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Interview with Reverend Nurya Love Parish, Founder of Plainsong Farm

Nathan Aaberg —  April 28, 2024 — Leave a comment
Reverend Nurya Love Parish stands at outdoors altar at Plainsong Farm with trees and bright sky in background

Reverend Nurya Love Parish at outdoor altar during Blessing of the Fields at Plainsong Farm (photo courtesy of Plainsong Farm).

Over the year, I’ve met remarkable people bravely pursuing  their own unique path towards a whole Christian life. Nurya Love Parish is one of those people.

Some years ago, I became aware of her and the work she was doing with others around building Christian community around a farm. So I reached out, and she kindly agreed to a chat by phone. I was instantly struck by her faith, her love of God, her cheerful and yet candid way of expressing herself, and her willingness to navigate institutions of Christianity in her calling to serve God’s people and God’s Creation. I knew I needed to interview her at some point for this blog. And when I did, I wanted to share our conversation with you.

What you will read below is an edited transcript of an interview we did in 2023 followed by an additional exchange in 2024 that emerged after the interview (you’ll see why we needed to do a follow-up!). I hope you will come away with two things. One is a story that sticks with you of God being alive in people’s lives in most remarkable ways. Perhaps this will inspire you to listen for your own calling. Maybe even act on the calling that you’ve always known was there.

The second is a set of insights into how Christians like Nurya and the other good people at Plainsong Farm are experimenting with new institutions that bring together collective God-led work and Creation. This is new ground. We need to learn from each other about what works and what doesn’t in unique contexts. We need to be open to new approaches.

I would normally include more biographical information here. Instead, so you can “hear” her words without preconceptions and with more appreciation for her way of telling her story, I’ve set that information at the end of the interview. 

 

Part One: Summer 2023

Nathan: About three weeks ago I read your book Resurrection Matters: Church Renewal for Creation’s Sake for the first time, prompting me to reach out to you. What you’re doing at Plainsong is fascinating and inspiring. I think we’re at a time of transition in so many ways in terms of the Church and the earth. And it feels like Plainsong is right in that space that is also the focus of your book. So I wanted to share your experience and your insights with our readers.

One of the things you make clear very early in the book is that you only attended church one time in your first 19 years of life. Now you are fully immersed, and one of the things that comes across clearly in your book is how much you love church.

Nurya: Aw. I’m glad that comes across.

Nathan: Can you briefly talk about how you came to be a Christian? And was Creation part of how you came to Christ?

Nurya: I would say yes to that. But I don’t know that it would make sense without an explanation. I was a child in Las Vegas and found myself looking at my lawn and realizing that it just did not fit. I was wondering where the adults got the idea that it was a good move to put this many humans in a desert. It didn’t seem wise to me. And looking for wisdom drew me to Christ. I went to church for the first time when I was 19 when I was in college. And very unexpectedly – I cannot begin to describe to you how unexpected this was – I had a call to ministry. I was just going to church. I was just curious about what church was. But the minister came out to start the liturgy, and I just profoundly understood “You’re going do that.”

I’m 19.  I don’t know what I’m doing with my life and I’m wanting to know what I’m going to do. I really didn’t think that that “calling” was going to be how it worked. But then the year following that experience, I found out that my father, who had died a couple years previously, had been a refugee from the Holocaust and never told me.

Nathan: Whoa.

Nurya: He was born in Vienna in 1922 and he and his family left Europe in 1939. And those were facts that I knew, but in my childhood I was not raised with any connection to Jewish community or practice. It never occurred to me to put those facts together with other historical facts until I was in my junior year abroad and we were about to visit, as an educational experience, a concentration camp. In the preparation for the visit, we were told, “You’re going to a concentration camp tomorrow, and here’s some of the things we know about the Holocaust.” And for the first time I put together that my family leaving Europe in 1939 was because of the Holocaust. Not the best way to find out.

After that call to ministry and that visit to the concentration camp, I spent a couple of years trying to figure out my religious identity. I spent time in the Jewish community and, weirdly, I missed Jesus.

In the Jewish community, they don’t talk about Jesus. The Jewish community’s not interested in that conversation for good reasons. When I realized I missed Jesus, I found my way back to the Unitarian Universalist world where I had first gone to church. Then I went to seminary and went to Harvard Divinity School. Harvard Divinity School was the first place that I found Christians that wanted to talk about faith in a serious, meaningful, but also open-ended way. It was where I met people who were the kind of Christian that I wanted to become.

I was baptized at 25, my last year of seminary. God provided for me in incredible ways. There was one job for a Christian pastor in the Unitarian Universalist Association the year that I graduated. It was a new church plant in Fenton, Michigan. That’s how I came to Michigan. I got that job.

Nathan: It seems like you had something inside you that resonated with the liturgy, resonated with church and Christianity even before you could kind of put your mind around it. Is that fair to say?

Nurya: Oh, absolutely. Madeleine L’Engle was my kind of pole star writer as a young person, and she was an Episcopalian. She would sprinkle in like snippets of the Bible and quotes from Christian thinkers into her young adult fiction. But the message that I got from the popular culture about Christianity was either you’re a Christian or you’re going to hell. And that just didn’t seem to me like it could possibly be true. So I figured I might not be a Christian then, because I figured you had to believe that to be a Christian. It wasn’t until I met Christians who understood Christianity differently that I realized I could be a Christian after all.

Nathan: So that combination of inner movement and finding the right Christian habitat as far as how people understood the Bible really kind of led to your conversion.

Nurya: Yes. That’s a perfect description. The right Christian habitat. I love that. May I steal that?

Nathan: Sure. [laughter]

Nurya: I’ll try to remember to attribute it, but it is really a great concept. I’m used to thinking about Christianity in terms of traditions and denominations, but it is a tradition we inhabit. In order to inhabit it, we need a habitat.

Nathan: Most Christians who care about Creation tend to come from a more thoughtful, sensitive, selfless approach to life. It’s hard for them to find places where those traits are welcomed and celebrated.

Nurya: Which is so ironic because that is Christ.

Nathan: You should write a book about that.

Nurya: I think that’s my next book. The longer that I’ve done this, the more that I have realized the questions that people have for me are as much about my story as they are about Plainsong. Kind of like you’re asking now: what is it in my story that led to Plainsong Farm?

 

 

Nathan: You talk in the book a number of times about career versus life – having a life versus having a career. You encourage the reader to question whether one is seeking one’s own security or responding to needs and responding to a calling. You also talked about church not being about maintenance. That was provocative.

Nurya: Wow. I need to read my book [laughter]. I have forgotten everything I wrote. It sounds like something I need to recall.

Nathan: If you read the Bible, the Bible is full of risk, drama, change, tragedy, movement, dynamism – all of these urgent, moving, compelling things. Somehow typical church has often become about buffering ourselves from life as much as possible and about refining a theory and theology of God that is as pure as possible. And let’s keep doing the model of church the same as much as possible. The disconnect, the cognitive dissonance, between the energy and action of the Bible and how church actually works is huge.

One of the things that really struck me was that you had this calling to create something like Plainsong for a long time. You and your husband bought the 10-acre property, and you thought, “Well, I should start farming first.” But you found out that farming wasn’t necessarily your thing. And so at one point you got on your knees and essentially said, “God, you have to take care of this.” That led you to take a big risk. Can you say more about that moment and just being able to let go and let God sort of lead you and to follow that lead?

