Sunday, March 1, 2009

Planting the seed for "the garden."

Back in August of 2007, Marion Harper invited Liz Pham, Steve Grindle, myself and a few others to experience a community called Nieu Communities. They lived a way of community that is the closest I’ve seen to Acts 4.

The experience that stuck with me most was a simple community garden Nieu Communities partnered with. The name of the group that runs the garden is called Jacob’s Well. They found an abandoned lot in the middle of a drug infested poor neighborhood in the Downtown East Side district of Vancouver and started caring for the land. They got the community involved and opened up a kitchen where they prepare meals from the harvested food and eat meals together with recovering drug addicts.

It’s become more than just a place to plant, it’s become a place where relationships are built on caring for the land God has given to us and restoring lives through Jesus in the process. There’s a vision in Jeremiah that Jacob’s Well guides itself by. “Build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit” to “seek the peace of the city…for in its peace you will have peace” (Jer 29:5,7).

We also visited a Christian conservatory organization called A Rocha. They are an international organzation working to show God's love for all creation by caring for what He loves.

Both of these ideas resonated with me, but exactly what God was calling me to back home was not clear at the time. Little did I know where it would lead...

1 comment:

  1. Awesome... my uncle works for CRM doing Business as Mission start-ups around the world. He was telling my wife and I about the Nieu Communities program. I'm stoked to hear of the fruit of that ministry and I'm excited to see where this goes from here.

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