Ottawa is home to a growing number of worshippers who would rather sit on a fallen log than a wooden pew. Since May, Anglican priest Reverend Monique Stone has been leading a biweekly service she calls Forest Church, moving the gathering from a traditional sanctuary into different forests around the city.
A different kind of Sunday
Instead of stained glass and stone walls, parishioners find themselves surrounded by trees, birdsong, and, as CBC's Giacomo Panico discovered when he joined a recent session, no shortage of mosquitoes. Stone has been rotating the service through various wooded spots in Ottawa, giving her congregation a chance to worship while surrounded by nature rather than inside four walls.
The format strips away much of the usual structure of a church service. There's no pulpit, no rows of seating, and no roof overhead. Instead, small groups gather among the trees, using the natural setting itself as part of the reflection and prayer.
Why take church outside
For Stone, the appeal of Forest Church lies in reconnecting faith with the natural world. Moving services outdoors offers parishioners a chance to slow down, notice their surroundings, and experience spirituality in a setting that feels less formal and more grounded than a typical Sunday service. It's part of a broader trend among some faith communities looking for ways to make worship feel more accessible and less bound to traditional church buildings.
The mosquitoes, as CBC's report noted, are simply part of the experience. Anyone who has spent time in an Ottawa forest during the warmer months knows that biting insects come with the territory, and Forest Church parishioners seem willing to take the trade-off in exchange for a service held under a canopy of trees instead of a ceiling.
An Ottawa tradition with local roots
Ottawa's abundance of green space, from the Greenbelt to smaller urban forests tucked into neighbourhoods across the city, makes it well suited to this kind of outdoor gathering. Stone's biweekly services have taken advantage of that geography, choosing a new wooded location for each session rather than sticking to a single spot. That rotation gives the Forest Church community a chance to experience different corners of Ottawa's natural landscape while keeping the core of the service, prayer, reflection, and fellowship, consistent from one gathering to the next.
The initiative reflects a small but notable shift happening within some Ottawa faith communities: an openness to rethinking where and how people connect spiritually. For a city with as much accessible forest and parkland as Ottawa, taking church outside isn't just a novelty, it's a natural fit.
As the biweekly gatherings continue, Stone's Forest Church offers Ottawa residents curious about a less conventional worship experience a chance to trade the church basement for the trees, mosquitoes included.
Source: CBC Ottawa
