Mennonites love good food and good company, and Harrisonburg Mennonite Church (HMC) is no exception. For the last three years at HMC, a gardening initiative created by Anne Nielsen and pastor Mark Keller has been combining the best elements of the two: tasty vegetables, and a welcoming, open community.

The HMC gardening project began in 2009, with sixteen small plots available for gardening. Since then, the project has significantly expanded, and the church now boasts 42 individual gardens. The project attracts gardeners from HMC, other churches in the area, and the community at large. Mark Keller says that the garden helps to create a strong community, and churchgoers, community members, and occasional passersby often gather at the garden for impromptu conversations. “A lot of interaction goes on,” he says. “It’s kind of like when you’re walking down the street with a baby or a dog. People feel comfortable talking to you.”

The community-building doesn’t stop with informal conversations, though. A number of the newer gardeners are members of a Spanish-speaking church that meets on Saturday nights in the HMC building. Mostly Honduran, members range from established community members to recent immigrants, and the garden has offered a rare space for English and Spanish-speaking churchgoers to welcome each other into their respective communities. The gardeners have even taken it upon themselves to organize their own get-togethers and dinners, and Wednesday evenings have been set aside for potluck meals made by members of the HMC garden.

Mark Keller says that the garden is a lived example of HMC’s belief in creation care and community interaction. “It causes people to increasingly feel welcome,” he says. Harrisonburg Mennonite has historically been a church that attempts to remain aware of and responsive to the issues surrounding them, and Mark sees the garden as a way for the church to stay true to its values of community and openness while still nourishing the planet. He, and others with him, see the community gardening project as a fine example of faith and belief made relevant.

HMC’s other creation care projects include a meditation trail and walking path. See previous blog entries about HMC from July 2009 and December 2009.

By Linda Espenshade

BOGRA, Bangladesh — The cornstalks growing in Anzu Rani and Biren
Mahato’s rented field are vibrant green. The leaves intermingle and
the strong stalks fill the field.

“The corn looks great,” said Mokhlesur Rahman, administrator of
Mennonite Central Committee’s (MCC) Research and Extension Activity
Partners in Bogra. “I’ve hardly seen corn that good in Bangladesh.”

Rahman is especially pleased with the results because the Mahato
family is benefiting from an MCC project that shows farmers how to
produce their own compost, which increases soil health and crop yield.
Farmers don’t need to buy as much chemical fertilizer when they use
compost, so they save on production costs even as they earn more on
their crops. (more…)

GOSHEN, Ind. – As a biology and environmental science professor, Ryan Sensenig knows that his students need to learn more than how to use a microscope or all of the scientific names of the plants they are studying.

Ryan Sensenig

Instead, creating connections – between people, cultures and different academic disciplines – has always been key to the way he has approached his own life and what he strives to teach everyday in the classroom. “There is no dividing line between sociology, biology, ecology and peace and justice issues,” said Sensenig, associate professor of biology at Goshen College. “I love ecology and environmental science because the complexity of connections forever intrigues me, and further binds me to a broader social and biological community.”

read more article by Lydie Assefa posted on Goshen College’s Go Green pages.

Greg Bowman's photographs transform a humble retention pond into a place of beauty.

Only the telephone wires reflected in the water reveal that this scene of solitude is actually near a busy street.

Nature is where you find it, and you find it by looking closely at where you already are. God works in mysterious ways to reveal grandeur and how things die to nourish what comes next in a system where waste=food, always.

I wish our church property weren’t located across from an untended right-of-way in front of a fenced housing development, and bounded by a busy state highway, the foundation for a former electrical substation and a school bus parking lot. But it is, and it also has a recently formed biodiversity site resulting from the retention pond/groundwater-recharge basin we were obligated to put in when we expanded our asphalt parking lot. This roughly rectangular pond is regarded, as much as anyone even notices it, as a nuisance that the lawncare people have to mow around. (more…)

For most congregations, looking ahead means passing next year’s budget or deciding which pastor to hire. Rarely does global climate change come up in Sunday morning conversations.

This makes Earth as Ally: Facing Climate Change Together a unique opportunity for Christians who want to grapple with this vexing contemporary issue. The weekend conference will take place at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College, Wolf Lake, Ind., September 17 – 19.

