Diocese of Washington church plant offers outdoor worship on the banks of the Potomac

[Episcopal News Service] For four years the Rev. Pete Nunnally worked to create and refine an outdoor worship experience in the Episcopal tradition that was liturgically sound but decidedly different from most other services.

On Sept. 14,  Water and Wilderness Church, the newest church plant in the D.C.-based Episcopal Diocese of Washington, had its official launch on Sept. 14, drawing 60 people.

“What if we acknowledge a truth … that there’s something holy about nature,” Nunnally told Episcopal News Service, adding that everything about the church flows from that belief. He said Water and Wilderness Church offers a service that is “relaxed but reverent” and is filled with joy that springs from being outdoors.

People now gather on Sundays at 5 p.m. at Fletcher’s Cove, part of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Park Site on the banks of the Potomac River. They start out in a circle, so people can see each other’s faces and not the backs of their heads, he said. They also walk, stopping to listen to readings and other elements of the service. Nunnally and others play guitars.

The river itself is part of the worship experience, he said, noting that during the Sept. 14 service, a kayaker heard people singing, paddled over and joined them in worship.

Washington Bishop Marianne Budde told ENS in an email, “Water and Wilderness Church is a beautiful expression of our diocese’s commitment to support new worshipping communities. Being in nature is where many feel close to God. I’m grateful to Pete Nunnally for his vision.”

The liturgy takes its shape from the Book of Common Prayer’s “An Order for Celebrating the Holy Eucharist.” While the service is informal, Nunnally uses the prayer book’s words of institution to celebrate the Eucharist, and the people say the Lord’s Prayer.

Though the first service as a part of the Diocese of Washington took place in mid-September, Nunnally has been overseeing variations of Water and Wilderness Church since 2021, just months after he was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.

That diocese’s St. George’s Camp, profoundly shaped his experience of God, he said, when summers there as a young man introduced him to “an embodied outdoor communal experience of God.”

While he remained active in his parish church through high school, leading him eventually to seminary, indoor worship never truly offered him the kind of experience of God, and what it means to be the body of Christ, that he knew at camp, he said. And in conversations over the years with fellow campers, many told him that while they still love God, they no longer attend church.

After he became a priest in 2020, he wondered if there was a way to bridge the gap “between the lived experience of God in community at camp and the experience of a normal church service indoors” in a way that might speak to those former campers and to others. While serving at St. Mary’s in Arlington, Virginia, he got permission to try and find out – and Water and Wilderness Church was born.

Nunnally said his goal always has been to find a way to unshackle the liturgy from its usual space to create “a deeper faith and a wilder God.”

From those early days to today, the church has attracted Episcopalians who are active in other churches – folks he calls “dual citizens” – as well as those from other faith traditions and people without religious affiliation. The common denominator is a commitment to caring for creation and an openness to experiencing God outdoors.

Before he began his work, he said he wasn’t aware of the Wild Church Network, which represents outdoor worship experiences from a variety of religious traditions, or of UP Wild Church, which operates under the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s Northern Great Lakes Synod. But he has since spoken to leaders of the Wild Church Network, and he is a board member of the Center for Spirituality in Nature.

Water and Wilderness Church offers more than worship, with a weekly online book study that is exploring spirituality and its connection with nature, and an upcoming webinar that will explore the church’s theology. Ahead of the Oct. 5 service, church members and others are invited to bring their kayak (or rent one) for two hours of paddling on the Potomac. An Oct. 10-13 “Sea and Soul” retreat will take place at the Chincoteague Bay Field Station, an environmental education center on Wallops Island in Virginia.

Serving and growing Water and Wilderness Church is Nunnally’s full-time job, and he is assisted by an eight-member leadership team that includes people from a variety of religious traditions. The church also partners with other organizations, including Interfaith Power and Light, Creation Justice Ministries, Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake and Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission, on whose board Nunnally serves.

After the Diocese of Washington’s Council voted in May to recognize it as an official church plant, the diocese pays half the church’s expenses, including Nunnally’s salary and benefits. The church currently has 30 pledging units, and Nunnally is fund-raising the remainder of the needed funds. Over time he wants the church to provide an increasingly greater portion.

Nunnally noted that many of those who attend services or other activities at Water and Wilderness Church are younger than the usual demographic of The Episcopal Church, where 73% of members are over 50. He hopes that places like this, as well as other worship expressions outside the norm, may help more people find their way into the church.

Using a fishing analogy – Nunnally is an avid fisherman – he said that right now, The Episcopal Church mainly has older fish. “They are great fish, they’re wonderful. But we’re running out of them.”

The church needs to realize that the tactics, the bait and the locations the church has been using just aren’t bringing in as many fish as it has in the past. “We have to change our bait and our location if we want to catch more fish and different kinds of fish,” he said.

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.