Nurya: It’s probably a moment of spiritual crisis that it is good for me to remember. I don’t often get asked about it, because I think it takes a rare person to be interested in somebody else’s dark night of the soul. So thank you for being that person.

It was probably May 2014. I really felt like I had totally failed. Because I had thought that it was my job to make Plainsong Farm.  And then I figured out that I couldn’t do it. I am not a farmer. And you cannot have a farm without people who are called to the work of agriculture somehow. I tried, and I found no joy in the work, and I did not understand what God was doing in my life – I was called to this ministry without any aptitude or desire for farming. So I said, “Lord, I can’t do this. If you want this done, you’re going to have to do this. If you do this, I will help.”

Unfortunately, or fortunately, from that day to this, there’s been zero ambiguity that God is bringing Plainsong Farm to life. It has required a ton of help. No disrespect to the Lord, but human beings have to create systems and manage staff and do fundraising and all of that. God can inspire generosity and bring the people, and God has done those things just in incredible ways. But it also required a lot of help.

Nathan: One of the things you talk about is not having the confidence yourself in the calling. And your calling didn’t seem to necessarily resonate with everyone you shared it with.

Nurya: Oh my goodness! I started talking about Plainsong to people in 2008. Tom Brackett in the Episcopal Church, in our office of church planting, was the first person who didn’t look at me like I was crazy. I felt like I was the only person on earth that had this vocation. I was looking for any models that might exist, any organization that might exist, any hope that I was not just utterly delusional. The church infrastructure had no concept for this.

It has been incredible since 2015 to see how many people God has called to do ministry interwoven with agriculture and nature. This is obviously something that God is doing at this point in time. I turned out not to be crazy or alone, but it sure felt like I was both in the early 2000s.

Nathan: I think a lot about what ecclesia should look like as the world changes. It seems like the farm church or farm community is a different way of doing connection. Do you think some of the inability of other people to sort of latch onto your calling was that you were paying attention to Creation and you were also proposing to do church differently?

Nurya: Yes. I think I didn’t have words for it. It was hard for people to understand what I was feeling called to do because I could not explain it. And unfortunately that has even been true in the founding process. The words in our mission statement – I didn’t write any of them.

Nathan: Oh, wow.

Nurya: I said yes to them when I heard other people say them. I was like, “Yes, that’s the thing that God is calling forth. That’s the thing.” My friend Polly was in our early founding team, and she put together the words about cultivating connections. Mike Edwardson, who I call my co-founder (he disagrees), put together the words about nurturing belonging and the radical renewal of God’s world. And I was just like, “Yes, that’s the succinct description of what this is.” But I could not articulate it myself.

I also was always clear that it wasn’t a church. The challenge with that approach though, and this is very fresh thinking [laughter], is that it is and is not a church. It is a community of practice. And it is an unintentional community of practice because it was not founded to be a community of practice. If I had thought that I was founding a community of practice, I would’ve done almost everything differently.

But I knew that Plainsong Farm wasn’t going to persist unless there was an entity that had capacity to take financial responsibility for the property. My family couldn’t afford to donate the property, and the organization wasn’t going to work for the long run unless it owned the property. So I focused 100 percent on creating a viable nonprofit organization that could purchase the properties on which it operates. We completed that work earlier this year.

 

Tomatoes and peppers growing in rows with red barn in background

Summer abundance (photo: Plainsong Farm)

 

Nathan: Let’s jump from when you founded Plainsong to today. You’ve said since you wrote the book that you feel like a lot has changed. Plainsong has obviously evolved. Can you say a little bit about what Plainsong is like today?

Nurya: So today I am grateful to say that Plainsong understands that who we are is a living laboratory for farm-based discipleship and environmental education. It took eight years for that to be clear. Partly because I wasn’t clear that that was what this was, even though I wrote a book about it. Partly I think it was hard to get there because it wasn’t something that we could copy from someone else.

When we started, we started with a community supported agriculture (CSA) program and also doing educational programming. As we evaluated our operations, it became clear that our unique contribution was education. And so now we have programs that teach and practice farm-based discipleship. It’s immersive farm-based discipleship programming.

We no longer run a CSA program. Instead, we partner with New City Neighbors, which runs a community supported agriculture program on Plainsong Farm’s land. So we still have agricultural production, and we do it in partnership with another faith-based Christian non-profit that is also thinking through issues of care of Creation, racial justice and reconciliation, and the practice of Christianity.

Nathan: And you now have a lead farmer.

Nurya: Yes, Mike Edwardson. It’s turned out that Mike is not only a lead farmer, he’s also one of our lead educators. Mike did youth ministry at Mars Hill in Grand Rapids back in the Rob Bell days. This has been a learning journey for both of us.

Nathan: How are faith and Christianity integrated into the life of Plainsong Farm?

Nurya: One of our signature programs is the Young Adult Fellowship. The Young Adult Fellowship is a ten-month residential program that is part of Episcopal Service Corps. It’s a residential experience that combines work on the farm with a number of other different roles. The fellows have a rhythm of life that includes daily practices of morning prayer, reflection, and spiritual formation. The fellows also get paired up with spiritual directors. Emily, who is on our staff, runs this program.

We also have, for the general public, the seasonal Sabbath at the Farm program, which is outdoors on Sunday afternoons. There is always a Bible story, always a wondering question, always a hands-on experience and always time for prayer and a potluck. That is something we’ve done from 2017. We started doing it weekly in 2019 for 12 weeks in a row. In 2020 we canceled it because of the pandemic. We brought it back monthly outdoors in 2021, and it was weekly last year.

 

Bowls and pots and other dishes for potluck on a tablecloth.

Food gathered for potluck during Sabbath at the Farm event (photo: Plainsong Farm).

 

As far as numbers of people attending, it’s been very up and down. The year 2019 was a little overwhelming, because there were 12 people at the beginning of the summer and then 50 people at the end of the summer.

Honestly, at the end of 2019, I was just like I don’t know how to cope with the growth of this place, which was a very nice problem for a mainline Christian to have. But it was still a huge problem. Then we had a pandemic, we couldn’t gather people, and they scattered. If I were church planting, I would be trying to grow those Sabbath event numbers. But I created a traditional nonprofit structure. That does leave Plainsong with strategic questions that we are in the process of answering now that we’re in this chapter of Plainsong’s life.

Nathan: Can you say more about how has the land, your portion of Creation, evolved from the time you and your husband bought the land until now?

Nurya: Definitely. It was 2001 when we moved here. It had been fallow, but not for long. The people that we bought it from farmed organically starting in the 1980s, even before USDA certification existed. They were part of the original Organic Growers of Michigan mutual certification process. Then they ended up selling to us.

When we bought it, I thought I couldn’t find a job, and we thought we couldn’t have children. And then I was immediately employed full-time, and we had two children!

So with that, it never really got farmed. We just kind of let things go fallow. This caused me to feel like we hadn’t kept faith with this place. It was meant to be a farm. God led us to a different place to live, and a mutual friend introduced me to Mike and Bethany Edwardson. At the time we met, they had a goal to have a farm that was somehow connected to the church. We started working on Plainsong together, and that’s how it came to life.

