Maybe its the midwestern farmer in me, or maybe its because urban farming and whole foods are hot topics these days, but I can't stop thinking about this idea of churches feeding their communities by growing their own fresh produce. It seems like this idea is really catching on.
After my last post, Bob sent me a link to an ABC news story about Will Allen, who's training people to do urban gardening in Milwaukee. The NYTimes magazine also did an article on Allen last summer.
Well, here's another story about an evangelical church, this one in Garden City, Idaho, that built the "garden 'o feedin" (get it?) to provide fresh food in the community and invite neighbors to come together. To me, this is such a compelling way to engage the community for a number of reasons:
(1) It meets a tangible need in the community (providing food for the hungry). In this sense, these new community gardens function much like the traditional church food pantry. But herein lies the difference:
(2) The community gardener says, "No, we're not content to handout whatever food gets donated, we want to provide nutritious food, food that will actually benefit the person's health, and the whole community's health.
(3) By doing so, the church community acts prophetically to fill a gap where the powerful food industry has failed: Making fresh produce affordable (free!) and accessible to low-income individuals and families. This is a way of feeding the hungry that bears witness to the inequities of our world, and seeks to mend, in a small way, the divide between the "haves" and "have-nots."
(4) Finally, this is ministry with the community as much as ministry to the community. In a community garden, neighbors, both churched and unchurched, labor together--cultivating the soil, planting seeds, and reaping the harvest--for the benefit of the larger community. All are co-laborers, invited in to share together, commune together for the common good.
What do you think? Have you heard of anything like this before? What can we learn from this?
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I'm wondering if this could/should be one of the opportunities available to kids as part of the proposed after school program. Great way to partner with community groups like the co-op, csa, botanical gardens, green market.
ReplyDeleteCan we get kids growing food that they can either take home or give to low-income families?
As I'm thinking, it seems like a great way to dovetail with some of what is already happening in our neighborhood and will likely only continue to gain momentum in the next few years.