Festival attracts leaders from TikTok’s ‘Progressive Clergy Squad’ and hybrid houses of worship
September 23, 2024
Pastor Patty (left) and Jon Mathieu discuss the differences between online church and TikTok ministry at the Wild Goose Festival. (Contributed photo)
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 Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
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.
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. (Contributed photo)
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.
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.”
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.
“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.
Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Daily Readings
Today’s Focus: Wild Goose Festival attracts TikTok’s ‘Progressive Clergy Squad’
Let us join in prayer for:
PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Jonathan and Emily Seitz, Mission Co-workers serving in Taiwan, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Robyn Davis Sekula, VP, Marketing Communications, Presbyterian Foundation
Let us pray
Holy Lord, thank you for the renewing, sustaining power of your Spirit. Bless your church with vision and courage that we might serve you faithfully even when the odds seem to be against us. Amen.
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