Pastors tend soil and soul

      While serving as pastor of Zion Lutheran Church, North Manchester, Indiana, for sixteen years, Pastor Jeff Hawkins also found time to raise a few chickens and cattle on his family farm. “Isn't it strange for a pastor to be a farmer, too?” he was often asked. “Actually, there's not much difference tending one flock versus the other,” he would typically respond, adding with a twinkle in his eye, “indeed, manure management is part of the job no matter which flock I'm with!”

      All joking aside, the idea that pastoring and farming share fundamental similarities is the basis for a new ministry Hawkins is developing on his family's 99-acre farm in Wabash County. “It isn't such a stretch to imagine that the farm can be useful to teach pastors about their work,” claims Hawkins, “considering that the Latin root of the word ‘pastor' is the same as the word ‘pasture'; pastor literally means ‘one who puts to pasture,' that is, one who feeds the flock.  

      The ministry is called HOPE CSA, which stands for Hands-On Pastoral Education using Clergy Supporting Agriculture.   HOPE CSA is a teaching ministry that offers a course of experiential learning and academic study to assist pastors to become healthier and more effective leaders.   “HOPE CSA uses the resources of Creation and colleagues in the context of a small, diversified family farm to teach the natural processes that make for well-being, or, as we like to call it, “holy health”—a wide view of health that understands a person spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, physically, interpersonally, and vocationally.”

      HOPE CSA is clearly “hands-on.”   Each group of about a dozen pastors spends one full day on the farm each month.   Half their day is spent engaging nature's processes by way of light farm work (such as weeding the garden and tending the animals). Mid-day a hearty meal of farm-grown food is shared. The other half-day is spent in prayer, reflection, study, and discussion based on the natural processes experienced and observed in nature, their biblical and theological expressions, and their identical functioning in any organic “household,” whether flock or family, the plant-community of a garden or the people-community of a congregation. “As a person participates in and reflects upon the regenerative processes of Creation, a practical basis for new thinking and functioning is encouraged, offering the opportunity for the ‘holy health' of the pastor, and a resource for leadership that encourages the health of family and congregation as well,” says Hawkins.

      It is Hawkins contention that clergy have become removed from Creation, and that the farther we are removed from Creation, the more we risk being removed from critical insights about God, the Church, and ourselves.   “Thomas Aquinas said, ‘Any error about Creation leads to an error about God,'” notes Hawkins, “and our increasing distance from Creation suggests increasing opportunity for error.”
             

      One of the errors he sees involves a common misunderstanding of the Church and the pastors who serve it.   “Nowadays, pastors are seen as leaders of organizations rather than stewards of households.   Organizations are like machines and the pastor's job is to make it run smoothly and efficiently toward the goal of production—producing more members, more square feet, more dollars, even more faith.   Households, on the other hand, are like organisms, which run by natural processes toward a different goal, toward the goal of health.   In the New Testament, the Greek word often translated ‘health' is soteria , which is also translated ‘salvation.'   We are on solid biblical ground here.   Moreover, different skills are needed in each setting.   An organizational leader needs to be skilled in forming committees and installing programs and fixing problems.   A steward needs to be skilled in working with the natural processes to enhance fertility and gain maturity, for instance.   It makes sense to me for pastors to be skilled at enhancing a believing community's fertility for faith and maturity in Christ.”

      A small farm is a great place for a pastor to learn more about being the chief steward of the congregational household and to gain skill in working with natural processes.   “The unique aspect of the small, diversified family farm is in the way each element of the household—chickens, cattle, pigs, pastures, garden, family—fits together for the benefit of all the other elements.   The chickens scratch the cow patties to get at the fly larvae, which is nutrition for them.   In the process they scatter the manure, which is fertility for the pasture.   The pasture provides grass for the cows to eat.   The cows provide meat for the humans to eat.   It all works together in God's natural economy.   Indeed, the Greek root of the word “economy” is oikos which literally means household!”

      HOPE CSA is hands-on in another aspect also.   The pastor who participates in receives not only food for thought but food for the body as well.   To fund the ministry, rather than paying a fee, each participant purchases a “teaching share” of the farm's harvest and receives naturally-grown vegetables, fresh meat chickens and turkeys, freezer beef, soup beans, flowers, and more, in addition to the academic course.   “Clergy have to spend this money on food anyway,” says Hawkins, “so it isn't a huge additional strain on the family budget.   And there is also something valuable about purchasing and eating local food, not only in terms quality, but also in terms of the problems associated with food that travels an average of 1500 miles to get to the average American plate.”

During 2003 about a dozen pastors met as a Pilot Group.   They described their experience as satisfying on many levels.   “I knew that I needed to get stretched out of my comfort zone,” said one pastor, “I didn't need another conference with seven secrets or six steps of four laws.   I needed to be refreshed spiritually, to become connected with that which has been around sustaining us since Adam and Eve.   Jesus uses so many agricultural parables and lessons that are foreign to my e-mailing, laptop, answering-machine world.   The time at the farm with other pastors helps me to reflect deeply on a significant portion of Jesus' ministry.”   “There is something grounding for me in taking some time to work the ground,” said another, “and it has also been helpful for me to see my congregation's system more as an organic, living thing than as a factory for producing disciples.”   Another said, “It has helped me see the connection between the working of nature and the ministry of being a shepherd to the flock God has called me to.”   Another said, “Our connection with the environment is one level.   All week, since we planted the tomatoes, I have been more aware of the weather, and for different reasons.   I've felt just a little bit of the vulnerability that those in agriculture must feel.   In addition, the devotional and reflection tasks/opportunity built into the program allow me to remember my groundedness in God, something that I sometimes use my PDA to avoid.   And the opportunity to discuss and argue and think out loud with colleagues feels like extremely good exercise.   I had a

good feeling from the discussion as we wrestled as colleagues with the assigned reading, that we can think and articulate and connect our brains, hearts, and ministries with the world.”