Why Spiritual Renewal

There are few aspects my work at Plant With Purpose which generate as many questions…

Visiting one of our partner churches in Tanzania
(Much of this post appeared previously at plantwithpurpose.org/stories)

Why Spiritual Renewal

Part of the formula which makes our work effective is the synergy between economic empowerment, provided by savings groups, and the existing small business opportunity each participant brings with their own farm. Regenerative agriculture training, taught through Farmer Field Schools, helps turn those small farms into something in which it is worth investing time and money.

People often wonder where spiritual renewal fits within that cycle. Some have even gone so far as to refer to it as a “bolt-on” addition, that has little to do with the rest of our work. That impression is perhaps reinforced by the fact that it is optional. Reaching out in love, we serve everyone, regardless of faith, and we don’t require anyone to sit through a sermon, participate in a Bible study or attend a church. We want to offer people the opportunity, but not the obligation, to learn about the hope we have in Jesus, and we want to ensure that is done with gentleness and respect, so there is no sense of coercion.

However, for those who do participate, it can be the “secret sauce” which really transforms individuals, groups and even whole regions. In other words, even beyond the eternal significance, which we do believe is important, there are overwhelming practical impacts of our outreach.

Partnership With Churches

Most of the places where we work are nominally Christian, and much of our outreach occurs by working with indigenous local churches. The character of these churches varies widely across the Plant With Purpose program, from tiny churches made up of a few families, led by a pastor with almost no formal training, to larger churches led by circuit pastors, whom the congregation might see only once every month or two. There are even a few surprisingly big churches in some of the larger towns. (I once visited a church in Burundi with a massive stone sanctuary, which they had outgrown. As I talked with their multi-person pastoral team, I witnessed hundreds of members of the congregation, each carrying large stones, voluntarily participating in the construction of an even larger sanctuary.)  

All of these variations are lost in the raw number of nearly one thousand church partnerships which our staff actually nurture around the world. We work closely with their leaders, equipping them and empowering them in their mission to their own communities, and in turn they are supportive of us, and lend immediate credibility to our presence in those communities. One of the reasons this partnership works is that we don’t compete with the churches. We provide them with tools they lack, such as devotional materials, while the teaching we share complements their theology and doesn’t overshadow it. That allows us to work with an incredibly wide variety of denominations.

Impact of the Church in the Community

Through our curriculum, churches leaders are taught more about their calling to be salt and light to their communities; to care for the widow, the orphan and the sojourner in their midst. They are encouraged to consider the needs of their neighbors, and turn outwards to meet those. This has contributed directly to church growth, but it has also resulted in a wide variety of church-led initiatives which would otherwise fall outside the scope of our own immediate work. Literacy classes have been started, church land has been dedicated to feeding the poor and homelessness has been addressed. A couple of years ago, a dozen local churches in eastern Congo organized to care for a large influx of refugees into their watershed. The pastors involved shared that this was a dramatic change for them. Previously, they never would have cooperated, much less taken this on. Instead, they would have considered it a nuisance, and a problem for the government to deal with.

The other side of this partnership with churches is their endorsement and support for our work. Richard, our director in Tanzania, recently told me how churches have effectively become our ambassadors, encouraging their members to get involved and allowing our participants to share during their services. This type of endorsement often makes expansion into new communities and watersheds far smoother. When we recently expanded into five new watersheds in eastern Congo, our local director, Birori, told me that church and community leaders were already waiting for us to arrive, eager to get started and ready to work.

Identity in Christ, Theology of Work, and Care of Creation

The synergy between farming, savings and spiritual growth goes beyond collaboration with churches. We offer curriculum that helps people to understand their importance in God’s eyes, to realize the value of their work, and to appreciate their role in loving their neighbor and caring for God’s creation.

Subsistence farmers are among the most disempowered people in the world. Often living on less than a dollar a day and growing most of their own food, every external input they receive tends to reinforce their sense of worthlessness. The signals are clear, whether from the economy, which doesn’t value anything they produce, to the government, which often considers them to be a barrier to progress, to the media and sometimes even their own families. Nonprofit agencies can further reinforce this, whether they are environmental NGOs which only see smallholder farmers in terms of destructive land practices or development programs, which prioritize getting farmers off the farm as a misguided route to economic growth.

However, as farmers begin to discover (or rediscover) their identity as people created in God’s own image, with unique talents, and given the privilege of participating alongside Jesus in his redemptive work in the world, the change in attitude is remarkable. Each of us, has a role to play, a purpose. Self-confidence and sense of possibility replace helplessness and discouragement. This is reinforced by practical success on the farm. That self-confidence and hope is directly invested back into savings groups.

Regenerative agriculture training, which is foundational to farming success, dovetails very nicely with care of creation. God placed Adam in the Garden to tend it and to keep it, and farmers are fulfilling this God-given role every day. They learn that they have been called to be stewards of the earth, and not only does their land provide them with food and more money to save, but it has meaning and importance in God’s eyes. Many of the local churches focus solely on getting to heaven, leaving few ways for most people to contribute, unless they are pastors. Our creation care teaching lets people know that their work on the farm is more than mere subsistence, it is a meaningful way to invest their talents on behalf of God’s kingdom. People are finding purpose in restoring their own watersheds. They aren’t just planting; they are planting with purpose.

 Richard, shared that this has made the work ethic of Plant With Purpose participants measurably different from their neighbors. Durbel, our Dominican director, goes so far as to say that the change in attitude and outlook is absolutely fundamental to the physical changes which we are more easily able to measure. He goes on to say how impressive it is that God has changed the attitudes, not just of one person or a few, but thousands who used to say, “I can’t,” and now say, “we can.”