The Gift Farm-Garden

The COVID pandemic restrictions stopped life as we knew it and, like many, we lost everything on which we founded our identity and our sense of accomplishment as a church: all of our ministries and programs, our meetings, our  in-person worship, and the sacraments. In this loss, the Spirit began to move, calling us to ask deeper questions, calling us into the heart of who we are in Christ: What is the church? Why are we here? Through the scriptures, ecclesiology, and conversations on Zoom, we came to understand the church as a sign and witness of God’s Kingdom. Putting the Kingdom at the heart of our life lead us to discern three new mission goals: Celebrate our Anglican tradition, Cultivate each one of us as disciples and leaders, Connect in relationship as we serve our community. We let go of the organizational structure that had carried us for decades, moving into three Circles of Ministry with shared leadership, and we continued to listen, trust, and wait as the COVID restrictions continued.

While we were discovering again the heart of who we are as church, two newly retired organic farmers were moving across the country as the provincial borders were shutting down. They made it to their family in Kelowna, found St Andrew’s worshipping on Zoom, and became part of the church. They wanted to offer their gifts as farmers if we could just find land. It was a nearby working heritage farm that offered a plot of land rent-free along with access to water, a storage shed, and a wash house. It was all a gift! And so “The Gift: St Andrew’s Farm-Garden” was born. Everything was grown organically and gifted to whoever had need. At Easter 2021 we stood in front of a fallow field realizing just how literally the Spirit had meant cultivate in our mission goals!

As we learned to farm, we discovered that we were being cultivated just as much as we were cultivating the land. For the first time in over a decade, the Anglican churches in the region worked together including gifting food to our cathedral’s food cupboard ministry. We took our name off the farm, learning that the work of the Kingdom is about shared responsibility not ownership: “The Gift Farm-Garden: From seed to Cupboard all is gift.” The farm welcomed local middle school students, community members, and other ecumenical friends. The farm even came to offer an onsite intensive course through the Vancouver School of Theology where students from five different denominations and three different countries farmed and learned together exploring what it means to believe that in Christ all things were created, in Christ all things hold together and that in Christ God reconciled all things to Godself (Colossians 1:16-20).

A firestorm hit the valley, surrounding the city with fires on three sides. Most of the population evacuated and we stayed retrieving our N95 COVID masks, pulling chunks for roof tile from the rows, and harvesting for those who did have the option to drive away. We learned how deeply we depend on God not just as humans but as part of, and with, all of creation.

The farm came to explain its way and reason for being as this: “We treat the land, one another, and ourselves as gift” calling the church, and all who came, to release our compulsive need to control, produce, and consume, in order to grow in a gift-orientated way of being with all of creation. In the midst of the climate crisis, we are being called to a spirituality of gift grounded in the gift of God in Christ.

From seed to cupboard all is gift: so keep choosing God’s Kingdom!