When we met in 2014, Mike and Bethany were in their twenties. Mike had an incredible amount of agricultural energy. He recreated the fields. He worked with the Kent Conservation District, which led to us getting into the Regional Conservation Partnership program. That funding allowed us to install native species and engage in conservation practices. Mike was making all of those decisions, and he was making decisions in accordance with our shared values. We set off some of the wetlands and just didn’t grow there. We started planting native trees, started planting pollinator habitat, and began using drip tape irrigation and cover cropping.

Now we engage others – volunteers and program participants – in these practices for their own learning and to cultivate connections, to build community. We all share this earth.

 

Three boys watching as farmer Mike explains a plant that he is holding.

Farm Camp at Plainsong Farm – Mike Edwardson shares insights about plants and farming (photo: Plainsong Farm).

 

Nathan: One of the points you make in your book is that both the church and the climate are in decline. And the church, you assert, can play a special role in addressing creation and all those kinds of issues. What are your thoughts now about the form of Christian community that makes the most sense now in light of everything that’s happening?

Nurya: I feel ambivalent about that question. The church is disciples. It’s not institutions. But I am an institutionalist. I am not an individualist. I am an institutionalist.

Individuals are mortal and so are institutions, but institutions carry meaning across generations. I created an institution to help multiple generations move more fully into what I now understand is the question of our country and our time: how do we practice Christianity in a way that cares for the place that Europeans colonized? I didn’t know that was what I was doing when this all began. I had to get to 2018 – after my book was published – and read Willie James Jennings. I’ve learned a lot as a white person in the last few years.

So the church is disciples, not institutions, and yet disciples inherently are going to make institutions. Somehow we have to make institutions that are focused on the practice of faith and the risk taking it involves. I think we have lost that thread.

Nathan: I’ve read some interesting books, and they talk about how church as we think of it wasn’t necessarily the original way that believers assembled and worked together and lived together. Instead, the way church is traditionally done has some genetics from the Roman Empire. And so the church template, as we have it today, isn’t necessarily the form that it has to be.

Nurya: Yes to all of that. And I say that as an Episcopalian. I don’t know if you’re familiar with us, but we have quite a bit to do with Empire. But also one of the things that I love about the Episcopal Church is we have this weird combination of Empire and Benedictine woven into us.

This place I have always hoped would bring out the Benedictine side of Christianity. That’s why it’s called Plainsong. It’s the only thing I knew. When Mike and Bethany and I sat down for our first conversation, I was like, “All I know is that it’s called Plainsong Farm, and it’s called Plainsong Farm because plainsong is the practice of prayer in the Benedictine tradition. And Benedict left Empire to practice faith in the desert.”

And for some reason, despite the fact that this was all I could tell them, they still signed up, they still wanted to participate. That was grace.

Nathan: So what little things are you getting inklings of in terms of what discipleship-based communities might look like going forward with Creation being part of it?

Nurya: It’s ecumenical.

Nathan: Really?

Nurya: Absolutely.

Nathan: Say more about that. That’s provocative.

Nurya: At Plainsong, our life is an ecumenical life. Our staff is ecumenical. Our board is ecumenical. I think what I’m seeing is people that are part of institutions saying, “My institution is not doing the work that it’s called to do right now. How can I find some other people that are?”

This approach can be very tricky when you’re trying to start an institution affiliated with the Episcopal Church. But I’ve had to remind myself, the Episcopalians, and everyone here that Plainsong is affiliated with the Episcopal Church because we have the parish mentality. It’s where you live, not what you believe that makes you part of this community. It’s a mentality that we inherit from Empire, but it still is a mentality that I think can be redeemed.

Nathan: It’s all still within the Christian set of beliefs. It’s just that you’re flexible beyond denominational lines.

Nurya: Yes. I believe that the world needs a much louder proclamation of a Christianity that makes clear that God made and loves all Creation. And that louder proclamation needs a lot of humans.

And it needs some humans that don’t know those words yet, and yet this idea lives in them. The kind of way that it lived in me. I had felt like something was wrong with the way Christianity was practiced, but I didn’t know how to articulate it. Only by putting myself into this context and trying to learn the things that this context demanded of me did I start to be able to articulate it.

Nathan: Your book was written with the hope that the renewal of church could help renew creation. I’ve been reading some of Professor Jem Bendell’s deep adaptation work in which he argues that government and academia has downplayed how far along we are in climate chaos. There will be disruptions, and things can’t be put back in place. In short, we’ve gone past the tipping point.

So if we’re past that tipping point, does Plainsong Farm (and other experiments like it) point us towards what the next kind of faith community will be in this changed world? Because if we have huge social disruption over time, then, just like monasteries, land-rooted faith communities could be planting seeds for a new civilization…or at least a new form of collective Christian living. I see it in what Plainsong Farm is becoming.

Nurya: I think when we began that is what I was thinking.

Nathan: It’s interesting to see that as we head into this big disruption, there are these people, like you and Plainsong as well as the Hazon movement, who have these yearnings and who are led by God and who sense that we need to have a new relationship with God and a new relationship with Creation.

I don’t think we can persuade established churches and denominations to move fast enough to face this disruption and to rethink themselves and their relationship with Creation. Creation tends to be an appendix to what most churches and denominations think about Creation. Creation is not made an integral part of what it means to follow and love God. They are not prepared for dealing with it at a deep, deep level. So I can’t help but believe we need new forms of Christianity going forward.

Nurya: I literally see us doing that. It’s right there. It’s happening. It is really important for younger generations. One of our alums said we were one of the rare Christian institutions that took her climate issues seriously. And I see it in my kids, too. They are happy here at Plainsong.

And other people seem to really need this place. A couple of years ago, a person sent me a note that essentially said, “I don’t think that I would still be involved with church communities at all if it weren’t for Plainsong Farm.”

Nathan: Wow.

Nurya: Then there’s the environmental educator who decided that she wanted to talk to me about religion. And after we talked about religion, she then came to the church that I was serving at the time. She then had an experience of God with the church and returned to faith practice.

And there’s the young adults who are with us now. This is what means the most to me, obviously, because I didn’t have that. I know how grateful I am that I found a way of life that was a way of faith. And I know how hard it is to find.

Nathan: That’s a beautiful place to end.

Nurya: This hasn’t been an easy journey, but there’s no doubt that other people’s lives, and my life have been very changed. God has worked through this ministry to change the lives of a lot of people. There are hundreds of people that are engaged in one way or another. And there are tens I would say whose life will never be the same and in ways that more nearly reflect the glory of God and in the care of God’s world. So thank you so much for taking this time. I have learned through this conversation, and I appreciate your ecclesiological questions.

Nathan: It’s wonderful to talk to you. I’m so grateful for what you’re doing.

 

Group of diverse people looking to right with barn in background

Visitors on tour of Plainsong Farm in fall of 2023 enjoy watching children play in prayer labyrinth.

 

Spring 2024

Nathan: I understand there have been changes since we last spoke. Tell me what has happened since we had our initial conversation.

Nurya: Whew. I don’t remember when we first talked, but I do know that in my soul last summer I was starting to see that the work that God had called me to do at Plainsong Farm was done. When I began my work on Plainsong in 2013 and 2014, what I was dreaming of and hoping to bring to life… I could see it. It was happening. I would walk the farm and instead of the farm kind of being grumpy and unsatisfied with me, which is how it felt in 2012, or encouraging me along, which is how it felt in the early years of organizing the ministry – 2018, 2019 – instead I started to feel a sense of completion. Not like Plainsong was over – Plainsong was very, very not over – but like what I was called to do had come to its natural end.

