Being Denominationally Homeless

Big Tents, No Fences, and the Call of the Wild

I tried to buy a grief curriculum the other day.

It’s a well-known program, faith-based, something I’ve seen help people. I’m preparing to start a grief group for the seniors I serve, and I thought it could be a good fit. But when I went through the checkout process, I ran into something I didn’t expect. The materials could only be purchased by a church. Not just a Christian, not a chaplain, but an actual church, with a pastor willing to sign their statement of faith.

Most of the statement was standard: belief in the Trinity, the resurrection, the authority of Scripture. But the last line caught me off guard. It was a moral position, not a doctrinal one: a definition of marriage and sexual ethics that had nothing to do with grief. I get why a faith group might include that in premarital counseling materials. But this is for people who have lost someone. And one of the people I expect to attend, a woman who just lost her longtime partner, wouldn’t even have her relationship recognized by that statement.

What struck me most was how easily access to pastoral care had been turned into a matter of doctrinal fidelity. The church, in this case, wasn’t offering ministry. It was guarding it. A grief curriculum became a boundary line, not over creeds or historic doctrine, but over a moral and political talking point. It made me reflect on how much ministry today is being consolidated by churches and denominations— pulled inward, away from the world it claims to serve. All in the name of doctrinal fidelity about certain stances that often aren’t really doctrinal at all.

Everyone knows, I’m not anti-church. I am not anti-denominations. I still show up for worship at a denominational church. I volunteer. I give. I still care about the community, the liturgy, the sacraments. I just don’t belong in the way I used to. I’m not a member, not credentialed, not under anyone’s banner. I’m not sure I could be, even if I wanted to. There’s not really a place for someone like me at their institutional table, and that is fine.

And that’s what I’ve been sitting with lately. Not a crisis. Just a quiet tension I keep running into.

Photo by Anthony Adu on Unsplash

I’ve been co-hosting a new podcast where we talk candidly about church culture, belief, and the messiness that comes with both. It’s been meaningful, but it’s also brought some things back up. Old conversations. Old wounds. Questions I thought I’d moved past. The further I get from my denominational roots, the more I realize how much of me was shaped inside a system I no longer fit. And how complicated it is to speak from outside that system while still trying to love the people inside it.

There’s a strange kind of clarity that comes with not belonging. I don’t have to defend a brand. I’m not trying to climb anyone’s ladder. And I’m free to name what I see, both the beauty and the brokenness. That freedom feels like enough.

What I’m protecting most, I think, is my peace. Not just the absence of conflict, but a freedom from paranoia. I don’t worry about stepping on the wrong toes. I’m not constantly running internal checks before I speak. Liberty has given me clarity. It has given me the freedom to show up as myself. And I’m not giving that up.

At the same time, there’s a cost to living outside the system. I have a life, a ministry, a community. I have meaning. But I don’t have credibility, not the kind institutions care about. In chaplaincy, for example, credibility is often measured by who endorses you, what board examined you, etc. There’s gatekeeping everywhere. Which is why I’ve started to dream about a different way (more on that to come).

When you are denominationally homeless, it’s a sort of wilderness. And inevitably, the wilderness makes you hospitable. You learn to share whatever shelter you find. You learn to bless people as they are, not as someone says they should be. It is how we survive out here. Out here, I’ve learned how to stand non-anxiously at the crossroads where real people live and engage. People who hate church, go to church, have left church, and have been rejected by the church. They are all here in the real world under the shadows of steeples. This isn't exile. This is where God is at work. This is where I am at work, as a minister in the wild.

This is the work of the minister now, the wilderness work. The calling to offer something credible, Spirit-filled, and deeply human, without needing permission from those who keep the gates. To feed people with whatever bread we have. To create ministry that isn’t the property of the church, but provision for the world.

As it turns out, God has a history of starting new creation in the wild places. Abraham left home for a wild place. The Hebrew children formed an entire society in the wilderness as nomads. The Jesus movement started in the wilderness where John preached. Even creation itself began as the Spirit hovered over the wild, chaotic deep.

Wilderness is not the absence of God. Again and again, Scripture shows God choosing the margins over the center, the wild over the temple, the uncharted over the institutional. The wilderness isn’t a holding place or punishment. It’s formation. It’s encounter. It’s where idols are stripped away and something lasting can take root. That may be why it rarely fits into institutional categories. It resists regulation. It resists branding. It has to be lived, not managed. It flows with the Spirit. It is hospitable to a fault. There are no fences here, just big tents.

I don’t know exactly where this path leads. But I’ve stopped waiting for a map. I’m learning to trust the manna and the presence. And if you find yourself somewhere similar, adrift, outside, in between, I hope you’ll recognize the wilderness not as failure. It is holy ground. There’s room here for you too. No signed faith statement required.