Each year, Wake Forest University School of Divinity’s Food, Health, and Ecological Well-being Program hosts a Summer Institute on food, faith, and ecology in western North Carolina. Here, on holy ground, faith leaders gather for four days to participate in God’s active renewal of the face of the earth and explore ways they are called to join God in that good work.
This year it will be held from June 11th-15th in Asheville, NC. I have the honor of being part of the gathering and invite you to join us as well!
I’m going to the Summer Institute because I believe God is at work bringing together people and conversations that are rising out of our collective hunger for a world that is nurturing and whole.
I have had the gift of being at a number of gatherings and events convened by the Food, Health, and Ecological Wellbeing program at Wake Div and every time, this is what I’ve found:
- A diverse group of voices from various backgrounds, faith perspectives, areas of expertise, and ways of life.
- Conversations curated with wisdom, curiosity, respect
- powerful opportunities for participants to hear, speak, listen, and change.
- A group of people who care: about the past, present, and future, about the church, about the planet, about the dignity and care of all people, and about the wellbeing of the interconnected web in which we all live.
I, like many of you, find myself walking between worlds. I walk in the world of church, where questions of “what does it mean to be church in this generation?” and “how do we respond to the changes in the world around us?” and “what does church have to do with food and farming and the environment?” are in the air. I also walk in the world of my peers, urban farmers, people striving to figure out how to be more environmentally sustainable, people fighting for a more just and generous world, and many who have left church and faith altogether because they feel that it’s become irrelevant to the deep needs of the “real world.”
At gatherings like the Summer Institute, I find others who are walking between these two worlds, and a multitude of others. And together we find words and images, connections, and distinctions that leave all of us more whole and informed and able to nurture our communities.
This February I had the honor, along with Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, of being a Practitioner in Residence at Wake Forest University Divinity. One of the things we did in our time there was to teach a course called Enlivening the Church, Repairing the World: Religious Leadership, Food Justice, and Entrepreneurial Ministry
As we worked with the students, we found a beautiful weaving together of our two stories. Dr. Brown shared about the Black Church Food Security Network and the work he is doing in Baltimore to mobilize farmers and churches, side-yard gardens, and youth camps in the church. This work has had radical implications for Christian leadership as it intersects with urban food sovereignty. His stories blended with mine as I shared about the work of founding a church literally as, and in, an urban garden in the streets of Los Angeles. I talked about how the liturgy—“the work of the people”—held and leads to communal transformation as people are not only reconnecting to the earth and their food, but also to each other and to God.
We are looking forward to expanding these conversations with the community at the Summer Institute in June, and exploring how each of your stories and areas of expertise weave together and answer questions such as: How does a renewed attunement to ecology and to food justice movements reframe ministry leadership? In this time of social upheaval and ecological crisis, what does it mean to be the church? And how can religious leaders help others join in God’s restorative work in the world?
These are some of the questions that drive me to continue to get up each morning and work in the corners of the earth where I am. And these are the questions that bring me hope when I see others gathering around to explore and act on them together.
More from Wake Forest about the gathering:
How does a renewed attunement to food justice movements reframe ministry leadership? In this time of social upheaval and ecological crisis, what does it mean to be the church? And how can religious leaders help others join in God’s restorative work in the world?
Each year, Wake Forest University School of Divinity’s Food, Health, and Ecological Well-being Program hosts a Summer Institute on food, faith, and ecology in western North Carolina. Here, on holy ground, faith leaders gather for four days to participate in God’s active renewal of the face of the earth and explore ways they are called to join God in that good work.
We live in an age when we can no longer ignore the ecological contexts in which all our personal and social actions play out. This age calls for the church to embrace the marriage of our religious and ecological imaginations. With this renewing of our minds, we are called to the hopeful and joyful and difficult work of food justice and social equity, so that all may experience God’s abundance.
The annual Summer Institute offers knowledge, tools, and practices that can help us all “seek the peace” of the places in which we dwell. Through workshops, lectures, shared meals, small group conversations–even wild foraging and bread baking–we will explore these questions and more. This year participants will be joined by our 2018 cohort of Re:Generate Fellows, making this an intergenerational learning experience for all.
We invite you to join us.
From June 11 – 15 we will gather on the lovely campus of Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC, just ten minutes from downtown Asheville. For lodging, participants can either choose their own lodging nearby [select the “Commuter Rate”] or you can choose to stay on campus in the EcoDorm, in either a shared or single dorm room.