Garden Churches. Farm Churches. Faith-based community gardens. Dinner Churches. All across this country people are reorienting their faith communities to be centered around food production and consumption. Even before the pandemic of 2020, local congregations were recognizing the need to care for those who were living food insecure lives. Churches were abandoning the idea of food "deserts" and recognizing that there are instead food apartheids, human-made, systemic issues that keep people from having access to healthy nutrition. People are recognizing that issues of food touch on all of the major justice issues that the church cares about from racial justice to immigration, to income inequality, to environmental justice. All have a connection with food. Moreover connection is what people are looking for. Connection to God, connection to others, and connection to creation. Faith communities are finding that bonds that may not be not be achievable in the context of traditional worship can be achieved over gatherings that center meals as a part of communal identity and worship.

These stories exist. For the last two years, Revs. Anna Woofenden and Sam Chamelin have hosted the Food and Faith podcast highlighting these stories. These stories are urban and rural, Black, White, Latinx, and Asian, gay and straight. They are stories of farmers, gardeners, bakers, organizers, and pastors. The podcast is a beginning, but there is more that can be done. I am proposing building a hub for these stories and people and communities that they represent. Ministry is isolating in the best of situations, more so for those who do unconventional ministry. I want to create a space where more stories can be told through the podcast, but also in writing and in film, and in this space, I believe the subjects of those stories can connect with another, support each other, and work together to help congregations rethink their land use and the ways they engage in feeding their communities.