There is growing anxiety around the “death of the church” narrative which dominates both professional and social media. This project chooses to contribute to a hopeful counter-narrative, focusing on the new ecclesial life that is emerging from the institution death of white Christendom in the Upper Midwest in early 21st century North America. Taking Mary McClintock Fulkerson’s work as a frame, particularly her linking creative theological production to the site of a wound, the study analyzes congregational theological production – in explicit and implicit, verbal and embodied ways – in response to the wounding participants have experienced under Christendom iterations of the church. Employing a comparative case study model, three congregations, affiliating in formative but complex ways to the three major traditions of white Christendom (Catholicism, Mainline Protestantism, and Evangelicalism) are examined. The methodology of the study follows the emerging mode of theological work and research known as “theological ethnography.” Data was collected through a multi-year ethnographic apprenticeship to each congregation.