Gathering new communities of faith from the online to the wild

Festival attracts leaders from TikTok’s ‘Progressive Clergy Squad’ and hybrid houses of worship

by Beth Waltemath | Presbyterian News Service

Pastor Patty (left) and Jon Mathieu discuss the differences between online church and TikTok ministry at the Wild Goose Festival. (Photo by Beth Waltemath)

1001 New Worshiping Communities hosted a conversation for online and hybrid church leaders at the Wild Goose Festival in mid-July. Started in 2011, the four-day spirit, justice, music and arts festival took place at VanHoy Farms Family Campground in Union Grove, North Carolina.

Professional musical acts and bestselling authors anchored the mainstage programming, while other acts, artists and speakers presented a diverse range of topics in 20 smaller tents. These co-creators accepted free admission in exchange for their knowledge and facilitation on topics that spanned the universe of religion, theology and spirituality.

Wild Goose co-creator Jon Mathieu of Harbor Online, a fully online church community supported by the PC(USA), hosted an hourlong session on digital new worshiping communities in an event venue called the Tent of Make Believe. The tent, inspired by the inclusive and imaginative ministry of the late PC(USA) minister and children’s public television producer and host “Mister” Fred Rogers, was sponsored by 1001 New Worshiping Communities and The Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

The smiling face of “Mister” Fred Rogers inspires and welcomes Wild Goose pilgrims to the PC(USA)’s tent co-sponsored by 1001 New Worshiping Communities and The Pittsburgh Presbytery. (Photo by Beth Waltemath)

Mathieu opened his session by inviting people to voice their contexts and questions about online or hybrid churches before sharing pastoral wisdom and best practices that Mathieu and his co-pastors have gained during the six years of growing Harbor Online into a full community of faith, with weekly interactive worship and several monthly small groups on Zoom as well as community-building forums through a platform called Circle.

Central to building community online at Harbor is creating safe spaces to be seen and heard. This is reflected in the gathering greetings and the facilitated breakout groups during weekly worship as well as a separate discussion group that gets together weekly using a resource called “Going Deeper” by the Christian Century, where Mathieu serves as community engagement editor.

As people shared their contexts, the many approaches, platforms and resources available for online and hybrid churches surfaced. The Rev. Mike Holohan, co-pastor of a new worshiping community in The Pittsburgh Presbytery called the Commonwealth of Oakland, shared the way this “progressive, Jesus-centered community of faith” approaches what is considered worship, balancing between the communal and the contemplative, the online and the outside. The community rotates forms of worship — observing Sabbath once a month, then dividing the other three Sundays among hosting a community dinner, engaging with reflection stations and Scripture, and creating a “contemplative nature experience” in city parks. Commonwealth’s nature experience is a form of worship inspired by the book “Forest Church” and echoed other worship communities present at the Wild Goose Festival, particularly those within the Wild Church Network. Once a month, Commonwealth creates a hybrid worship gathering that is interactive. Holohan and Commonwealth’s co-pastor, the Rev. Erin Angeli, take extra time to create reflection stations that can be engaged with in person and online.

Beloved Everybody is a new worshiping community based in Los Angeles, dedicated to making spaces “where people with and without intellectual disabilities can be celebrated and form mutual, authentic friendships.” A remote member of Beloved Everybody who identified by his first name, Dennis, is a resident of North Carolina, not California. In addressing how to set norms for online community, Dennis reflected on challenges to a hybrid community that is not just accessible but enriching for anyone who engages in person or online.

Some online ministries define community building in a different way, especially when focusing primarily on social media platforms. The Rev. Andrew C. Patty, known on TikTok as Pastor Patty, talked about their dual calling to ministry in the social media space and within a “brick-and-mortar” congregational setting. Patty also serves as the pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in the West Village of New York City. They remarked on how the mutual ambivalence of each context toward the other makes it hard to build bridges between those who seek spiritual content online and those who congregate in churches.

Patty participates in the “Progressive Clergy Squad,” which started at the height of the Covid lockdown with 13 progressive Christian TikTokers, including PC(USA) ministers the Rev. Bethany Peerbolte and the Rev. Kari A. Olson, who organize content together and promote each other. The Progressive Clergy Squad, which meets regularly on Zoom and has even hosted an in-person gathering in San Francisco, has grown to include 200 squad members and multiple faiths with imams, rabbis and leaders in various Pagan traditions. Patty joined other squad members on the development board of a fully online church and suggested that some of the new platforms created to build the multifaceted communities that online churches need are open to customization. Their board was able to go through such a process with Altar Live with the help of outside grant money.

Festival attendees who report not wishing to attend a “traditional church” due to past church trauma or because they are religiously unaffiliated are attracted to programming in the PC(USA)’s 1001 New Worshiping Communities tent. (Photo by Jeff Eddings)

“Wild Goose has been a great place of collaboration and connection for 1001 NWC,” said the Rev. Jeff Eddings, an associate for the PC(USA)’s 1001 New Worshiping Communities, which has hosted a speaker tent at Wild Goose for three years. “Each year, we introduce more people to the 1001 movement through dynamic presentations in the tent as well as one-on-one conversations throughout the festival.”

The 1001 tent sat next to the United Methodist Rethink Church and the Episcopal Church venues. This outpost of mainline Christianity in the midst of the Wild Goose Festival fostered valuable collaboration to address the deconstructive discussions and free-spirited fancies of the festival-goers. “We are building bridges to other ecumenical partners doing innovative ministry around the country,” said Eddings.