Hi. This is Compass finding spirituality in the everyday. I'm host
Reverend Ryan Dunn. And in this episode, I'm joined for a
wild adventure by Reverend Corey Turnpenny.
Corey discusses the unique blend of community
and nature that defines church in the wild
where worship is, like, harmoniously aligned with the
rhythms of the natural world. So we're gonna discover how
this innovative faith community, Church in the Wild, embraces outdoor
worship, the beauty of a camp setting, and the
profound spirituality found under open skies.
Corrie Turnpenny is the founding pastor, of course, of Church in the
Wild, a nature focused congregation in Upstate New
York. Her journey began at the UMC Next conference
in 2019, leading her to establish a faith
space where individuals can reconnect with their spirituality
amidst the splendor of creation. Through church in the wild, Corey's
pioneering a movement that calls people back to nature, fostering a
sense of belonging for those who feel spiritually homeless in
traditional settings. If you appreciate conversations
like this one that we're having with Corey, hit the like and subscribe
button on your podcast listening platform. And if you're ready to
take the next step, leave a rating and review. That would
really help us out. Thank you. Let's get to the story
of Church and in the Wild with Reverend Corey Turnpenny.
There's so much to explore around Church of
the Wild, but let's start with this. How are you? How goes it with your
soul today? Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Happy season. You know, winter
is hard. Yeah. And I I'm I'm I
remind myself of that that this is, you
know, the season that,
was hardest for humanity, especially here up here in the
North that, took a
lot of, you know, special care and
lots of different traditions throughout human
history to help us survive winter. And there's been,
of course, a lot of just social and
Yeah. National stuff loaded on top of us
in the middle of winter. And so yeah. It's hard and
heavy for a lot of folks right now. Well, in talking about some of the
ways in which we connect with the natural world, what does the
rhythm of life look like for Church of the Wild during the
wintertime? Yeah. We try really
hard to match the rhythms of nature,
and it does take, like, these regular
reminders that it's okay okay to be going slow
and to not be as active right now as a community.
So we worship outdoors for as long as
we can. We're in Upstate New York. So, usually,
by the October, early November, we are moving
indoors at our host site, Skylake
Camp and Retreat Center. They're k. Phenomenal
hosts to us and welcome us indoors
to cozy rooms where we can have a fire in the
fireplace and still look out, you know, at the lake
and and feel a connection to nature. And
then after Christmas, we go
on Zoom for a month or so. Okay. So
we meet virtually, which is also really awesome.
You know, I I I try to tell people a lot.
Like, as a a nature focused
congregation, we are not tech averse. Like,
there's great tools in the Internet and Zoom,
and we can use those to do great
ministry. And so it's really fun in the winter to
expand our circle. We we get people joining us from
all over the country and all over the world. We have people from Sweden
and Brussels. It's amazing, the folks that find
us and wanna join in. And then that allows us to bring
in guest speakers. So, you know, people that
aren't near us geographically can still come talk to us,
and we can learn about the great stuff they're doing.
And then for, February and March,
we meet at another church in
their chapel. And that still allows
us to be able to have people join us on Zoom. So
our our Zoom friends are with us, you know,
for three or four months. We're actually hoping
that on the at the end of this year when we come indoors
again, that we can start Zoom earlier than
January to keep, you know, keep our connection
with them. They're they're really regular, awesome
attenders and and give a lot to
our community. So, yeah, we we come
indoors for this time. And for, you know,
for January, we are hearing from guest speakers. For February, like
this month, we're just sharing our soul songs. So every
week we have three or four people just share a song. We listen to it
and they tell us about it. So it's not even a full worship service. You
know, we don't have our full liturgy or program. We just we're
taking it easy. And and there's always a part
of me that feels anxious about that, and I have to remind myself
that, no. This this is what the world
should be doing right now, and we have to we almost
have to work at slowing down. It takes it takes some
effort to not get caught up in our cultural pace
and to really keep with the pace of nature. What have been some
of the songs that people have shared? Oh my god.