When we incorporated in 2019 I had made an agreement with our board of directors that I would remain the executive director through December 31, 2023. So all of 2023 I was wondering, “Am I staying past the end of this year?” The board had kindly invited me to continue. But the longer the year went, the clearer it became to me that it wasn’t going to be good for me and it wasn’t going to be good for Plainsong for me to stay. It became really, really clear the day in September that the board chair sent me an agenda with my contract renewal as an item on the agenda, and I realized that I could not in good conscience allow the board to renew my contract as the executive director. I didn’t have it in me anymore. I needed to go.

Nathan: That sounds like it was a hard place to get to.

Nurya: It was. I love Plainsong Farm. I love the place, and its people, and I love the work. So it was sad. And also, I knew that Plainsong was going to need me to leave without me having something else lined up, because Plainsong wasn’t going to be okay if it had a fast transition. When you leave one job for another job, usually you have like thirty days. Plainsong wasn’t going to be able to make that shift in thirty days. So I just had to say “I can’t renew my agreement” and step back and wait to see what happened. It felt so much just like starting Plainsong Farm all over again: a big risk.

Nathan: Now you have a new role, and Plainsong has new leadership. It sounds like you didn’t know any of that was going to happen.

Nurya: I did not. I knew the role I now hold was available, but I didn’t get offered the job until February. So that was four months without knowing if I would have employment after my work at Plainsong ended. For the first couple of months, I wasn’t really looking, because I wanted to wait to see how long Plainsong would need me. They ended up settling on February 29 as my last day, and that honestly turned out perfectly, because March 15 was the right first day for my new role. But I had no idea how things would work when I said I needed to step down.

On Plainsong’s side, the board and staff created a transition team, and I wasn’t on it, which was exactly right. That transition team ended up with the staff proposing the co-director model. I would never have thought of it, but I enthusiastically support it. The new Co-Directors at Plainsong Farm are Katharine Broberg, Mike Edwardson and Emily Ulmer. I worked with all of them for years and I love that they wanted to step forward into leadership. I couldn’t ask for a better succession plan than the one they made.

Three new co-directors standing together in front of red barn.

The three new co-directors of Plainsong Farm (from left to right) – Mike Edwardson, Katharine Broberg, and Emily Elmer (photo: Plainsong Farm).

 

Nathan: Tell me a little about your new work.

Nurya: I now work for the Episcopal Dioceses of Eastern and Western Michigan, who voted on March 16 to merge later this year and make a new diocese together, the Diocese of the Great Lakes. It’s funny to look back on everything I said about ecumenism now that I am in such an Episcopal-oriented role. I am still deeply committed to ecumenism, but I feel a call to serve my own church in this next chapter of my ministry. My work is to care for the churches in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula. There are 33 congregations there. In addition, I hold the portfolios for two diocesan-wide initiatives: Building Beloved Community, which is our work for inclusion and belonging, and Care of Creation. It is pretty exciting to hold the Episcopal Church’s portfolio for Beloved Community and Creation Care in ¾ of Michigan’s lower peninsula, but it’s only about 10 percent of my time. So right now I’m pondering how I can use that 10 percent wisely. My priority has to be our congregations. I believe the Episcopal Church has gifts to offer, and for that, we need stronger churches.

Plainsong gave me a beautiful “Blessing and Sending,” and there was a small gathering afterwards where a few people spoke. Mike Edwardson was one of them, and he made a reference to a movie called Interstellar, which I have never seen. But apparently there’s a moment in it where someone is told that something is impossible. And they reply, “It’s not impossible. It’s necessary.” Then they keep going; they don’t give up.

I feel like that sums up so much – about my ministry with Plainsong, about my ministry now. I’m grateful for that story and for all the wisdom and love I received from God through Plainsong Farm.

 

More on Nurya’s Life

Nurya was born in Las Vegas, Nevada to a nonreligious family and first felt a call to ministry while attending church for the first time as a college student. While attending Harvard Divinity School as a Unitarian Universalist, she was baptized as Christian and later ordained as a Christian pastor within the UUA in 1997. After ten years as a Unitarian pastor and church planter, she realized she was “sneaking off for prayer with the Episcopalians regularly and frequently.” After completing a Certificate in Anglican Studies at Seabury-Western Seminary, she was re-ordained as an Episcopal priest in 2011. Since then, she served as associate rector with St. Andrew’s, Grand Rapids and as priest-in-charge with Holy Spirit, Belmont, while beginning Plainsong Farm.

For nine years, she served as the founding Executive Director of Plainsong Farm and Ministry, an ecumenical ministry in the Diocese of Western Michigan. This year she became Canon for the Northern Collaborative. In this role Nurya will coach, encourage, and equip congregations in Michigan’s northern lower peninsula in areas of congregational development, transitions, and in seeking God’s vision for their future.

She is married to Dave, a retired firefighter, and together they parent two college-age young adults, Claire and Nathan. She is the author of Resurrection Matters: Church Renewal for Creation’s Sake (2018). 

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A Voice for Belonging to a Church

Nathan Aaberg —  February 28, 2023 — Leave a comment

I received a number of thoughtful responses to my last blog post entitled Longing for the Belonging of Church. For this I was grateful. What I had written was quite personal and, frankly, counter to what most Christians would think of as being Christian. 

Below I share one of the responses. As you will see, the writer’s words, which he and I edited slightly for this blog post, also come from the heart. He communicates the challenges and joys of being part of a church while also being a voice in that church for the deep value of Creation to God. I admire his faithfulness and compassionate spirit. 

Hi Nathan,

I enjoyed your most recent blog piece and especially appreciate your willingness to share your struggles with finding a church that reflects the whole of your Christian values.

I’ve been reading Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright, which is chock-full with both the hope of the new creation and a radically healed Earth. I’ve wept at the strength and conviction of his writing, words that I’ve felt strongly in my heart but could never articulate very well. I think you’ve mentioned that book as an influence also, yes?

One of things that attracts me to Wright’s writing is his conversational style, with portions sounding like they could be delivered in a lecture (and I think he notes that portions actually were). In this way, his writing reminds me of C.S. Lewis, coincidentally or not, who also had ties to Oxford.

Which brings me to a word of encouragement, from C.S. Lewis. One of the things I recall poignantly from Mere Christianity is Lewis describing Christianity as a large house with many rooms off the “main hall”. Each room (church, denomination, etc.), has its own characteristics (and flaws), but his observation is that fellowship and community develop within the room as people share life together. His encouragement is to “not stay in the hall” but to enter a room.

My heart aches for you and Mayumi not being able to find Christian fellowship together at a local church. I applaud your willingness to ask yourself hard questions in humility, like “Am I being unforgiving”—it’s a question many of us need to ask when we become frustrated with others, especially our leaders (in our churches, nation, world, etc.).  I also find I need to remind myself of other virtues as well, like forbearance, humility, and charity (caritas/love), even when I don’t feel like being charitable toward others.

But I have found that if I’m willing to plug into a place and do it with some virtues, and find other people grounded in virtue, even if they don’t think quite like me about restoring the Earth, they’re at least open and curious to hearing about it, precisely because they’ve grown to know and love me as a person.

