MAGDALENE Community Church (MCC) was launched two years ago as an “outdoor” church, to enable people to find and worship God by connecting with nature. Set deep within Chopwell Wood, the largest 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 rich Northern Celtic heritage, it is the idea of the Revd Rachael Phillips, Assistant Curate in 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 creating an outdoor church has resonated with the 30 or so midweek worshippers, and between 40 and 70 who attend on Sundays, with many more who have 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, thanks to word of mouth, a strong social-media presence, and a determination to build a new church community.
Ms Phillips describes MCC as “a simple, ‘back to basics’ church, finding new life in ancient traditions. We are outdoors, and that really frees us. We understand that ‘church’ is wherever the people gather to be with God, and reminds us that God is everywhere, including within each of us.
“We believe it’s important to take time to reconnect with God’s creation and rediscover our place in it, noticing how God speaks to us through it. . . We want to learn to tread lightly on the earth and appreciate the vast beauty of this part of God’s Kingdom.”
THE church started in the forest-school area of a local primary school. A subsequent meeting with a representative of Forestry England — just to make a connection, because the church was using Chopwell Wood for morning prayer on Fridays — unexpectedly led to her finding a space in the woods to be the home for the church’s main worship events.
On Fridays, members of the church take an informal walk into the woods while discussing anything and everything, including sightings of deer and native birds in the woodland. Sometimes, the subject of spirituality is not mentioned until the group find a suitable location for liturgy and prayer. All are invited to pray, and even to lead the prayers, if they wish. But there are no obligations. Everything is opt-in.
Celtic-inspired liturgy and prayers are followed by a trip to a local community café for hot drinks and brunches, before the group heads back into the woods for communion. This takes place within MCC’s specially created church setting in the woods, with an altar table and camp fire surrounded by log seating and hammocks. Dough made that morning is cooked on the fire before it is broken and shared, with wine. An area for children to play within a safe boundary leaves them free to engage more closely with worship when they choose to do so.
IN ADDITION to Fridays, MCC also meets twice monthly on Sunday afternoons. On the first Sunday, “Explore” looks at different ways of worshipping and knowing God. The format varies, but always includes music, discussion, prayers, and food. The third Sunday is known as “The Feast”, and is centred on being fed spiritually and physically, with prayer, song, Bible stories, and holy communion, followed by a big, free community meal out in the woods.
The desire to care for creation means serving only ethically sourced food that would otherwise be wasted; and the church has a partnership with a local charity, the Pickle Palace, and Gibside Community Farm. Not having a building keeps their carbon footprint (as well as their running costs) very low.
Rachael observes that Fridays are often a good starting point for anyone thinking of coming along. The group is usually smaller (about 15-20 people), and it is easier to dip in and out. MCC has become a place for some who have struggled to engage with other models of church, for example, Neil, who recently attended a Friday gathering for the first time: “I’ve been looking for a different way to engage with God, and this very much appeals. I love music, and we get to play our favourite songs in the woods. People dance to them. I can see it’s a close-knit community. It’s easy to find people to talk to, and I have felt comfortable here.”
Another member of the congregation, Mandy, talks about how she had previously been part of a thriving new monastic community in Essex, but, after moving north, struggled to find a way to engage with faith communities until she discovered MCC.
THE new outdoor church is more than an environmentally conscious, family-friendly place to meet for worship. “We feel God is calling us to be a new 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 will grow our own food, have space for workshops and studios, and be a place of prayer and learning and developing leaders.
“We are already laying the foundations for this, which you can see in our weekly pattern of prayer, worship, the sacraments, studying, and eating together. Our community is already deeply embedded in each other’s lives. We’re ‘all in’ and seeking to live out Acts 2.42-47 as wholeheartedly and authentically as we can.”
Canon Brazier says: “Something we are particular about is that we are ‘Jesus Church’, because we explicitly recognise that our distinctiveness puts us in danger of becoming distracted from Jesus as the main thing.”
Top tips from MCC:
- Pretty much any site can be used as long as it is reasonably safe (or the risks can be appropriately mitigated). We carry almost everything we need to the site with us, and take it away afterwards. A lesson we have repeatedly had to re-learn is to keep it simple and strip everything back to the basics. We make the set-up and tear-down part of the worship, and invite everyone to participate, as we have found that a lot of the value happens during these times.
- In terms of resources, a small core of committed people who will always turn up is essential (we have always had about 12 committed adults, plus their children), but the most fundamental thing is prayer. We have met monthly to pray intentionally since almost a year before MCC was founded, and we still meet monthly. (Of course, all meetings happen outdoors, usually in a bell tent or prayer walking.)
- The seed funding was part of Durham diocese’s “transformation funding” via the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board, and MCC is so cheap to run that we are still using this money. Rachael’s stipend as a curate is provided for. We are working on growing the funding so that we can become financially self-sustaining over time. Some of this is increasingly coming from members, but MCC is mostly made up of people whose income is very small; so we are looking for grant income as well. Money doesn’t worry us overly much, though, because God has provided so far.
- 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 that might blow trees over.