That has really stuck out to you like, Yeah. There have been
some great ones. Last week, we got Soul
Shine, from Government Mule. Mule. Okay.
Great one. We got some Mumford and Sons coming up this
week. We had some John Denver.
What else have we had? Some really some
really eclectic tastes in our congregation, which is
awesome. And it's like this little, window
into somebody's soul when they they say
like, yeah, this song speaks to my soul and they tell
us about why and how it connected for them. And
it's really cool. We're we're putting it all into a great playlist
for for ourselves. Preference community preference, though, would
probably be to to meet outside. Is that correct?
Yes. Absolutely. We
are full of nature lovers.
Our group loves to be outdoors, and we
just get to savor it and soak it in when when the weather
allows. Yeah. Well, how did all this come about?
How did a community of nature lovers come
together to form this church? Oh, well.
Let's start at the v maybe we can start with what inspired you,
Cori, to Yeah. To make this kind of movement?
What was stirring in your soul? Well, it was back
in, gosh, 2019.
I attended, the UMC Next conference
that happened that year as we were getting ready for a general
conference and what's you know? And, of course, all
none of that happened as anyone thought it would, but we had this great
gathering. It did. Just five years later. Yeah. It
happened. Just yeah. Yep. So we got you know, a bunch of
people from across the country gathered,
at Church of the Resurrection, and it was all about, you know, dreaming.
What about the future of the church? And so I was sort of
in that space as I was traveling back
home and, you know, a late night drive,
you're talking to God feeling I was kinda
complaining to God, feeling like, you know,
there's just thinking about the future for myself
personally. I was at at a great
church, but I knew I couldn't stay there forever. You know, I was there
it was, like, my sixth, seventh year and thinking
locally in my area, what other churches,
you know, might be options for me as a leader. And I
would this was the complaint is in that I didn't feel like there
was any church that I could really be my full
authentic self as a pastor.
And that was frustrating to me. And I was complaining to
God kind of, and it really felt like this
very sassy reply of, well, you know,
you could start your own congregation.
And I just said, no. No. What?
No. I never first of all, I never thought I would
experience another call. Like, I I had
my call to ministry, and I said yes. Great. And I,
you know, did the whole thing, god. But now
this, no. I was not interested in planting a church.
It seemed like a lot of work. And most
of the church planters I knew, you know, were
over workers working a ton of hours and
trying to start, like, another megachurch or
Yeah. Or just another type of church that that, again, I don't know that I
would feel comfortable or able
to be my full authentic self.
And so I I said no, of
course, initially, but these things tend to
not really leave you alone. And so it kept you know, the
thought kept circling around in my brain for a month or so.
And then I was with my, clergy covenant group at
annual conference, And I I heard myself say
the words, I just wanna be the pastor at Skylake.
Like, why can't I do that? And it was
then it felt like God was like, there you go. You know? It just
took you a little while, but that's that's the
ticket. And Was there a church already at Skylake, or are you
saying, like, I just wanna be a pastor in this area? Yeah. At Okay.
At at camp. You know? So this is the camp I Skylake is the
camp. Yeah. It's where I grew up attending as a kid.
I worked there on summer staff for five summers.
You know, it was it is my soul's
home. It's where I feel
the most connected to God,
the most self confident and at
ease and peaceful and grateful. You know? It
it's just the place where I feel best and it's
beautiful. And and it's this underutilized
resource that's just sort of sitting there most of the week. You know? There's
retreats on the weekends, but I just thought, gosh. I
wanna be a pastor, and I wanna be a pastor at Skylake. And then
it was like a flood of ideas
when I thought, wait. We could actually do that. You
know? Like, people are doing church in bars and restaurants and
and movie theaters. Like, why couldn't we do church Yeah.