I’ve also left some communities because the fit didn’t seem right. But my overwhelming impression was that my leaving grieved those who stayed, because they knew I had something different to offer while I was there.

For myself, I’m a cradle Catholic and find both hope in figures like Pope Francis and frustration with lack of action and what I perceive as political bias on behalf of U.S. bishops and their lack of action on things like climate change. But I stay in the room, knowing that I’m slowly influencing others.

I thought I had our pastor on board for solar panels about five years ago. We still don’t have panels, at which I sometimes shake my head in exasperation. But he did recently announce that as part of our capital campaign (part of which involves solar) there would be a Care of Creation committee to ensure upgrades were as sustainable as possible—and he asked me to lead it. In particular, he also wanted to make sure that promotional materials that are distributed to every member of the church highlight the importance of putting our values of caring for the earth and future generations into practice. I don’t know a hoot about building sustainability and energy efficiency, but I’m glad to be at the table.

When I first met him, I never would have dreamed he’d designate a Care of Creation committee for the capital campaign. Although pastoral in person, he is also at times a strident conservative, which rubbed me the wrong way.

There was even a time when my wife and I and some close friends thought seriously about leaving that particular Catholic parish in large part because of what we perceived in some of his homilies. But we have stayed, offered up our frustrations in prayer, humbly tried to enter into a dialogue with him and others, and then rolled up our sleeves to make it more of a place where we wanted to stay. It’s far from perfect, but it’s our community.

A few weeks ago, our pastor, who frequently preaches on the theme of God’s love for us, went on to also say “God loves his Creation.” I beamed. I would like to think it was partly my influence in continuing to beat that drum. He still doesn’t preach on it much from the pulpit, but he did invite me to give a short reflection to the entire congregation on it this Lent, which is further affirmation that the Spirit is at work in both our hearts.

I think in part my influence was due to him being convinced that I wasn’t lobbying for something from the outside. I was committed to the community and to personal and collective spiritual growth. For example, I lead a men’s faith-sharing group (most of whom share my views on Creation care or have come to do so over time). I have also served on pastoral council, even being asked to be president. So I have some street cred, I guess.

I’m praying that you might find a church you can call home. Grapes can only grow on the vine.  And the vine has to be grafted on a rootstock, which I imagine could be painful and feel binding and awkward at first for both rootstock and vine. But only when a vine is rooted in a particular place can it sustainably bear fruit.

Blessings and peace.

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Bravery, Goodness, and Gratitude in 2022

Nathan Aaberg —  December 31, 2022 — Leave a comment

I wrestle with staying hopeful.

My heart and mind are often painfully aware of climate chaos and the ongoing loss of the life of God’s earth

But I know those who follow Jesus and love God cannot help but to also be people who see light and hope. Everyday we are alive on this earth, we should seek out and hold onto gratitude for the goodness around us that comes from God. That awareness feeds our hearts and fuels our persistence.

As you begin a new year, I encourage you to take time to meditate on the year that has just past. What was good? Where did you sense God’s grace? What are you thankful for? What did you learn? In general? About protecting and restoring Creation as part of a whole Christian faith-life?

Here are just some of the things I discovered by looking back at my own year.

1. Bounty from the Garden: My wife Mayumi has been building the soil of our pesticide-free garden for more than 15 years. In 2022, she harvested a wonderful bounty – garlic, Asian pears, beets, kale, green beans, parsley, ground cherries, and even okra. During the height of the okra season, she was harvesting and cooking it in delicious ways almost every day. God’s Creation enables us to taste and see that God is good.

My wife harvesting okra

My wife Mayumi harvesting okra from our garden that she will cook later. Through her careful tending, the garden produced wonderful food again this past year.

2. Earthkeepers Podcast: Early in 2022, James Amadon and Forest Inslee interviewed me for their Earthkeepers Podcast, a production of Circlewood. Circlewood is an organization in the Pacific Northwest that is working to accelerate the greening of the Christian faith. I first interviewed James for this blog back in 2017 when he was still early on in his move from being a church pastor to becoming Circlewood’s executive director. I’m delighted to see that his gifts are bearing so much fruit. I was also honored that I would be chosen to be interviewed. Through the Earthkeepers Podcast, James and Forest are interviewing fascinating people on the edge of faith and ecology.

3. Good and Brave People: In 2022 I had a good conversation with the elder of a church in Davenport, Iowa. He had given a sermon about the Biblical basis and faithfulness of Creation care. He had been nervous but felt compelled to bring up the topic. We need more brave people like him.

Through my work and my own personal seeking, I continue to have the chance to encounter brave farmers. They are willing to go against the current of conventional practices and raise crops in ways that minimize harm to God’s earth. These same ways produce excellent, healthy products, from vegetables and meat to grains and flowers. Farmers like these put their livelihoods on the line in their choice of how they will raise food to sell. Their faith and values are profoundly inspiring to me.

This sign at Broadview Farm in Marengo, Illinois, highlights an area planted with sunflowers specifically to feed goldfinches. I’ve been fortunate to meet many farmers who keep the life of God’s world in mind as they plan the uses of their farm.

Over the past years I’ve had the opportunity work with and help a number of public conservation and forest preserve districts work to improve the sustainability of their farmland management systems. These are public organizations with thousands of acres of farmland which have largely been farmed with a chemical-reliant, production-first approach for decades. I have been blessed to work with staff who care deeply about the land and water under their management.They are creatively advocating within their institutions to move more earth-friendly farming requirements forward. They do this even when others in their institutions don’t get it. I admire them.

During a 2022 field walk at a farm field owned and managed by the Forest Preserve District of Will County, participants were shown a prairie strip planted perpendicular to the downward slope of the field. The strip provides habitat for wildlife while slowing erosion from farmed land. 

4. Food Forest and Land Stewardship Near Galesburg: This summer, my wife, eldest son, and I visited friends who had purchased some beautiful land near Galesburg. Just one of the ways they are tending this land is by replacing conventional corn and bean fields with trees that will produce nuts and fruit. They have a long-term vision and love the land very much. Their willingness to try new things, work hard, and build community inspired us greatly.

Our friend Craig showing us one of the chestnuts he and his wife planted on their land near Galesburg.

5. Positive News in the World: In the midst of many negative forces, we cannot forget that Creation, when given the chance, can begin to rebound. Check out this story about the response of nature in New York Harbor, which used to be a cesspool of pollutants. A key point to remember is that in a world in which we are all tempted to sin, good regulations and laws are needed.

We can also forget that people can push for decency and goodness in their society….and succeed. Check out news of this ruling in Maryland that preserves the right of homeowners to garden and landscape in ways that enable nature to thrive. A brave couple made that happen.

6. Birds of the Garden: We had three surprise avian visitors this year to our largely naturally landscaped yard. Two were birds – a nuthatch and red-bellied woodpecker – that came to the bird feeder and thrive around trees. After 19 years, our yard has three bur oaks, a pin oak, and two hackberries that are all of decent size. I particularly appreciated the nuthatch. It is able to descend headfirst down the trunk of a tree with perky little movements. Its  upturned beak is perfectly suited for seeking out food in the nooks and crannies of tree bark. It also, as this excellent article explains, stockpiles seeds in the bark of trees for accessing later.

