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Sharing stories: example projects
Growing relationships at Divine Tilth
- a community garden, food pantry, and shared meals
Pilgrims gather 'round the table and in the dirt - a series of local dinners, field trips, Bible study and worship
Cultivating food security at Ashe Outreach - a rural food pantry serves local food and fosters community self-reliance
Feed My Sheep Ministry - an urban church offers food and fellowship to its community
Growing relationships at Divine Tilth
A reflection by Scott Merritt
Divine Tilth’s mission is to bring God’s sustenance to the least and the last, to express God’s love to the unloved, God’s salvation to the lost, God’s presence to the forgotten, and God’s word to the unbeliever. In other words, by feeding people with God’s natural abundance and the beauty of plants, we attempt to demonstrate God’s grace and present the miracle of his creation.
This ministry began during the summer of 2005 when I began to offer an abundant surplus from my backyard garden to the congregation or any passerby on Sunday mornings. At the time I never realized that we had members who truly needed this as a supplement to their households. All I was thinking of at the time was finding a productive and convenient means to dispose of what had become a curse of abundance.
In November 2005, our church opened its first ever food pantry, which became another outlet for distribution.
In April of 2006, I and several others worked up another garden plot of about 1600 square feet in the back of the parsonage. That increased our growing capacity to over 10,000 square feet.
Also in summer 2006, Pastor Doug Lain, myself and others organized our Table of Grace community meal, which serves all invited food pantry guests and everyone else who happens by on the last Monday of each month. Divine Tilth also offers a table of veggies at this affair as well as utilizing some of our stuff in the meal being served. Table of Grace”expanded into Word of Grace weekly Monday worship service, where our veggie table’s presence can be found.
Is there a pattern here? For sure our mission continues to expand.
Earlier in the season I offered ownership of the parsonage plot to a group of four individuals who have been served at all of the above events. They joyfully accepted the challenge, work diligently and are proud of this responsibility. I provide support, supplies, and advice but can pretty much forget about this plot’s needs. In fact, the group helps me in my garden and at the Table of Grace. It is evident that the growth of ministries of this type will and should be sustained by those being served.
In closing I would like to say that it seems that most missions face an uphill struggle in opposition to the distractions of a very material culture. Our sustaining force must always be God’s grace. We are not only growing plants to feed people. We are growing relationships with others in order to form intentional communities of faith that they may become connected to a higher good much greater than themselves.
Pilgrims gather ‘round the table and in the dirt
Summertime, when the kids are out of school and the gardens are overflowing with cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes, seemed like the perfect time to make connections between food, faith, farming, and hunger.
Schoolteacher and Pilgrim United Church of Christ member Robin Franklin wanted to get people thinking about these issues. She and Rev. Carla Gregg designed a series of dinners made with local ingredients and activities that would get the congregation thinking and talking about faith, hunger issues, and where they get their food.
Robin provided information about the sources of the different ingredients to allow people to make connections with producers, both mentally and for future shopping.
The church also invited community partners to make short presentations about their organizations’ work and then join in the discussions. After-dinner activities included planting herbs to take home and making a prayer chain offering thanksgiving for food and prayers for the hungry. Projects included a morning working at the SEEDS community garden in Durham and a day of gleaning with the Society of St. Andrew.
As those gathered passed the dishes around the table, questions from envelopes placed on each table helped start the discussions. The topics ranged from sharing childhood farm memories to discussing favorite foods from the garden. The organizers designed the questions to be inclusive, allowing the young and the old to join in the conversation.
To wrap up the summer, the church held a potluck in which everyone prepared something with local ingredients to bring and share.
The summer series culminated in a worship service that gave thanks for the abundance of good food in their lives and reflected on their responsibility to those who do not regularly experience such abundance. It included bringing in the prayer chain and placing it on the altar, breaking bread made by a congregation member and using grapes from a local vineyard.
As is tradition on communion Sundays at Pilgrim UCC, the children collected change to go to Urban Ministries Community Kitchen, an especially powerful act this Sunday.
Through the summer program’s endeavors the congregation at Pilgrim UCC was able to gain greater understanding of how issues of food, faith, farming, and hunger can affect each of our lives.
Cultivating food security at Ashe Outreach
It’s a windy day when I drive into Ashe County up Highway 221’s winding curves. I’ve been in the mountains for an hour and I’ve only passed through one town.
