Episode Details

The Sunday Assembly build a community and celebrate life by rejigging a traditional church service …… but leaving out all the “God-stuff”.

We’ve been hearing over the past few episodes how important community is in the faith journey … for devout believers returning to church (Ep. #51) … for those trying to now revitalize the church experience (Ep. #52)… and even for those trying to help those struggling through the journey of faith deconstruction (Ep. #53 and #54).

Today, we’re going to talk to people who fully deconstructed their faith, and decided to leave church entirely behind, but felt they missed community so much, they would re-create the church experience entirely, replacing all the religious components with secular surrogates.

The Sunday Assembly substitute most aspects of the church experience—worship songs and a sermon with inspirational but non-religious surrogates; prayer with meditation or a moment of reflection; communion with simply sharing a meal; infant baptisms/Christenings with baby namings; short-term missions with community clean-ups—all without any reference to God.

And it started a wave that swept around the globe. The one group in London UK that started in January of 2013 has now grown to 45 chapters in 8 different countries around the globe (their growth trajectory hasn’t been as good as that sounds … we explore that within the episode). We talked to two key l