Field Guide to Church of the Wild

by Victoria Loorz, Valerie Luna Serrels

From Victoria Loorz, author of Church of the Wild, and Valerie Luna Serrels, spiritual guide and wild-church leader, comes a guide for all who long to reconnect their spirituality with the rest of the living world.

Field Guide to Church of the Wild serves as a companion to a movement committed to restoring sacred relationship with Earth. With a wide-ranging collection of stories, rituals, and practical resources, its pages lead us toward prayer and mountain, ritual and wren, gatherings and forests.

Practiced as a personal spirituality or in communion with others, Church of the Wild is more than a novel way to do church outside or declare nature your church. Expanding beyond religious and institutional boundaries, this book offers ways to rewild your spirituality no matter your spiritual heritage.

Field Guide to Church of the Wild invites us into landscapes and wild church communities to meet the movement's leaders and participants, both human and more-than-human. Join Loorz, founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality, and Serrels, director of the Wild Church Network, as they present wisdom collected from among the hundreds of wild churches blooming throughout the world. Gather inspiration and courage to invite a group of friends to practice wild spirituality. Create eco-spiritual practices that honor the sacred presence you already experience in nature. Each chapter includes stories and practices common to many wild churches, including grounding practices, land acknowledgments, liturgies, prayers, solo sauntering prompts, and ways to listen reverently to the land and one another.

Take this field guide with you into the fields and wildish edge lands of your home place. Join an emerging yet ancient spiritual remembering our place in an alive and holy web of interconnection.

Genres: Spirituality

162 pages, Paperback

Published March 4, 2025

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a follow up to Loorz’ Church of the Wild. It provides a framework for anyone who, after reading the book, feels called to start a Wild Church. There is practical advice, examples from existing Wild Churches, and a general framework for a Wild Church gathering. What you’ll discover is that each Wild Church is unique, as is the Wild Church that I co-lead. There is no “right way” - more like an overall aesthetic. Whether you are thinking about starting a Wild Church gathering or are looking for new ideas for an existing group, this Field Guide will help you get there.

[Bebo Saucier Carrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this book for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

At the beginning of this book, I worried it would be a little too Christian/organized religion-ish for me as someone who stepped out of that space. However, upon reading it was such a beautiful look at interfaith eco-spiritual communities. I think I will likely reference this book in the future because it has so many good rituals/practices I'd like to incorporate into my own eco-spiritual practices.