Your church needs a community garden
Every school day morning, we take the same route past 3 churches. All different denominations. All with large parking lots and big signage. Not one church feels inviting or bustling with any kind of life. Yes, it is 7:30 am on a weekday. I would give them a pass for that IF they weren’t also lifeless and uninviting the rest of the week too.
I grew up going to church. I no longer attend for a variety of reasons. One of them is that unless or until you have been going for a while it feels hard to crack the community.
Know what would change my mind?
A community garden. Specifically, a cut flower community garden. Can you guess why that would change my mind more than a flashing sign about service times and AA meeting times or the banner advertising VBS (vacation bible school, in case you aren’t in the loop)?
Because flowers at the front a building look inviting. They would make me wonder what exactly they have going on at that church. They are obviously thinking outside the box. What else is different in there?
Parking lots, even full ones, don’t make me wonder that. Flowers bloom all summer. Church parking lots are only full on Sundays. Saturdays if you are Catholic or Jewish.
Here are 3 other reasons a community cut flower garden should be part of the outreach program at your church.
Community Building - A community garden by name requires a community. Gardening next to someone without talking is a great way of disarming people and giving them time to be ready to talk. Especially the lonely ones or the introverts. The loneliness epidemic is such a real thing that the surgeon general took time to write a book about.
Gardening is therapeutic - Gardening and getting your hands dirty are proven therapeutic activities. It isn’t uncommon for the church to be a place people turn to for comfort. Add in an activity that is proven to cause the brain to release happy hormones, increasing the chance that you are sharing kindness and lifting people up.
Church is meant to be a place of healing and belonging. With this community garden idea, we have knocked both of these out of the park.
Gardens are ripe with analogies and quality sermon topics. - Use this talking point to bring your clergy around to the idea of a community garden. I have more examples to help convince them if you need them.
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