My review of Todd Wynward’s excellent book, Rewilding the Way: Break Free to Follow an Untamed God appears in the upcoming issue of Sojourners, and you can read the review online for the next several days here. The book is excellent! Its main point is that as current-day American Christians, we are woefully tame compared to the prophets, disciples, and Jesus himself, and that participating in the creation in a less controlled manner enhances our faith and trust in God. Wynward gives great examples from church history, and from modern-day individuals and communities who put their faith into practice in ways that care for human beings and the rest of creation.
I’ve been working on a project this semester for my course in civic ecology where I’m interviewing individuals enacting watershed discipleship. After I read this book and wrote the review, I got to interview Todd Wynward. He’s great! He has the awesome title of “Minister of Watershed Discipleship” in the Mountain States Mennonite Conference. He’s both wise and humble, recognizing that he still has a long way to go to put these things into practice, but offering his stories anyway as encouragement for all of us to continue deeper into the (literal and metaphorical) wilderness on the Jesus Way. I’m sure I’ll be sharing more about these interviews here in future months.
It’s also great to be able to contribute to Sojourners, because I have a great deal of respect for their work, a relatively long-term movement in the direction of Christ-centered social justice. Lately they’ve been moving more into the area of environmental justice and climate change discussions, so that’s exciting!
Cherice Bock 