At camp? It almost it
made so much sense. I was like, I I don't know why I
didn't think of this sooner, but here we are, you know, all
in all in the spirits time. So that was the
initial idea and it was a little nerve wracking at first.
So I just, how did you pitch it to the powers that
be? Yeah. So openness at the time? I
I started by just sharing with, you know,
my close family, a couple close friends who were
also a part of, like, the camp community
there. Just just to say, let me just
gut check this for me. Is this totally out of
the, you know, realm of possibility? You know, what do you think about
this idea? And they were supportive.
So I went to our conference at the time,
the person overseeing new
church starts and told him the idea, and he
thought it was great. And, you know, every
point here, I was just, like, waiting for somebody to tell me no or
don't do this, and that never happened. So here
we are. It's like you just wanted somebody to confirm
your own reservations or misgivings. Yeah. I just
knew somehow to get out of having to do this
because I knew it wasn't gonna be easy.
So, you know, he gave me some people to talk to. And, obviously, the first
step was talking to the director at Skylake to say, hey. Would
you support this? Would you be willing to host a
new faith community here? And when he was supportive,
then I was like, okay. I guess we're doing this.
Fine. Alright. So then I just, you know, started
talking to people I knew who liked
the outdoors, who were part of camp, were interested,
and they kept giving me other people to talk to.
And then we had a group of, like, 10 people who thought this
was a good idea. And so we just met
monthly for, like, six months to talk about,
okay. So who who do we want this community
to be for, and what what
values do we want this community to have? And, you know, we
we resisted jumping right to worship. Like,
what's it gonna look like? What are we gonna do? We wanted to first lay
the foundation of who's this for? What's it really about? Like,
what our mission and vision and all of that and our
name and, you know, so we sort of workshopped all this stuff
together. And our last meeting was
March of twenty twenty Yeah. Alright. Before
everything shut down. Yeah. So we we took
a pause with the rest of the world and regrouped and
said, what do we think? Do we wanna keep going on
this? And and everyone said, yes. We think
we need this now more than ever. A few few folks
said, yes. You should still do it, but I have to step
back, which was totally understandable.
So we've sort of forged ahead. You know, the plan
was to build community first, which was a little
bit different on Zoom. You know, we had lots of
Zoom gatherings and then we started doing, service
work. So we were outdoors and we were able to, you know,
be social distanced and all of that and
doing doing community work together. And what kind of work was
that? We did, like, a
cleanup day at Skylake. We did, we
built a new community garden for our local,
community garden group. We did
some street cleanups in different neighborhoods where
they were hosting it. So there there was a lot happening outdoors
that we could, like, show up and support, which was nice during that
time. And and we really wanted to start with
service work because that is way less scary
to people than starting with a worship
service, especially a new kind of worship service.
So we we wanted to get people together,
in in that setting first before launching
worship. So we we were building community. We had a
great group of folks help get
started. You know, we we did some trial runs of worship
and then had our first, you know, public
official launch day worship the June in
2021. And we've been
going strong every week since then. Ma'am,
how did you first come in contact with
some of the people who are joining in besides that initial leadership
group? Have there been other people who have heard about what you're
doing and joined in? I I I asked this because in my
mind, I imagine, part of the
allure of the natural world is a sense of isolation.
And so how do you connect with people who feel
like, or value a sense of isolation?
