Cultivating Neighborhood: Identifying Best Practices for Launching a Christ-Centered Community Garden

Why have so many churches started community gardens over the past decade? Are they simply a fad? Or do community gardens somehow connect more deeply with the mission of the churches that launch them? What can churches and faith-based institutions interested in starting community gardens learn from those that have started their own gardens over the past decade? And what would it mean for a church to put Christ in the center of its community gardening efforts? In order to discern best practices for launching Christ-centered community gardens moving forward Cultivating Neighborhood begins with a brief survey of the history of community gardens in the United States and builds a constructive theological framework for community gardening grounded in the practice of Christian hospitality. It continues with two case studies of church-sponsored community gardens and one case study of a community garden sponsored by a Christian college all three of which were created between 2003 and 2011. The results of this research conclude with a new definition of Christ-centered community gardening and an outline of fifteen best practices for launching a Christ-centered community garden. If every church and school had a garden how different this world might be! Cultivating Neighborhood reminds us that caring for a garden provides somethving that cannot be purchased at the grocery store: the satisfaction of eating food tended by our own hands. Jesus is the new Adam and we are invited to tend and protect the garden this earth. Highly recommended! --Nancy Sleeth author of Almost Amish Bryan K. Langlands is a church planter campus minister and instructor in the Religion Department at Georgetown College in Georgetown KY. He is the editor of William H. Willimons book A Will to Lead and the Grace to Follow: Letters on Leadership from a Peculiar Prophet (2011).