The third bird was a red-tailed hawk. It somehow caught a rabbit, despite the restricted air space of our small property. The hawk consumed the rabbit on top of a rain barrel with little concern for the sensibilities of the people looking at it from their dining room.

This red-tailed hawk has the remains of a rabbit on the top of the rain barrel in our yard during a rain day. (Our son Owen snuck up close to get this picture)

7. Thought-Provoking Books: There were two books I read in 2022 about Christianity and Creation that were so thought-provoking that I read them twice – Victoria Loorz’s Church of the Wild and Norman Wirzba’s This Sacred Life. I’m grateful to the authors, their editors, and their publishers for producing these books.

This book was insightful and moving. it also used language far from traditional conceptions of Christianity. I

8. Inspired Words: I continue to find inspiration (and challenge) in reading the Bible. Thanks to my interview with John Kempf, I now have Job 12: 7-10 indelibly etched into my consciousness. How much better would we be faithful servants of God if we actually did ask the beasts, the birds, the bushes, and the fishes of the sea and were willing to listen and learn from them? What if we remembered that our lives and the livings of all living things are in the hand of the God? We are created kin.

What are you grateful for in 2022?

Write those things down. Talk about them. Feed your heart and soul with them. Share them if you would.

Many blessings to you all.

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7 Tips for Giving for Creation Care

Nathan Aaberg —  November 30, 2022 — 1 Comment

Are you using some of the monetary blessings you’ve received from God for Creation care?

Yes, recycling, greening your house’s energy, Creation-friendly landscaping, and eating foods that come from God-honoring forms of agriculture are all ways you can live a more holy, more whole faith-life.

But you should also look for ways to have impact beyond your personal sphere. Giving to organizations doing good work for God’s earth is a meaningful and satisfying way to do so.

Giving for Creation’s protection and restoration represents a tiny proportion of American philanthropy. According to Giving USA 2022: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2021, giving towards the environment and animal welfare represented just 3% of all American philanthropy in 2021. Just 3%.

What’s also striking is that individual giving still outweighs foundation and corporate giving by a long shot. Big gifts and grants by foundation and corporations may make you think your gifts aren’t significant. But they are. In 2021, 67% of giving came from individuals. If you include bequests, then the percentage grows to 76%.

Your personal giving matters.

It’s vital that Christians give more to organizations making a difference for Creation. Creation matters to God. Damage to Creation has been compounding for decades and even centuries. Fostering and fighting for healthy, vibrant Creation is a way to honor God. It also is indispensable for giving Creation and the people (that’s all of us) who depend on it.

We cannot say we love God and our neighbors and simultaneously stand by while God’s earth is spoiled. Our neighbors, now and in the future, need a living world if they are to have breath, health, food, play, and heart-opening spiritual wonder. And each living creature has its own value to God who feeds ravens and sustains lions.

I urge you to make gifts for the protection and restoration of God’s Creation as 2022 comes to an end.

To help you do that, here are some tips on thoughtful, impactful giving for Creation care. My wife Mayumi and I have been giving significantly to organizations and causes working for Creation for more than a decade. I also have worked for environmental non-profits for over two decades and served as a fundraiser for over 10 years. I believe you will find at least one useful nugget in what you read below:

 

Tip #1 – Budget (and Bank) for Giving

You’re unlikely to be a committed and effective giver, if you don’t plan to give.

In keeping with one of the key principles my wife and I learned from the Financial Peace University course of David Ramsey, we create a budget each month that reflects unique income and expense factors we can forecast. We specifically budget a set amount for giving to the church my wife attends and for general giving as well. Our total giving usually represents a little under 10%. We want to do better than that in 2023.

Each month we transfer the general giving allocation into a separate “Giving” bank account. Then, when we make charitable giving decisions, we transfer the gift money back into our checking account for offsetting the check we write or the credit card expense.

By budgeting for giving, we commit ourselves to giving. By holding the general giving funds in a separate account, we protect those funds from other uses. We also feel peace of mind when making the gifts because we know the money is there specifically for that purpose.

 

Tip #2 – Commit to Giving to Creation Care

If you’re still reading this (and I hope at least some people are!), then you care deeply about Creation. You care about the streams, oceans, mountains, prairies, rain forests, and even the teeming rhizospheres of God’s earth.

So don’t just have those abstract values. Apply those value to your giving. Carve out significant giving for Creation-related causes when you work through your giving plan for a year.

I would suggest this complementary tenet as well – the less your church does around speaking and acting for Creation the more you should give for Creation care beyond the church. Ideally, your church will be an outpost of God’s kingdom where our Creator God is worshipped and where people and Creation are cared for in creative ways. But if our human duty and joy of prospering Creation is neglected by our churches, then our whole faith will prompt us to want to compensate for that neglect.

Even if your church does integrate God’s earth into its life and culture, I still urge you to give for the care of Creation. Giving is acting. Generous giving for the keeping of God’s earth is a fruit of genuinely loving our Creator God.

 

Tip #3 – Be Organized and Do Your Homework 

I keep a spreadsheet for tracking what we have given to different groups each year. The spreadsheet I’ve developed also allows my wife and I to figure out the best allocation of giving funds we have set aside. And when I come across new groups over the course of the year, I’ll add them to the spreadsheet to look into further at a convenient time. I also find a holding spot for flyers and solicitations.

However I hear of a group, I will begin my research with a visit to their website. Later, I may check out their social media feeds as well subscribe to their email newsletter. From a website you can get a pretty good idea of who the people are of the organization (including board members), what their programs are, and what their mission is. With most groups you will find an annual report on their website as well which should give a good and clear outline of what the group is doing.

In all that you read, look for purposefulness and tangibility. What are their specific strategies and programs? Do they seem well organized? What specifically are they trying to accomplish and how are they doing so? Be cautious about groups that have stirring language but do not communicate concretely what they are doing.

In short, take some time to do your homework before writing a check. But also accept the fact that sometimes you can’t fully know the true nature of an organization until you make that first gift and then have more contact with them.

 

Tip #4 – Give Across Several Categories of Creation Care

I suggest allocating your Creation care giving across the following four categories::

A. Christian Organizations Engaged in Creation Care: We like to support Christian organizations fostering a knowledge of Creation and a culture of Creation stewardship. Two excellent examples are Au Sable Institute and Plainsong Farm. Another group we are likely to begin giving to this year is A Rocha, a family of Christian conservation organizations around the world.

 

Located just north of Grand Rapids (Michigan), Plainsong Farm uses sustainable farming and Christian community building to experiment towards a healing practice of Christian faith fully integrated with the care of Creation.

 

Shows home page of Au Sable website with photo of instructor with students preparing to do learning in woods

To learn more about Au Sable Institute, visit its website and check out the interview with its executive director (Jon Terry) in our September 2022 blog post.

I look for organizations in this space that are: (1) clearly Christian in identity, (2) doing tangible things on the land and with people, and (3) unapologetically convinced that Creation is an essential element of the Christian faith-life.

B. Local and Regional Groups: By supporting conservation and advocacy groups who work near you, you support Creation where you live. Even if where you live doesn’t seem as wildly beautiful as the Rocky Mountains or the Amazon, your neighborhood, state, and region still need keeping and regeneration.

Every square inch of Creation matters.

