
Food banks find it difficult to provide a well rounded diet because they are usually restricted to the food that’s donated or what they can buy inexpensively. Fresh fruits and vegetables are hardest to come by in economically depressed areas. Ironically, what you typically find in poorer areas are convenience stores where the food is not nutritious and, relatively, more expensive. Many of the people who need the food don’t take it either because they refuse charity or because they feel someone more ”needy” should have it. And food banks rarely provide a genuine community connection between the people providing the food and the people that need the food. At best, food banks are a Band-Aid on a gash that needs surgery to repair.
There is a better way. Pastor Steve is working through Goodness Grows to revitalize communities through sustainable agriculture. They are engaging individuals from urban and rural communities in programs to provide nutritional food and jobs for depressed areas. It’s possible to harvest heat and/or heat producing waste materials from existing businesses to prolong growing seasons or harvest fish. The locally grown crops reduce cost and carbon footprint making food accessible and affordable. And they are bringing communities together in a meaningful way.
Here are just a few of the other efforts taking place:
- An urban farm at St. Mary's Episcopal Church on Harlem's West 126th Street
- An organic ministry through a community garden at Grace in Snellville, GA
- A 21,000 sq. ft. garden at NorthRidge Church in Plymouth, A “Giving Garden” at Center Grove Baptist Church in Rock Spring, GA
- A“Café Sunshine” and the “Peaches and Greens” truck through the Central Detroit Christian Community Development Corporation
- A rooftop farm at Metro Baptist Church in midtown Manhattan
An urban farm at Christ United Methodist Church in Gary, IN
- A community project to reclaim barren and underutilized landscapes
- And internationally through DIG (Development in Gardening)
The Bible begins in a garden and ends in a garden city.
The idea that a simple garden could be the answer to the complexity of poverty is not a fantasy. It’s not pantheism to acknowledge the connection between God and the earth that’s expressed throughout the Scriptures. Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God”. We see where the wind and the waves obeyed Jesus and that, if his disciples were to remain silent, “the very stones would cry out” (Luke 19:40). Psalm 89:11 says that heaven and earth belong to him, so doesn’t it make sense that we could look to what God, himself, made and then called “good.”
Jesus had a passion for the poor, and we would be hard-pressed to call ourselves disciples without allowing that passion to well up in our being. Let’s not let the good feelings that come from our service through food banks anesthetize us to real challenge. Let’s not be satisfied with simply treating the symptom; let’s eradicate the disease. Let’s make food banks history.

















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