Yes. It has been fascinating
to me how people find us. And the most
incredible people have been brought together
under this, you know, concept of church in
the wild. It's just I'm just blown away. Every time a new
person comes and I learn their story,
it's just incredible. And and they're
so excited to have found something that resonates
with them, their life experience, and their,
you know, their spirituality because I I can't tell
you how many times people have said, I didn't know
there were other people like me in this area
or that, you know, that that there was this kind of thing around
here. It mostly people find us
online. They they see our website or social
media and and different events that we're doing and connect with us there. There's
one person who's super involved right now,
and she just saw our, like, yard sign that we had
out front of the camp. She was driving past,
saw the sign. She never grew up going to
church. She didn't really know anything about church,
but she looked up our website after seeing the sign
and thought, I think this seems cool, and just showed
up by herself. You know? I'm just like, the
the courage it takes for somebody to do that,
I was astounded. So, yeah, it's amazing
how people find us word-of-mouth, you know, people bringing friends a
lot. But there is sort
of, yeah, there is a sort of sense of some
seclusion. You know, we're we're about a half hour drive
from our closest city. And so it is
sort of like this mini retreat every every week
when you come out of that busyness. And, you know,
we call it the camp bubble when when you're at camp
for, you know, the whole summer, you feel like you're in this bubble. Like,
you don't even know what's happening in the rest of the world. It's it's great.
And and we want to we want people to have that
little mini experience of that to come get away,
be in this incredibly beautiful
space, you know, and and then just
have have a moment of sort of exiting
your your everyday life and coming into
the glory and grandeur of nature
is is really special and important. And
and I think people get, I don't wanna
say addicted to it, but, you know, they they long for it.
You know, you come once and you're like, oh.
So you wanna keep coming back. Yeah.
So besides the the setting, when you do gather, what do
those gatherings look like? Right. We're we're
in this great beautiful setting on the shores of
of the lake with these huge trees all around us.
We we gather in the round. We sit in a circle. We
have some benches. Sometimes people bring their lawn
chairs or, pull up a blanket. We
have, like, a bag of of blankets for folks to sit
on or wrap up in if it's chilly.
We we start, you know, by
reminding each other what we're about, which is our
mission following the wild spirit through creation, adventure,
and restoration. And we
share, it's sort of like passing the piece,
but we share something new and good with people
next to us. So every every week, it's it's a
real spiritual practice to say, okay. What
is new and good in my life? And sometimes it's a
challenge to come up with something, but that's why we do it and to
remind each other there is good in the world. And then we,
I'll go get something from nature around us and bring it
up to our altar, which is just these
five wooden crates that we stack on top of each other.
And we have a candle and a pitcher of water,
and then everybody brings stuff to the altar.
So sticks and rocks and pine cones and acorns and feathers
and leaves and flowers, anything that's around.
And so every week, our altar looks
like the season that we're in. You know? We
we see the changing colors and textures of of
each season reflected in our altar, and it's this beautiful
work of art, and then we take it down. You know? It's this practice of
impermanence that we come together. We
have this beautiful experience, and we return those things back to
the earth, and it's good. You know? It doesn't have
we don't have to try to preserve everything. So we build our
altar while we sing a song and, that we have a
nature connection moment where
someone from our congregation shares something
cool about nature, some cool nature information
that usually connects to, like, whatever the theme for the day
is. And then our kids, we have a wildlings
club, and they go with the kids' leaders
and do their thing, which can be
scavenger hunts or games or books or, you know,
anything that you can do at camp.
And then we have a poem. Every week, we read a
different poem and a wisdom
reading. And then we
have a message time, but it's very conversational.
I love that most weeks, I am not the one to
say the most profound thing. It takes a lot of
pressure off. You know, I just sort of have to ask some questions,
and then we have this incredible conversation.
We sing a couple songs. We have a great,
guitarist, who leads us in all kinds of
music, you know, secular, sacred, you
know, oldies, folk, up to current stuff.
We'll sing whatever fits. And
we have a time of prayer and meditation
that one again, another member of the congregation
leads that time. And that takes many
different forms too. Sometimes we'll all just go wander
and sit for ten minutes and
just be in nature. Sometimes
it'll be kind of a guided meditation or we'll invite people to take their
shoes off and ground on the earth or or we'll
walk while we meditate or, you know,
a a traditional sort of, pastoral
prayer. It it varies week to week. And then we
set intentions for the week ahead so everybody gets a
chance to share, you know, a word or a phrase
that they're claiming as as their intention this
week. And we share the Celtic deep peace
blessing as our benediction and and send people
off with that. Yeah. Full
bodied. Like, by the end of the hour, I
feel like I just did yoga or got a massage. Like,
I just feel so relaxed and
good, but alert and present, you know, just
spending that time with that fresh
oxygen and, you know, hearing the birds
songs and it just is so
peaceful. So we send each other off with that. Have congregants
told you why this is appealing to them or
meaningful for them? Yes. Absolutely. I
hear a lot. Well, I'll tell you.
