Putting the faith into practice
Worship and community
Worship can happen in a kitchen, workshop, classroom, care setting, on a stage or at home. Choose practices that connect you with life and other people, alone or together.
What makes it worship
Understanding the world and living in it.
Evidence helps us understand what is happening. Stories, art, music, ritual and humor help us work through what those things mean in our lives.
We can feel wonder while admitting what we don’t know. We can grieve without making promises we can’t support. We can celebrate while still caring about suffering we can help relieve. Remember people through the changes their lives made, and care for the people who are here now.
Our worship brings us into a fuller relationship with the world we share. It can be a ceremony or the care we put into everyday work. No single practice, gathering, deity symbol or central leader is required. What connects us is the responsibility to care for life.
Freedom of worship
Worship through what you do
These are examples, not a fixed list. People find spiritual connection through many forms of creative and useful work.
Performing theater
Telling stories, exploring human experience, creating joy and bringing people together can be acts of worship.
Making clothes
Using skill and creativity to provide warmth, protection, comfort and self-expression can be a practice of care.
Educating others
Sharing knowledge, teaching skills and helping people develop understanding can express our duty to life and its future.
Fixing things
Repairing what people depend on, restoring usefulness and helping resources last can make spiritual responsibility tangible.
Preparing food
Preparing meals, nourishing people and bringing them together around a table can be acts of worship and care.
Providing care
Medicine, nursing, recovery support, child and elder care, and help with daily life can express our responsibility to relieve suffering and protect dignity.
Many such activities are currently organized through commerce. Earning a livelihood can coexist with worship. Let care for life guide how the work is done, how people are treated and whom it serves. Neither income nor productivity measures a person’s worth or belonging.
Reflection, rest, companionship, receiving care and simply sharing life also have a place. Worship does not require turning an activity into a job or organization.
Personal meaning
Choose symbols that express the creed.
People who use deity symbolism may choose deities from any past culture to represent the church’s beliefs and creed. Choose one, several or none. No pantheon is required, and everyone can participate without a deity symbol.
Learn the histories of the symbols you use and respect the people who preserve those traditions. Explain the meaning you give them without claiming to speak for another faith. Our shared responsibilities remain care for life, intellectual honesty, reciprocity, freedom and the future.
When we gather
What we do together
There is no single script every gathering has to follow. These are some ways to bring the ideals into practice, not an exhaustive list.
Start with the world around us
Explore a question, an event, a living thing, a human need or a change we need to understand.
Tell the story
Use myth, history, art and lived experience to explore what an idea means for the people living with it.
Ask questions together
Make room for conversation, disagreement and what other people know. Saying ‘I don’t know’ leaves room to learn.
Remember and celebrate
Remember people who have died, celebrate what life has made and leave room for laughter, including at ourselves.
Do something with it
Turn what we learn into care, practical help, repair or another useful action within reach.
Take it into daily life
Bring that understanding into how we treat people and the living world after the gathering ends.
Shared service
Build community around the good you provide.
Gather people around a good or service that puts the creed into practice. A theater company, clothing workshop, learning community, repair collective, community kitchen or caregiving group can put the creed into practice. Providing that work can be an expression of worship and a duty to the church’s ideals.
Choose practices that fit your community. Share responsibility, make decisions open to question and learn from the people you serve. If you’re interested in establishing an official branch of the Church, contact us. Read about groups and branches.
Understand and exercise the religious freedoms available where you live. Legal recognition, tax status and exemptions depend on local law and their own requirements; they do not follow automatically from calling work worship. Read the guidance and sources on religious freedom.
Watch and take part
Photon Ghosts
On TwitchPhoton Ghosts is a church-sponsored show on Twitch. Join the conversation. Participation is welcome. Belonging to this faith does not depend on attending, living near a building or being recognized by a central leader.