Braving the heat, humidity, and insects of a Tennessee summer day, Disciple volunteers pulled weeds, harvested vegetables, and chased away garden pests to help feed Nashville’s poor as part of the 2011 General Assembly’s mission pre-events.
Six members of the youth group of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Great Bend, Kan., about two hours northwest of Wichita, worked alongside their adult leaders in a garden on the campus of Nashville’s Woodmont Christian Church. The garden is a project of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a ministry that seeks to improve nutrition and food security for homeless and low-income people.
The ministry is the local arm of a national organization of the same name based in Austin, Texas. While located at Woodmont Christian, Mobile Loaves and Fishes counts on the help of various churches, including neighboring Vine Street Christian and area Baptists and Episcopalians, according to executive director Tallu Quinn. "A lot of churches claim us,” Quinn explained.
The core of the ministry consists of two catering trucks that volunteers drive to areas of the city with concentrations of the homeless or people transitioning out of homelessness. Mobile Loaves and Fishes uses more than 600 local volunteers every month, Quinn said.
The executive director explained that the local arrangements committee for the 2011 assembly and Disciples Volunteering arranged the mission pre-event.
Arriving early Saturday, the nine-person Kansas group walked between patches of flowers, beans, squash, potatoes, and other produce to tour the garden, then got to work.
Kelsie Keener and Jenna Hertel, both 14, "deadheaded" a row of basil, removing flowers from the purple plants to improve growth. A couple of yards away, Michael Ramer, also 14, cut flowers for an upcoming Mobile Loaves and Fishes event. Courtney Campbell, 16, bent over to pull Bermuda grass and Nutsedge, two invasive weeds.
"It’s not something that I’d choose to do … in the first place," Campbell said about weeding. "But it’s good to know that in the long run you’re helping people."
Near a rail fence of recycled wood that surrounds the garden, Matt Hiss, a First Christian youth sponsor, pounded metal stakes into the ground to help support the garden’s burgeoning tomato plants. "We wove twine in and out of the plants," explained Hiss, an investment advisor and part-time football coach. "It allows them to grow a lot better."
Several times the group interrupted their work to chase away young rabbits trapped by the wire mesh attached to the garden fence, with volunteers forming a human barrier to encourage the animals to scurry away from the vegetables and through an open gate. With the garden completely organic, workers use no artificial fertilizers and apply no pesticides or other chemicals.
The approach taken by Mobile Loaves and Fishes contrasts industrial farming, said Brooke Gillon, garden program coordinator. "We’re kind of farming the soil," Gillon said. "We put compost and organic material on the soil, that feed the microbes in the soil. … It’s a system that will work forever, it’s a cycle that can go on."
Measuring 2,800 square feet, the Woodmont Christian garden is one of three connected with Mobile Loaves and Fishes. From June to November, during growing season, the ministry’s trucks carry sandwiches and snacks in one serving bay and fresh produce in the other. The gardens supplement vegetables donated to Mobile Loaves and Fishes or purchased from organic producers.
Besides allowing the ministry to provide fresh-grown vegetables in Nashville’s "food deserts" — areas with limited access to supermarkets — the gardens provide opportunities for education about nutrition, farming, and food security.
Resting in the shade after his stint in the tomatoes, youth sponsor Hiss described the benefits of the garden work for the First Christian volunteers. "It just teaches them good values on how to help others," he said. "I think they get that through mission."
Justin Frazier, First Christian’s minister to youth, said that the 2011 General Assembly was the first for almost everyone in the group. He connected the garden mission project with what it means to be a Disciple as well as to this year’s assembly theme, "Tell It!"
The project "really just falls back on our calling," Frazier said. "As Jesus told us to go into the world and make disciples, he didn’t specify how we were supposed to do that," he explained. Pointing out the garden requires the kind of care his group offered, Frazier added, "its fruit can go out and be our message."
Executive director Quinn echoed the link between General Assembly and working to better the food that Nashvillians put on their table.
"We have this common language about being the body of Christ, serving the body of Christ, to the body of Christ," Quinn said. "Food ministry’s sort of … a natural fit."
By Ted [email protected]