Early on in our first year, someone came for the
first time, and they they they said when
they showed up, I'm kinda nervous. You know, I just heard about this.
I came by myself. And and so it was great to
have a moment of, like, reassuring them that I was gonna be okay. And they
then they met someone they knew already there, which was
great. And afterwards, they said, you know, my whole life,
I have felt like I was spiritually
homeless. Like, I just didn't fit in anywhere
until now. Like, this is
my spiritual home. This is what feels like home to me.
And that was huge to hear that
reflected back to us early on because that helped us
with our own identity of what this community is. You know, it's not
just about creation care. It's not just about
we're a place full of nature lovers, worshiping God
together outside, that this was an
alternative to other religious
or spiritual places that could be a home for
people that didn't feel like they fit in anywhere. And so
we've we've heard that similar
story time and time again as people find us. They say, wow.
This this is what I've been looking for, you know, for so long. This
feels right. I've tried so many different things, and this
is what I've been longing to find. So it sounds
like the the natural world is a central
piece of your your community gatherings. Are there
ways that you encourage congregants to kinda
take an awareness of the natural world into their own
spiritual practices, like, away from the Sunday gathering?
Yes. Absolutely. We we have,
like, a monthly action that we set for
our group that we do together. And it can be, you
know, let's all sign this petition or
send a letter about this usually environmental
issue. You know, this month, we're encouraging
folks to support black owned businesses in our community. It
can be a variety of different things, but it's it's usually
about how are we helping to care for
creation? How are we answering that charge we've been
given? One one of my favorites was,
we made up these little signs that said, like,
bananas don't need a plastic bag.
Plastic takes three years to break down in in
you know, then it's microplastics. And so we we
encourage people to take them and, like, clip them to the
banana stand at their local grocery store just to sort of
spread this message, like grassroots.
You know, we didn't get permission or anything. We just stuck these signs in different
grocery stores saying like, hey. You don't need plastic for your bananas.
So little things like that were,
incorporating into our spiritual
lives as not just, you know,
sitting in nature and meditating, but caring
for creation is part of our spiritual practice.
We also do encourage people to
notice what's going on to make
sure you get, you know, even if you just step outside
for five minutes one day, you know,
especially now when it's cold, you know, just having
that little bit of, rubbing
shoulders with your your nature around you
are our wild neighbors. You know?
We're called to love our neighbors, and that's not just humans.
That's the trees and the animals and the plants
and the air and the water and the land
itself. And we can we can
gain so much from all of them
just as much as we can give. And so, yes,
really encouraging to notice, to slow down,
practicing Sabbath, you know, practicing
rest as a spiritual practice is a big part of creation
care, and learning from
nature. And we've heard I I
just love we have a woman who goes to
morning church because we we meet at 4PM. So she
goes to her local United Methodist Church in the morning, and then she comes
to church in the wild. And she
has said, my siblings told me
since I started coming to this wild church,
I am so much more relaxed and calm.
And it really does. It makes a big difference for me. She
said, you know, I just feel more in tune and
more connected and present. And that, you
know, brings a tear to my eye because that's exactly what we're
hoping for is to help people find that
calm, that peace that we find in nature.
Your use of the word wild, I feel like we need to talk about that
a little bit. You talked about the wild spirit, and you couldn't name the church
like church in the woods or church in Skylake. But
why why center in on this term wild?