It shouldn’t be hard to find a number of local groups to choose from. Land trusts are often a very good option as they protect land from development (through land purchases and holding easements) and steward the land they own. There are also often groups advocating for rivers and watersheds as well. One recent subscriber to this website’s email feed shared news of the river group he works for in his semi-retirement – New River Conservancy. I worked for Friends of the Chicago River for four years, too. Water and watersheds unite everything.

And, of course, there are many other options, like local chapters of the Audubon Society. If you have a friend who is involved in conservation in the area, I’d encourage you to talk with them and get their inside scoop on which organizations are doing the best work around you.

C. National and International Groups: I was tempted to make a distinction between national and international groups, but quite often groups working at a national scale also work beyond national borders. My main insight here is to look for groups doing on-the-ground conservation and protection of Creation and to also look for groups addressing laws and policies that shape how Creation is treated by individuals, states, nations, and corporations.. An example of an on-the-ground conservation group working at a national and international scale is The Nature Conservancy, which generally avoids policy issues and anything smacking of politics. Examples of more policy-level, advocacy-type organizations are the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earth Justice. We need both types.

One challenge is that the larger a group is the harder it is for the organization to tangibly and clearly explain their activities and impacts. Large organizations can make bigger mistakes and lose sight of their core mission and values. Larger organizations also find it hard to avoid doing fundraising in a bureaucratic, impersonal way. This tends to turn me off, but then I ask whether they are filling a unique niche and doing a great deal of good. If they are, I accept who they are. World Wildlife Fund and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society are examples of international groups that fill vital niches and work pretty hard at communicating their impact clearly. Are they perfect? No. But on balance they are doing good and unique things.

D. Where People & Creation Meet: Let me give you an example of this kind of giving. Check out People and Carnivores. This group primarily works in the northern Rocky Mountains where its staff offer creative solutions for preventing human-carnivore conflicts. The organization does this by devising and supporting the use of special technologies and hacks that keep carnivores from hurting people and people’s property in non-lethal ways.

This might seem a little less sexy than a group buying and restoring a 1,000-acre ranch. But, in my eyes, the group is tackling a dimension of a fundamental human-Creation challenge. How do we live with wild creatures, especially those who can hurt us, as humanity spills into previously wild places? The technologies and cultural work that People and Carnivores develop have bigger lessons for us all.

Another very local example that my wife and I also support is COOL Learning Experience. This non-profit, operating out of the First Baptist Church of Waukegan, Illinois, provides summer camp opportunities for children and youth who would otherwise not have those opportunities. What makes it fit in with the Creation care theme is that its leader – Barbara Waller – has integrated nature learning and appreciation into the program from the beginning. This is because Barbara loves Creation and wants all children, not just those who are well off, to have exposure to nature.

Preserving wide open and wild spaces and the nature that lives there is very important. But cultivating better nature-people relations in our everyday interactions is also critical. I would especially urge you to support organizations working to foster farming that treat God’s earth with care and respect. Agriculture impacts Creation and people in a multitude of significant ways. A good example of a nonprofit organization working in this space is the Land Stewardship Project. LSP, which works across the state of Minnesota, has an excellent newsletter and podcast.

My last point – listen to your heart in your giving choices and categories. What Creation issues especially resonate with you? Is it a particular place? Is it a particular animal or habitat? Is there a person who has a creative idea around Creation Care who could use some resources to further explore their calling? Express who you uniquely are and what aspect of Creation speaks to you through your giving.

 

Tip #5 – Patiently Discern, Learn, and Build Relationships 

Mayumi and I tend to start our giving relationship with an organization off cautiously with a small first gift. We’ll then read their communications carefully and track how they handle their fundraising process from there. If we like what we see, we gradually increase our giving. If we don’t, we’ll likely end the relationship or plateau our giving.

Personal thank yous say a great deal about the organization’s commitment to appreciation to donors and to the culture of that organization. Conversely, a million followup fundraising requests are a big turnoff to me.

I also encourage you to pay attention to the content of the communications coming from the group. Well written? Communicating tangible impacts? Honest about challenges they are facing? Regular? Generally speaking, groups other than very small non-profits should have a regular newsletter (email or print) or at least an annual report. If the only thing you get is fundraising letters, then I would recommend terminating that giving relationship. This is something we’ve done a number of times. Don’t feel bad. It’s all part of the learning process.

I’d also recommend attending an event or webinar that the group offers. Those will give you a sense of the culture and character of the group.

Welcome calls and letters from the group’s representatives as long as they are respectful of your time and boundaries. Ideally, they will thank you and be curious about your interest in the work they are doing. Ask them questions in return. Why does that person work or volunteer for the group? What is the biggest challenge that group is facing around the issues it is working on? Listen for candidness and authenticity. Share that you are motivated to give by your faith. Down the road, the group may want to meet with you as a way to ask for more and larger gifts. That is normal. Determine what feels comfortable to you.

The biggest point of discernment needs to be paying attention to the language and rhetoric of each group. Fundraisers for non-profits are tempted to exaggerate what their group accomplished and to not acknowledge the degree to which accomplishments were the results of partnerships with other groups. Good groups give credit to their partners and don’t claim far more mission impact than they really are having. Even “statistics” can be deceiving. Again, this is oftentimes not intended to be deceptive. It can be hard to calculate exactly what impact an organization’s work has over time, and non-profits are pressured to generate metrics of impact.

 

Tip #6 – Rebuke, Instruct, and Forgive

I guarantee that any non-profit organization you support will do something that you disagree with or are disappointed by at some point.

It goes with being human.

We know from the Bible there is not one who is without sin. And when you put together lots of sinful people together in a complex organization, the likelihood of problems, issues, and mistakes rise exponentially. You’re probably not surprised by this when it comes to government or corporations. But I’ve found that when idealistic organizations committed do those kinds of things, people tend to be even more outraged.

What I encourage you to do is be a wise Christian when you experience the sting of disappointment.

This starts with assessing the situation carefully. Is the issue a human mistake in an organization stretched very thin? Did the organization apologize sincerely about the issue or mistake? Have changes been made? Is the issue systemic or just a fluke or something that can be addressed by changing a staff person?

Part of your wise Christian ethics should also be sharing your rebuke with the nonprofit. Let them know you are hurt, frustrated, or even angry by what they have done or not done. Proverbs is full of statements asserting the value of rebukes, advice, and instruction. Jesus also rebuked people and groups frequently. A rebuke expressed out of love and common values is actually a gift. It gives the organization, especially one you have given to repeatedly, the opportunity to repent, learn, and get better.

A Christian is also ready to forgive when forgiveness is asked for and even if it is not. Once you have shared your rebuke and expressed your hurt, give it to God and decide with calmness and prayer whether you should continue to support the group. You may want to put a pause for a year and see if they change. You may want to give less. You may decide to stop altogether. It all depends on whether that issue was minor and temporary or major and systemic.

In short, don’t stop giving because of one small mistake. And don’t keep giving regardless of how serious the organization’s problems are. Apply wisdom and the fruits of the spirit and look at the situation as a whole.

 

Tip #7 – Be Generous Once You Find a Really Good Organization

Once you’ve given to an organization a few times and you have a good sense of their efficacy, professionalism, and commitment to good philanthropy, then I’d encourage you to ramp up your giving over time.

It’s good, of course, to give any amount. But impactful gifts around issues and topics that you care about are more meaningful. They also simplify your giving and records. We give a variety of small gifts, some medium-scale gifts, and several larger gifts each year. When we give a large gift to an organization we’ve gotten to know and believe in, it feels really good. It really does. And, it feels even better, when there is some kind of personal expression of gratitude from the group.

