maybe it’s also time to see how the flowers of the field grow and learn from rewilding. In nature, when natural processes are allowed to reign, a sustainable, authentic landscape emerges.

One lesson comes from the 3,500 acre Knepp Estate in West Sussex in the south of England. It has become a beautiful example of the benefits of rewilding. The process began 25 years ago, simply because the managers of the estate couldn’t make a profit out of conventional farming, however intensively they tried. They started by ripping out 110 km of fencing.

In a way, that’s what Jesus, our wild Messiah, did. His world was criss-crossed by fences: powerful religious, ethnic, social and gender barriers. What we see throughout the gospels is Jesus consistently being subversive, in his teaching and example, as he breaks down these barriers. Rewilding and fences do not go well together.

Rooted in Christ: The Foundation of Rewilding Faith

Rewilding the church begins with knowing ourselves to be beloved, (as we were thinking last Sunday), by allowing our identity to be shaped by scripture. And then by putting our roots down deep into Christ. Our foundation isn’t something organisational. It isn’t even a commitment to a set of propositions or beliefs. It is relational. We are to be rooted in a person. As Paul wrote to the followers of Jesus in Colossae, Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Col 2:7

It all begins with that compelling invitation: follow me. When we say Yes to Jesus we are inviting into our lives the wild spirit of Jesus whom C.S. Lewis called the Great Interferer. It’s like releasing a long-extinct species into an unenclosed landscape and watching what happens.

Leading into the Unknown: A Different Vision

The conventional wisdom for church leadership has always been to cast a vision, to communicate a picture of the future, and explain how to get there and the reasons for change. That was certainly my leadership style. But rewilding is different. If we can communicate the new future then it is not truly rewilding. By definition, the rewilding future is unknown.

Let’s be clear…Rewilding the church is not about doing more and working harder. It is not about implementing our best ideas with greater passion. It is more about stopping or, at least, slowing down. It’s about a conscious setting aside of preconceived ideas of what the church should be like and a determination to discern what God up to and what our role in that might be.

Signs of Spiritual Biodiversity

The Spirit of God is at work. He is challenging us to refocus our attention on Jesus, to rediscover our first-love and to reignite our passion for living wholeheartedly for him. There is an increasing recognition that God is doing a new thing. There is a realisation that, rather than fighting for survival, trying to save the church with attractional strategies, there is a need to step back and see what God is doing.

When we do, we see encouraging signs of increasing diversity in how the church is expressing itself, from ancient and complex institutions to small informal groups, to churches without walls and virtual networks. This growing biodiversity is surely one of the signs of God’s rewilding activity. Of course, our traditions are a rich inheritance and deep wells from which to draw.

But when the spirit is blowing we need to be prepared to cast off, raise the sails and commit to a journey towards an unknown destination. Like our Celtic ancestors who got into their little skin-covered boats and allowed the wind and the currents take them wherever.

The Power of the Ancient Gospel Message

Do we long for the life-giving breath that filled them and the early followers of Christ with a passion for sharing his love with others. Do we long for a deeper experience of God and a more authentic encounter with one another.

The gospel is as powerful as ever. It’s the same ancient message of forgiveness and reconciliation – the good news which promises freedom from the past, purpose in the present and hope for the future.

I am challenged, and maybe you will be too, by Alison Morgan, who wrote the book, Wild Gospel. In that book, she suggests that rather than communities centred on Jesus and committed to becoming more like Jesus, we have set up private clubs for those whose leisure interest is religion.

Refocusing on Jesus: The Essential Enterprise

Steve Aisthorpe, who has written passionately about rewilding the church, says: refocusing on Jesus is the most imperative, transformative, life-giving, terrifying, hopeful, empowering enterprise possible. For the follower of Christ, the pathway to refresh or recover or restore vision, faith and vitality always begins here. The single, essential essence of being disciples is that we seek, repeatedly and frequently, to re-centre our lives on him.

But, as you may have experienced, in thick fog or a white-out in the mountains, following someone you can’t see is really tricky! But that is our calling, both individually and corporately.

Looking for God’s Presence in the Wild

I confess that I spend quite a lot of time scanning the skies above our home in the hope of seeing an eagle or an osprey. I am regularly looking out over the water hoping there will be signs of an otter or an unusual bird. And very occasionally I do see that illusive eagle or otter. But if I were not constantly on the look-out, I would never see them. In his book, Reaching out for the invisible God, Philip Yancey notes that he seldom runs into clues of God’s presence unless I am looking.

That’s why we engage in times of prayer and study, fellowship and contemplation, learning to be attentive and expectant. Such practices, with silence and solitude, increase the odds of those special moments of encounter.

A Divine Moment in Preparation

I think I had one of those special moments, a clue of God’s presence, as I was preparing this message a couple of weeks ago. I will be honest. I was really struggling. It just wasn’t coming together. I had just remembered my meeting all those years ago with the Swiss lady and her comment about the countryside being too manicured and I had typed it up as my opening story. Then in a bored moment I picked up a book which Eleanore had taken from our bookshelves and which I had never read. I turned to the middle of the book and started to read:

It’s tempting to make the outward appearance of life look trimmed and neat, controlled and presentable. Yet the end result can be like a garden with such carefully manicured lawns that we’re afraid to walk on the grass, let alone allow the kids to kick a football on it, or invite any wildlife in to make its home there once more.

The word manicured just leaped out! I read on:

Some people like to have their religious beliefs perfectly arranged, too. Yet it’s often on the blurrier edges of life that faith really flourishes, if given the chance. If we are willing not to have everything we believe in its right place, we can become open to the surprise of what might emerge, like the speckled beauty of wild summer flowers by a roadside.

That spoke to my heart. I am very happy to be on the blurrier edges if it means my faith will flourish. And I want to be open to God’s surprises. After all, God does say in Jeremiah 29:13 – You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. And in the sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: Everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Matthew 7:8