Why is that important for your identity? It's a little bit of a
reclaiming of the word. Right? I think it
connects to the idea of, like,
negative connotations for nature when I think
of of our history, you know,
calling people savage because they
lived in huts or tents or teepees.
And though that sort of connotation of, like, oh, the wild
is scary or dangerous or
not civilized. Right? And and we want
that's that's where we wanna be. We wanna be outside
of, you know, the manicured,
perfect, like, controlled
nature experiences that
exist in a lot of places. We want to
to follow the wild spirit into the
wilds of creation, and we recognize
that life is wild. You know? Like, we're in
the wilderness of our lives sometimes. We're
in the wilderness of society. Like, you
know, things can be, complicated
and and tangled and messy. And that that
is okay, you know, that that
the wild spirit exists in all those places,
whether it's, you know, a swamp or
a city street, there there is nature in all of
those places. And and we know that
the spirit, the source of life is there in all of those
places. And so it's sort of a reclaiming of the word
and acknowledging that there's nowhere we can go that
is separate or removed from
our creator. You spend a little time searching for that,
and and in that, you had a a sense of,
it sounds like, I don't know, if disassociation, a sense
of unease with kind of the, traditional
trappings of the institution. I
I there are a whole number of people who who feel that
kind of uneasiness as well. Do you have any
advice for those who are, you know, longing for that spiritual
community, but feel like, I don't know, if I just fit in at the
traditional church setting? Yeah. There's a lot of options
for folks in that in that realm. Even
though it feels like there aren't, I think there are a lot of
options. So you can bring you can
bring some of this some of these concepts
into your traditional church. You
know, start a creation care committee,
or or encourage you know, I know churches that
will worship on their lawn in the summer or do, you
know, a monthly outdoor worship service in a park
or put up install a labyrinth
somewhere outside or or a prayer trail if your church has
lots of property. There's so many ways of
engaging with creation, and there's so
there's so much precedent for it in scripture,
in our traditions, you know, the various,
Christian traditions and other traditions have so much,
encouragement and guidance and wisdom about connecting,
connecting with creation. One of our favorite, Bible verses
comes from Job who says, ask
the animals what they think. Let the birds teach
you. You know, put your ear to the earth and learn the
basics about who God is. And that's
exactly, you know, the the indigenous wisdom
that we can learn from that we were the
last ones here. The animals and the trees and the
plants, they were all here before us. They all know how to be earthlings
better than we do. So we have a lot to learn from them.
And, and so there's tons of ways of incorporating
these ideas and practices into traditional
church. There's also lots of
places like Church in the Wild cropping up all over the
world. And there's a couple there's a couple resources
you could check. The wild church network has
a map of different wild churches, and the
center for spirituality in nature has a
database of different, groups that meet
outdoors. They're not all gonna look the same. They all
have various differences about
them, but there are people doing
this. And if you can't find someone near you, I
would love to help people start a wild church
gathering. I have, I have helped people,
done some coaching and training and it's,
it's such a needed and,
important way of connecting with God that I am happy
to help others do that. If, if, if
you're not finding anything, if you're not getting anywhere,
let me know. Cool. Well and, Corey, let's go out with this
then. Where are they gonna get ahold of you? Well, we're
easy to find churchinthewild.org.
And there's all of all of the ways you can connect
to us are there on our website, our,
email, Facebook, Instagram, all those
things, you can find fairly easily.
Send us a message and yes, we would love to connect.
Corey, thank you for sharing your story with us. Absolutely. Thank
you. We hope this episode has given you some food and thought on
how to find spirituality in the everyday, whether
possible. Dedications and hard work keep us on air and
connected to our listeners. And speaking and
listening, if you haven't already, we would love for you to see, to
subscribe to help this podcast,
rate us, and also feedback
helps us reach more listeners and continue.
I'll chat at you again in two weeks time. Again, my name is Ryan Dunne.
Peace to you until then.