Outdoor worship helps Anglicans listen to God through creation
Christ Church Bells Corners in the diocese of Ottawa has doubled the number of outdoor worship gatherings it holds on the trails of the National Capital Commission after a strong response to its Forest Church program, launched in summer 2025.
It’s just one parish where the Forest Church movement, originating in Britain, has taken root in the Anglican Church of Canada. Forest Church involves communities gathering outdoors for worship and spiritual practice, emphasizing connection with God through the natural world. Its core ideas are reflected in a variety of similar movements with names and practices as diverse as nature itself.
Salal + Cedar describes itself as a “watershed discipleship community,” referring both to watersheds as natural geographic divisions and to humanity being at a watershed moment in the global climate crisis. The community has met regularly for worship outdoors in the diocese of New Westminster. Its ministry also focuses on education and action towards social and ecological justice.
In October 2025, the diocese of Niagara held a Forest Church workshop. The Rev. Rachel Summers, a final-year curate at St. Peter-in-the-Forest Church in Walthamstow, England— located in northeast London near Epping Forest—led the workshop, drawing upon her 12 years of hosting Forest Church gatherings.
A former schoolteacher, Summers was inspired by the similar forest school movement to hold lessons for students outdoors. She says rising interest in Forest Church is driven by the concept that “we are drawn to meet [and] understand the divine through creation.”
Summers also refers to Romans 1:20, which states, “Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things God has made.”
The Forest Church movement in the U.K., she says, grows out of an idea of “stepping outside looking at creation around you as that fifth book of the gospel … expectant that we will hear God speak through the things that God’s made.”
Beautiful and contested places
The Rev. Laurel Dykstra, founder of Salal + Cedar and vicar at St. George’s Anglican Church in Fort Langley, B.C., says of growing interest in worshipping outdoors, “I think that people have a real hunger to be connected in a way that feels authentic to them … The big perception that churches are in cahoots with climate [change] deniers also feeds into this hunger for … faith that takes [the climate crisis] seriously.”
Although Salal + Cedar’s outdoors worship practice is similar to Forest Church, Dykstra—who uses they/them pronouns—says the ministry identifies as part of the Wild Church movement. They draw a distinction in the latter looking at a variety of eco-systems, beyond forests, where communities gather and worship.
“Sometimes [outdoor worship is] in a place of a lot of natural beauty and sometimes it’s also in a place where environmental sovereignty or creation [are] at risk,” Dykstra says.
“We don’t always go to beautiful places. We also go to contested places … The intention in Salal + Cedar’s worship is that worship in these places equips you for the work of creation care and land and water protection.”
Along with outdoor worship, ministry of Salal + Cedar includes “showing up to support Indigenous people in their struggles for access to free, prior and informed consent for what happens on their land,” Dykstra says. Salal + Cedar has also offered support for land defenders facing charges and offered grants and training for habitat restoration, aiming to reduce loss and extinction of plant and animal species on church lands.
‘The forest is a natural cathedral’
At Forest Church Ottawa, a typical gathering sees 15 to 25 participants gather at 6 p.m. at the start of a trail, opening with a prayer and Scripture reading. The Ven. Monique Stone, incumbent at Christ Church Bells Corners, describes an intention or focus for the walk before worshippers hit the trail.
Wandering through the woods, participants eventually find a place to set up an altar. They offer prayers such as a litany and often hear a confessional statement before Stone leads a Eucharist service.
Stone says her involvement in Forest Church followed a longstanding interest in the connection between ecology and theology. Earlier in her career she did fellowships at churches in the United States where there was an interest in outdoor worship, including pioneering congregations in the Wild Church movement.
The placement of Christ Church Bells Corners in the middle of the western Greenbelt, Stone says, made it a natural location to bring Forest Church to Ottawa. Worshipping in the woods also provides an opportunity to include people who wouldn’t otherwise want to come to a church building or attend Sunday morning worship, she says.
“People do find a sacredness in the outdoors … The forest is a natural cathedral, a natural sacred space,” Stone says. “I also think that by doing a church service outdoors, we are able to connect people to God’s creation.”
Impact of the climate crisis
The Anglican Journal spoke to Dykstra and Stone on July 7 during a summer that saw devastating wildfires, flooding and heatwaves across Canada. Both said in follow-up emails in mid-August that such extreme weather and disasters further emphasized the importance of ministry highlighting the link between humans and nature.
Dykstra says in the wake of a heat dome, fires and catastrophic flooding that hit B.C. in 2021, and with people connected to Salal + Cedar’s ministry displaced and homeless due to destructive wildfires that now take place on an annual basis, “the relevance of our ministry of mutual aid, climate-crisis response, and worship in sacred and vulnerable wild-places is more and more clear.”
Stone says that “the more time we spend intentionally worshipping in, and noticing the sacredness of, creation, the more we are aware of the climate crisis that exists in our country.” She notes that recently Forest Church walkers could not go any further on a trail due to extensive rain in Ottawa that has flooded more 5,000 homes.
“I do hope that Forest Church services increase awareness, respect and humility about the land,” Stone says.
