A Church without Borders

Do you ever stop to think what church might feel like if you’re neurodivergent? Being encouraged to share the peace by touching people you don’t know, feeling that you have to sit still in one place when your body is desperate to move and being asked to stand up and say words you don’t necessarily fully understand or agree with are huge challenges for many neurodiverse people. However, in the village of Bottesford in the northeastern tip of Leicestershire, church has been reimagined and is reaching out to people on the margins.

Our editor Ruth Leigh caught up with Laura Marsh, co-founder and Pioneer Minister at Windmill Forest Church to find out more.

Ruth: How did it all start?

Laura: Back in 2012, my friend Glenda and I were attending our local parish church and had a vision of a more contemporary service to appeal to young people. For five years, it ran as an extra service on the rota, but over time, we started to gather a nucleus of people who wanted something more. A community was forming. We applied to become Pioneer Ministers in 2017, and our Bishop recommended that we became a separate church community by Bishop’s Mission Order, which we did in 2019. We had just performed our first baptisms when the pandemic hit. During lockdown, I developed a Facebook Messenger ministry, building relationships with families who had children with additional needs who were having a tough time, and keeping in touch with them via Facebook. Once life began to return to normal, it became evident that we needed something different to invite these families to, as the children couldn’t engage with church services on Zoom or sitting inside and colouring. What they did love was being outdoors and so I began to explore the concept of a monthly forest church. We began in November 2021 and it was a hit from day one.

Ruth: What does forest church look like?

Laura: It’s a church without parameters, without walls – fun and faith in the forest for families! We partner with a local forest school provider and use their space which is already set up with hammocks, fire circles and tarpaulins. We can forage, craft, practice fire-lighting and bushcraft skills, learn how to build shelters, cook, use plants and wildlife, and most importantly just be ourselves. This year, we’re covering stories Jesus told, bringing parables to life with forest based activities suitable for different age groups. Recently, we explored Matthew 7:3-5 (‘Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?’) and used a different range of wood-based activities as visual reminders of the story. The preschoolers made patterns with sawdust and paint, the primary-aged children printed with wooden mallets and flowers, and our teenagers carved butter knives from birch wood. Our heart for autistic and neurodiverse people is strong and we want everyone to feel loved and included.

Ruth: How many people tend to come along?

Laura: We’ve got a membership of seventy, but our capacity in the forest is forty-five, largely because our autistic members don’t feel comfortable with any more than that. We no longer advertise. All the forest church families tell their friends about it. We’ve grown through building relationships, not marketing.

Ruth: Are there any other groups which meet during the month?

Laura: We have a weekly small group in the morning for young mums after the school run, and an evening one for people who work. The two groups’ content mirrors each other but they are very different.

Ruth: What effect is forest church having on your community?

Laura: One of the mums emailed me and said that it’s a place where everyone can be themselves. She’s going through a difficult time at the moment and she’s so grateful to find a place where she is loved and accepted for who she is. ‘I didn’t know that church could be like this,’ she told me. ‘I can stop masking and be authentically me.’ I’m passionate about including people who have food allergies in all we do, and we model God’s love through being thoughtful about that. When we ran our community Easter trail, we made sure that we offered Free From Easter eggs, hot cross buns, marshmallows and s’mores so that everyone could enjoy themselves without having to worry. Our heart for inclusivity was rewarded when two families whose children had food allergies asked following the trail if they could join us in the forest.

Ruth: Do you have a favourite story?

Laura: The Archdeacon visited us one month. I pointed out two girls relaxing in a hammock and told him that one of them hadn’t been in school for four months. Forest church is her only opportunity to mix with people her own age. She happily comes to the forest and she is making connections in that way. It warms my heart and it’s incredibly humbling. I spend a lot of time with our families individually, so they all know me. I walk into the forest and the children run up to me with their arms held up or asking to play. A mum will hand me her baby to feed, and it knows and trusts me. That’s very special.

Ruth: What difference has the funding from Rural Ministries made to you?

Laura: A huge difference! It means I can carry on leading Windmill, as I’ve always been self-supporting and worked an extra job to fund it. RM has rescued us with the funding so that I can continue to serve the people I love. Going forward, we want to be able to run more of the forest activities ourselves and the funding means that myself and two other members of the Windmill team can take part in Forest School training. I want to set up a group for young people around self-esteem and neurodiversity, and who they are in God. I’d also love to set up a preschool meet up outside of the forest. We started with one preschooler, and now we’ve got ten! RM have helped us so much and given us the chance to keep going and really look to the future.

Ruth: And how about the future?

Laura: Next year we’ve got a full programme of sessions in the forest including three baptisms and four confirmations. We will be running our Easter community outreach again in April 2026, which this year brought the Easter story to 300 people. New families are joining us and they’re learning about Jesus. I want to see more of that for everyone

in our community.

First published in MOSAIC Issue 18, January - April 2026