Gardening

Plainsong Farm integrates Christian formation with sustainable agriculture

Visitors come to the working farm in Michigan to learn about agricultural, environmental and spiritual practices.

By Sue Nichols Zimmerman Journalist

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Loving our neighbors, including the leafy ones

Learning the names of the plants around us is a Christian practice that invites us into loving, hope-filled care of the natural world, writes an associate director for LEADD’s Thriving Congregations Coordination Program.

By Sarah E. Forsyth Associate Director, Thriving Congregations Coordination Program

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Growing flora and faith: Churches embrace native plant gardens

The National Wildlife Federation’s Sacred Grounds program helps churches increase native plant gardens — thereby helping wildlife flourish and encouraging community connection.

By Leslie Quander Wooldridge Journalist

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A new garden of Eden: Eden Theological Seminary’s Gleaning and Garden Project flourishes

More than just a space to grow food, the seminary garden serves as a hub for local gardeners and community activists pursuing racial and economic justice.

By Chelsey D. Hillyer

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Nurya Love Parish: Tracking the Christian food movement

Church leaders need to recognize the potential for new ministry at the intersection of food, agriculture, and discipleship, says an Episcopal priest who has compiled the first comprehensive guide to the Christian food movement.

Soil and Sacrament: A Spiritual Memoir of Food and Faith

By Fred Bahnson Director, Food, Faith and Religious Leadership Initiative

In this excerpt from the prologue of his new book, writer Fred Bahnson recounts his visits with four different faith communities -- Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal and Jewish -- to explore the connection between feeding the spirit and feeding the body.

The gift of honey and the promise of God

In a backyard garden at D.C.’s Church of the Pilgrims, God’s promise, the Holy One’s movement of liberation, is alive and buzzing in the form of 40,000 fat, furry honeybees, says the church’s associate pastor.

By Ashley Goff Pastor, Arlington Presbyterian Church

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Living abundantly

The co-author of a new book on reconciliation with the land reflects on a Brazilian community that models “abundant kingdom homesteading.”

By Fred Bahnson Director, Food, Faith and Religious Leadership Initiative

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Godly gardening

In this excerpt from “Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating,” a Duke Divinity professor argues that our work as Christians is to develop into godly gardeners, who witness to the life-creating presence of God in the world.

By Norman Wirzba Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor, Duke Divinity School

Growing in relevance

By Lori Stahl Journalist

Our Saviour Community Garden began as an effort to show that a parish with dwindling membership still had relevance in an older Dallas neighborhood. Eight years later, the church garden has yielded nearly 20 tons of organic produce for the needy, serving as a destination for gardeners and a model for other churches.

The gardening way of God's keeping

God often is presented as father, judge, potter, redeemer or companion. How would believers’ thinking and speaking be transformed if God was described as a gardener?