Earth As Ally: Facing Climate Change Together is this year’s Autumn Hope Conference, a faith-based event that Merry Lea sponsors annually, bringing together students, lay people and environmental professionals. The primary distinctive of the gathering is its emphasis on hope grounded in Christian faith, rather than an attitude of despairing fatalism or denial that environmental problems exist. (more…)

If there is a common thread among the seven students from five different colleges who studied in Merry Lea’s Agroecology Summer Intensive (ASI) this year, it is one of new possibilities.

“Now I know that there are ways to survive as a small farmer,” observed Emma Regier, a biology major at Bethel College, North Newton, KS.

“This is an exciting time to study sustainable agriculture,” adds Dale Hess, director of the program. “There are indications that the Obama administration has recognized the connections between the way we grow food and eat, and the health-care crisis on one hand and the climate-change and energy crisis on the other.” (more…)

Winnipeg, MB – Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) is pleased to announce the recent appointment of Kenneth Reddig as Director of its Braintree Creation Care Centre in southeast Manitoba.

The Braintree Creation Care Centre was given as gift to CMU from Walter and Eleanor Loewen on March 12, 2008. The purpose of the Loewen gift was to protect this remarkably diverse wildlands area, which the Loewens so deeply cherish, while also serving as a Christian centre of learning and reflection around creation care and protection of the environment. (more…)

The article below is by Mark Keller, pastor of Harrisonburg Mennonite Church. It appeared in the congregation’s newsletter.

On the surface it seems as if the title to this little article is absurd.  How could a tiny group of HMC Christians imagine that they have any impact what-so-ever on the agriculture of Asia ? But, then again, that kind of skepticism has been around from the beginning of the Jesus movement.  Christians hold the Biblical concept that God is honored and calls and transforms others as we live more faithfully to His desires for the world.

What is happening to agriculture in Asia anyway?  It is changing fast.  I first went to the Asian nation of Nepal in 1985.  Because of my Iowa farm background I held interest in and intentionally observed the farming practices there.  I listened to the agriculture workers and farmers.

Nepali agriculture amazed me.  Rocky, steep mountain sides were carefully terraced and coaxed into producing surprising amounts of food.  Farmers who had never been to first grade let alone a Land Grant College knew how to produce food in healthy sustainable ways.  Farmers well understood the amount of compost/manure needed to produce the best crop in a wide variety of conditions.  Nepali farmers, without engineering degrees, knew how to bring the right amount of irrigation water from far away to reach all parts of steep mountainside plots. (more…)

Dave Hockman-Wert on the job in an Oregon stream.

In Mennonite circles, he is more likely to be known as the moderator of the Pacific Northwest Conference of the Mennonite Church USA or as a member of the Creation Care Council of Mennonite Creation Care Network. But on the job, Dave Hockman-Wert, Corvalis, OR, is a scientist who finds meaning in seeking the truth about…fish.

Working for the federal government was not necessarily Dave Hockman-Wert’s dream job after graduate school, but, ten years ago, his roots sank into the Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center (FRESC) of Corvallis, OR, and he has remained ever since.

“We’re not setting the world on fire,” says Hockman-Wert. “But it’s a good group to work with as we try to understand just a little bit more about this corner of the Earth where we live.” (more…)

Living Hope Farm, near Harleysville, PA

by Heidi Martin, MCCN staff writer

During a time when unemployment is high and spending tight, the Franconia Mennonite Conference of Eastern Pennsylvania feels a call to begin a new ministry on a farm the conference owns near Harleysville, PA. The ministry, called Living Hope Farm (LHF), will begin as an organic market farm but the board has a vision that extends well beyond that.

“Everyone that I’ve talked to has a very positive sense that now is a good time for this,” says Greg Bowman, LHF board member and Mennonite Creation Care Council member. “There is a lot of enthusiasm and goodwill.”

The property was purchased by Franconia Mennonite Conference in the 1950’s for use as a rehab center for alcoholics. When that ministry ended, a new ministry began, caring for mentally disabled children. The Indian Creek Foundation group home is still active today.

The land was always special to Bowman who developed a horticultural therapy ministry as part of Indian Creek Foundation in the late 90’s. Spending time working in the various garden plots and traipsing the land left him mesmerized by the stream, wetlands, slopes and ridges. His vision for the property was extensive but, until recently, the ideas remained latent.

Since 1995, the conference discussed how best to use the property’s farmland, without satisfactory conclusions. A new energy among conference leaders and members sprang forth when the farm was in danger of being sold for development. (more…)