I arrive at a small house tucked in beside Brown’s Chapel United Methodist Church. Behind the buildings, a wide pasture dips to the wooded slopes beyond. I’m met at the door by Rob and Andrea Brooks of Ashe Outreach.
The ministry operates a food pantry and serves about 70 mobile meals and 20 on-site meals each day. In the summer, it offers meals for schoolchildren.
The food crisis has hit the ministry hard. The supplies of donated canned food are dwindling and demand is increasing. This makes finding local sources of food critical. The meals that Ashe Outreach serves are often made with food produced in and around Ashe County.
Most of the fresh food at Ashe Outreach comes from gleaners and from donations. The ministry has been creative about making the best use of this food. For instance, Rob has set up a phone tree so that when fresh food comes in, he can make a few simple calls and get the entire load distributed before it has a chance to spoil. Well-planned meals help as well.
After the fall’s first frost brought in loads of gleaned green tomatoes, the ministry declared “Green Tomato Day.” They invited clients to bring in their favorite green tomato recipes to share, and the hot meals for the day featured green tomatoes.
New sources of local food are needed as well. Last spring, food pantry clients received potted tomato plants. In the fall, the ministry sponsored a canning workshop at a local community center. Clients brought their harvest and went home with enough canned tomatoes and apples from that year's bumper crop to last the winter.
Ashe Outreach also helped start the Riverside Farmer’s Market, a small “buy-sell-trade” market where the community can buy fresh food at good prices, farmers and gardeners can make extra income, and everyone can trade what they have too much of for what they need.
Farming finds its way into most aspects of Ashe Outreach’s work. The children in the summer programs visited a farm. Even the ministry’s fund-raising fun run included prizes like mini-greenhouses, potted herbs, and compost bins.
Their next project is Pastor’s Back Porch. The goal is to create small food pantries and gardens at rural churches, where land is plentiful but food assistance is hard to reach.
In three years, they envision their “back porch” with a greenhouse, a small raised catfish pond, a vegetable garden, fruit trees, worm bins, herbs, bees, and a shed stocked with canned vegetables, fruit, and a freezer-full of venison. The church’s kitchen will provide a place for people to can and prepare foods from the garden.
These local pantries will equip churches to provide healthy food to community members in isolated rural areas and ensure that they have provisions even in the harsh winters that can trap them near home for weeks.
More importantly, Andrea explains, Pastor’s Back Porch will enable cash-strapped pantry clients to give back by working in the garden, canning vegetables for the larder, or bringing in venison from Ashe County’s plentiful deer.
Getting local food into food pantries is about more than just stocking empty shelves. In this rural country, where many needy families don’t have reliable transportation, where cash and canned food are too scarce, and where harsh weather can cut communities off, self-reliance is critical.
By linking farmers, gardeners, hunters and churches together, they find ways for every member of the community to share what they have and receive what they need. This, Andrea says, is the ultimate goal: “You give, and you get, and you give back, and everybody gets raised up.”
Feed My Sheep Ministry: Bringing fresh food to an urban community
Asbury Temple United Methodist Church’s Feed My Sheep ministry addresses hunger in its community.
Three years ago, the ministry had begun serving hot meals and bagged groceries to approximately 20 households once a month. Today, it serves nearly 100 households twice monthly.
Neighbors show up at the church on a Saturday morning, where, one by one, they circle the church’s fellowship hall. Around the hall stand tables, loaded with fresh produce, bread, meat, and packaged goods. After filling their grocery bags with whatever they choose, guests get a hot meal.
The ministry is run on a shoestring budget and 100 percent volunteer help. The church has been adding donated refrigerators and freezers and new cooking equipment in its basement. With help from the Society of Saint Andrews and local businesses, volunteers have been expanding the amount of fresh, local produce offered by the program.
Feed My Sheep has been a vital bridge into the church’s immediately surrounding community. It also has opened up a working relationship between Asbury Temple and two major area universities: North Carolina Central and Duke. Students from both institutions continue to play a vital role.
“Because of this ministry, our local church is now clearly identified as being in solidarity with the community and the poor within our community,” says Rev. Shane Benjamin, the church’s pastor. “This is what we hear often from those we are called by God to serve.”