MAGDALENE Community Church (MCC) was launched two years ago as an “outdoor” church, to enable people to search out and worship God by connecting with nature. Set deep inside Chopwell Wood, the biggest woodland in Tyne and Wear, it brings together people of all ages for food, friendship, and prayer.
Drawing on the Forest Church movement and the wealthy Northern Celtic heritage, it’s the concept of the Revd Rachael Phillips, Assistant Curate within the parish of Greenside (and MCC leader) near by, and its Vicar, Canon Tom Brazier.
Ms Phillips was appointed by the diocese as a church-planting curate, and her dream of making an out of doors church has resonated with the 30 or so midweek worshippers, and between 40 and 70 who attend on Sundays, with many more who’ve joined online. On Wednesdays, at 9 p.m., the late-evening office of compline or night prayer is led via the church’s Facebook page. The church is becoming well-known, due to word of mouth, a powerful social-media presence, and a determination to construct a latest church community.
Ms Phillips describes MCC as “a straightforward, ‘back to basics’ church, finding latest life in ancient traditions. We are outdoors, and that basically frees us. We understand that ‘church’ is wherever the people gather to be with God, and reminds us that God is all over the place, including inside each of us.
“We imagine it’s necessary to take time to reconnect with God’s creation and rediscover our place in it, noticing how God speaks to us through it. . . We need to learn to tread frivolously on the earth and appreciate the vast fantastic thing about this a part of God’s Kingdom.”
THE church began within the forest-school area of a neighborhood primary school. A subsequent meeting with a representative of Forestry England — simply to make a connection, since the church was using Chopwell Wood for morning prayer on Fridays — unexpectedly led to her finding an area within the woods to be the house for the church’s important worship events.
On Fridays, members of the church take a casual walk into the woods while discussing anything and every thing, including sightings of deer and native birds within the woodland. Sometimes, the topic of spirituality isn’t mentioned until the group find an acceptable location for liturgy and prayer. All are invited to hope, and even to guide the prayers, in the event that they wish. But there aren’t any obligations. Everything is opt-in.
Celtic-inspired liturgy and prayers are followed by a visit to a local people café for decent drinks and brunches, before the group heads back into the woods for communion. This takes place inside MCC’s specially created church setting within the woods, with an altar table and camp fire surrounded by log seating and hammocks. Dough made that morning is cooked on the hearth before it’s broken and shared, with wine. An area for youngsters to play inside a protected boundary leaves them free to have interaction more closely with worship once they decide to achieve this.
IN ADDITION to Fridays, MCC also meets twice monthly on Sunday afternoons. On the primary Sunday, “Explore” looks at alternative ways of worshipping and knowing God. The format varies, but at all times includes music, discussion, prayers, and food. The third Sunday is often known as “The Feast”, and is centred on being fed spiritually and physically, with prayer, song, Bible stories, and holy communion, followed by an enormous, free community meal out within the woods.
The desire to take care of creation means serving only ethically sourced food that may otherwise be wasted; and the church has a partnership with a neighborhood charity, the Pickle Palace, and Gibside Community Farm. Not having a constructing keeps their carbon footprint (in addition to their running costs) very low.
Rachael observes that Fridays are sometimes start line for anyone considering of coming along. The group is frequently smaller (about 15-20 people), and it is less complicated to dip out and in. MCC has develop into a spot for some who’ve struggled to have interaction with other models of church, for instance, Neil, who recently attended a Friday gathering for the primary time: “I’ve been on the lookout for a unique solution to engage with God, and this very much appeals. I really like music, and we get to play our favourite songs within the woods. People dance to them. I can see it’s a close-knit community. It’s easy to search out people to consult with, and I actually have felt comfortable here.”
Another member of the congregation, Mandy, talks about how she had previously been a part of a thriving latest monastic community in Essex, but, after moving north, struggled to search out a solution to engage with faith communities until she discovered MCC.
THE latest outdoor church is greater than an environmentally conscious, family-friendly place to satisfy for worship. “We feel God is asking us to be a latest monastic community,” Ms Phillips says. “One day, we imagine several of our families will live together in an intentional community here in Chopwell, and we are going to grow our own food, have space for workshops and studios, and be a spot of prayer and learning and developing leaders.
“We are already laying the foundations for this, which you may see in our weekly pattern of prayer, worship, the sacraments, studying, and eating together. Our community is already deeply embedded in one another’s lives. We’re ‘all in’ and looking for to live out Acts 2.42-47 as wholeheartedly and authentically as we are able to.”
Canon Brazier says: “Something we’re particular about is that we’re ‘Jesus Church’, because we explicitly recognise that our distinctiveness puts us at risk of becoming distracted from Jesus because the important thing.”
Top suggestions from MCC:
- Pretty much any site will be used so long as it within reason protected (or the risks will be appropriately mitigated). We carry almost every thing we want to the location with us, and take it away afterwards. A lesson we have now repeatedly needed to re-learn is to maintain it easy and strip every thing back to the fundamentals. We make the set-up and tear-down a part of the worship, and invite everyone to participate, as we have now found that a variety of the worth happens during these times.
- In terms of resources, a small core of committed individuals who will at all times turn up is important (we have now at all times had about 12 committed adults, plus their children), but probably the most fundamental thing is prayer. We have met monthly to hope intentionally since almost a 12 months before MCC was founded, and we still meet monthly. (Of course, all meetings occur outdoors, normally in a bell tent or prayer walking.)
- The seed funding was a part of Durham diocese’s “transformation funding” via the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board, and MCC is so low-cost to run that we’re still using this money. Rachael’s stipend as a curate is provided for. We are working on growing the funding in order that we are able to develop into financially self-sustaining over time. Some of that is increasingly coming from members, but MCC is generally made up of individuals whose income may be very small; so we’re on the lookout for grant income as well. Money doesn’t worry us overly much, though, because God has provided up to now.
- When it rains, we dress for the weather and meet anyway. The only thing that has stopped us is when the weather becomes dangerous, e.g. gale-force winds which may blow trees over.
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