Bloom Haven Spiritual Community Center

By Tirah Keal

Bloom Haven will be a church by another name, a spiritual community center. Currently taking shape in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, we are a brand-new congregation of the Swedenborgian Church of North America.

 Our Mission Statement: 
Rooted in the Swedenborgian message of love, inclusivity, and respect for all paths, Bloom Haven exists to support people in forming and nurturing relationships with themselves, with each other, and with the Divine. 

We are building a community that will strive to embody the Swedenborgian idea that “Religion is all about how we live, and the religious way to live is to do good” (Doctrine of Life §1).

I am called to be the founding executive pastor for Bloom Haven, it’s a call I wasn’t expecting, and it would certainly be more convenient to ignore it, but I heard and saw a need, and realized I can’t look the other way. Growing up as the daughter of a Swedenborgian minister, from a different branch than the SCNA, I thought my dad’s job looked like the best work in the world: fun, and deeply important. But that branch doesn’t ordain women, so I was told I couldn’t do that job. I remained a member of that church, married and had five children, supporting my husband as he became a Swedenborgian minister himself. Living in Huntingdon Valley since 2008, I gave much of my time and ability to that church as a volunteer supporting the church behind the scenes.  Still loving the idea of women becoming ministers, even if I wasn’t one of them, I became an activist, hoping to change the organization from within. I helped with efforts on demonstrations, and even went so far as to publish a survey asking the population if they wanted women in the clergy (the majority did!). In addition, there was rising energy advocating for inclusion of LGBTQ+ folk in the church, and I joined the effort and led a march and passed around a petition that gained over 800 signatures asking for change. 

In 2021, the head of the clergy published a letter making it clear that the stance of the church would not change, and LGBTQ+ people would continue to be excluded. I was broken-hearted but reconciled with the fact that the church I had given so much to and loved so dearly, was never going to open the pulpit to me, and it was never going to love a whole swath of precious people for who they are. I joined the SCNA with a goal of answering the call to become a minister and plant a truly inclusive congregation in the community where I have lived for decades. I have come to realize that the Lord had been preparing me for this call all along. While I have a passion for this work, I also know it’s not about me. I am just here to follow in the path I have been given and invite others to join me in building something I know will be beautiful and life-giving. 

I have been blessed in my education and preparation by the mentorship of Rev. Shada Sullivan at The Church of the Holy City in Wilmington, Deleware. Under her guidance, I have spent the past several years learning ministry by doing it. I’ve founded our monthly Dinner Church program, developed and preached a sermon series on Divine Providence, relaunched the children’s program, and crafted a building manual to support day-to-day stewardship. The work of Bloom Haven will draw directly on every one of those experiences.

This extended period of incubation has also allowed me to assemble a wonderful team of people to serve as my founding Board of Directors. Folks with experience in ministry and the private sector have stepped up to lend their time and talents to help make my vision for Bloom Haven into a reality.

Bloom Haven is intended as a place for everyone, Swedenborgian and otherwise, to gather in spiritual growth and mutual support, with a foundational inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community. I am delighted to find fellowship in the SCNA with so many people who have found Swedenborgianism, and made their home here in Convention precisely because women and LGBTQ+ folks are welcomed into leadership and full inclusion. I have been sharing the vision of Bloom Haven in my neighborhood, and many people have expressed excitement, saying things like “It’s about time!” and “we need this!” and “A woman in the pulpit? I’m in!” It makes it clear to me that many Swedenborgians already living in this region long to practice their faith in a community free of the exclusionary practices. Right now, the nearest inclusive congregation is over an hour’s drive away, which is out of reach for most.

We call Bloom Haven a spiritual community center rather than a church. It’s a tragic reality for many that the word church on a building can act as a barrier to entry, a reminder of institutions that have failed to live up to their mandate. My hope and prayer is that by choosing a different name we can offer a clearer message of welcome, one that can reach people who might otherwise find it difficult to walk through our door.

Bloom Haven will be a place for people to gather in person for a wide variety of events and activities. While we are not identifying ourselves as a church by name, we will have worship! The basic service will be a gathering on Sunday afternoons. We’ve drawn our inspiration from the practice at the Garden Church in  San Pedro, California. We’ll gather in the afternoon to cook together, then worship together, and after worship, eat together. The cooking will include making the meal for those who come in person, and making extra to be packaged up and sent to food pantries in the region. Our worship service will be informal, with lots of music, readings from scripture, a simple sermon, and a time for sharing among everyone there. People will be welcome to whichever parts of the afternoon and evening they are fed by, literally and figuratively. 

We will have a mid-week evening worship service, focusing on a peaceful meditative ritual rather than a sermon-based service. The focus will be making time to hear/read the Word and reflect on it. Alternating music with readings, the framework will allow time for reflection, and time to share insights with the whole gathering. 

During the rest of the week, we plan to host a wide variety of groups and have the flexibility to try new ideas and be responsive to the needs of our community. We have a pilot program already in operation called Prysm Arts, which is an after-school ally arts and crafts club for kids ages 9–13. 

We hope to have a morning program for infants and young children and their parents involving music and movement. 

We intend to have an active youth group that will be a part of the Swedenborgian Church Youth League (SCYL) based at Bloom Haven, providing weekly gatherings for kids ages 13–18, and connecting them to the annual retreats and camps.

We have plans for an evening Spiritual Sharing Group for the Transitions young adults group ages 18–30. It will follow a simple format grounded in Bloom Haven’s mission of nurturing relationships with self, others, and the Divine. The group will hold space for real questions and concerns, offering an expansive and inclusive welcome.

We have plans for two ongoing series called Confronting Scripture, and Confronting Swedenborg, both of which will be a format in which we read through books of the Bible and Swedenborg’s writings, respectively, and investigate the ideas contained. We will read pre-planned sections and gather to discuss and more deeply understand what we read. There will be a special attention paid to passages that have historically been used to exclude people or excuse prejudice.

There will be two weekly performance groups, Music Performance, and Scripture Performance. The Music Performance group will be led by a paid music director and made up of volunteer musicians and singers to prepare the music for Sunday and mid-week worship. The Scripture Performance group will be led by me, and composed of volunteers who will prepare the readings from the Bible and the writings for use in Sunday and mid-week Worship. Depending on the interest of the participants, I will offer support for the development of scripture as storytelling, where people will learn the Bible passage by heart to deliver at worship in a storytelling style.

As a new endeavor, this ministry depends completely on funding from denominational grants and individual donations. This is an ambitious project and we begin with the recognition that a minister has a skill set that does not always include managing the vital day-to-day operations of a community center, not to mention that we plan to have more to do than I can fulfill alone. As such, we intend to raise funding not only for our programming and location, but also for staffing. We envision a staff made up of myself as the full-time pastor, a full-time Director of Operations, and a part-time Music Director. We are actively looking for a location that will be open for use and connection seven days a week, and that will also require a dedicated group of volunteers in addition to our staff. 

In the fall of 2026, I will begin my final year of education, and as long as I remain in good standing for ordination with the Committee on Admission to into the Ministry, receive approval from the Council of Ministers, and am successfully voted on the floor of Convention, then I will be ordained into ministry for the SCNA at Convention in 2027. If it is the will of the Lord, Bloom Haven will open in July of 2027. We will need a lot of help getting ready for that to happen!  

Bloom Haven is now incorporated as a Pennsylvania non-profit organization, and we have a bank account where we can collect donations! If you would like to contribute, please check out our website: www.bloomhavenscc.org.

May we all have a haven in which to bloom, and may Divine Love and Wisdom, community by community, fill the world.

Read the full issue of the June Messenger.