And when you find a really good organization with good leadership, staff, and programs, consider making monthly gifts to them instead of one lump sum at the end of the year. This makes their budgeting easier – imagine if all of your annual income came in December! Also consider including them in your estate plans.

 

Happy to Help!

Would you like to talk through your plans and questions in giving for the stewardship of God’s Creation? I’d be happy to talk by phone.

When I began writing this blog post, it was not my intention of offer to talk with readers about giving. But I’ve realized in the writing of this that I am more experienced in non-profit organizations, fundraising, and philanthropy than I realized. I would like to help people like you be effective and happy in your giving for God’s earth.

You can reach out to me at wholefaithlivingearth@gmail.com.

 

P.S. If you have a charity you especially like, please share it as a comment so we can all learn from your experience. Happy giving!

 

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Interview with Jon Terry, Executive Director of the Au Sable Institute

Nathan Aaberg —  September 30, 2022 — 2 Comments

Jon Terry standing in woods with Au Sable Tshirt on

When I reached out to Jon Terry, the Executive Director of the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies, to ask for an interview, Jon immediately suggested that the Institute’s new director of college programs might be a better candidate. Jon, it was clear, felt that the new director would have more interesting things to say. How fascinated would readers be in budgeting, staff leadership, and strategic planning? But on instinct, I stuck with my original intention. And I’m glad I did.

Much of the progress we have to make in Creation Care isn’t in theology and isn’t in remote, pristine places. We need to make progress in the messy and challenging places where our the ideals of whole Christian values meet the realities of how we use land and water and how our human society works. Leadership of an organization is one of those places. As you will see, Jon is eloquent, insightful, and candid about practical leadership, theology, and emerging challenges. He believes Christians should be on the forefront of solving the most pressing challenges that God’s earth faces. 

Prior to joining the Au Sable Institute, Jon was president of Capitol Youth Strategies LLC in Washington, D.C. His company provided strategic consulting to nonprofit organizations working to ensure that young people are prepared for college and  career and are able to achieve  success in life. Jon holds a bachelor’s degree from Calvin College and a graduate certificate in Nonprofit Management from George Mason University. He has been married to Kristen for 27 years and they have two sons in their 20s. 

Nathan: Can you share your journey of faith and how a concern for Creation has become part of that?

Jon: I was raised in a Christian home and come from a long line of faithful Christians. So it was presented to me as a young age, but like any good teenager, I rebelled. There was a period where I was like, “What do I really believe?” And so I set out to live my own way, but I couldn’t shake the belief that I was created and loved by a god.

There’s some author, maybe it was C.S. Lewis, who talks about the idea that in the center of everyone there’s a believing self and a doubting self. I relate to that and feel, on most days, my believing self is about 51 percent and the doubting self is 49 percent. And I have to choose which side to nurture. I choose every day to nurture my believing self.

As far as caring for the earth and Creation, I guess my defining moment for that was when I was studying at Au Sable in the middle of winter in January of 1991. I was an undergrad at Calvin University in Grand Rapids and took a, a course up here at Au Sable where I now work. And God spoke to me one night – which is a story in and of itself – but it changed the trajectory of my life. It was when I was on a walk by myself in the middle of the night, just kind of standing on the edge of a frozen pond. It was really impactful to me. For some reason, I could hear God better when I was out in His Creation. I was grateful for that and wanted to tap into that.

So it was a completely selfish desire to tap into wisdom and truth. It was less about caring for Creation at the time than just kind of recognizing there’s something special about being out in the created world. I’m able to be closer to the Creator there than when I’m in the middle of the, a city, at college, or inside a house. I don’t think it’s required. I don’t think you have to be standing on the edge of a frozen pond. But for whatever reason, it certainly helped me at that time.

Nathan: You were born and raised in Michigan. What’s special to you about the land and water of your state?

Jon: I love Michigan, particularly northern Michigan. Halfway between the equator and the North Pole is the 45th parallel, and it runs between my house and Au Sable. So every day I pass over it twice going in each direction. And I always say that you’ve got to be north of the 45th parallel, or at least close to that, to really be in Michigan. <laughter>

I grew up in Charlevoix, which is on Lake Michigan, about an hour from here. When I lived on the East Coast for about 20 years after college. I just missed the lakes, especially the big lake – Lake Michigan. And when I’m swimming in that cold lake now late in the evening before the sun goes down, that’s when I feel most alive. There’s just a lot of beauty here. You’re always aware of it, because like half the year it’s trying to kill you. <laughter> It’s just that you’re not in control, particularly during those winter months.

When I lived in a city for those 20 years away from Michigan, someone once asked me, “When was the last time I stepped foot on the earth?” And it had been months. You’re just constantly on pavement or a sidewalk. That’s not the case here, which is great.

Nathan: I first visited the Au Sable Institute in 2017 and was really taken by it and the warm, welcoming spirit of the people there. Can you share what the mission of the Au Sable Institute is and what it’s doing?

Jon: Yes. I work for a really cool and amazing organization. Our mission is to inspire and educate people to serve, protect and restore God’s earth. We were started in the late 1960s by a professor of biology from Taylor University in Indiana as a camp for kids in the summer. He needed counselors. The college students he knew were all biology students, so he brought them up to be counselors for kids. And he quickly realized that the counselors were actually getting more out of the experience, or at least as much out of it, as the kids. So he essentially established a field station for Taylor students who were in the biology or, or environmental sciences. Then Calvin College joined with them.

If you go to a big university, the university will have a field station for the science students. Most Christian colleges don’t have that for themselves. So we serve that role for about 53 Christian colleges throughout the U.S. and Canada during the summer. Students from these schools come to us here in northern Michigan. We also have a campus off of Seattle on Whidbey Island that we call our Pacific Rim campus. So if you’re interested in marine life, marine biology, and alpine ecology, you take courses out there. And we also have one course in Costa Rica that focus on sustainable agriculture. The rest of the year we work with local schools and churches on habitat restoration projects and environmental education programs.

Students in the Field Biology of Spring course show-off a piece of God’s creation

Students in the Field Biology of Spring course show off a piece of God’s Creation – a lily pad rhizome retrieved from the pond behind them.

Nathan: You mentioned you had been in Washington, D.C. for 20 years. What brought you back to Au Sable? What was that calling?

Jon: Honestly, it was a calling just to get back to northern Michigan. My wife and I just felt it was time. It was fun living in a big city when you’re young and energetic and proving yourself. That was important to me when I was young and right out of college. But after a while, the great achievement was just making it through a year. You make a ton of money; you spend a ton of money. And everything’s kind of a fight. We were ready to live differently, and we wanted to come back to northern Michigan.

Au Sable wasn’t on my radar at the time. My initial plan was to keep my foot in Washington, DC. And that wasn’t working out. A year or two after I was back in northern Michigan, I was questioning what I was doing with my life. What am I supposed to do? It wasn’t working out, as I thought it would work out. A position opened up here focused on external relationships communications, fundraising partnerships, and alumni relations. So I applied for that position and, thankfully, got it. I’m very grateful for that. That was about five years ago.

God is much more creative than I am. I never could have figured this out on my own and make it happen on my own. So I’m just really grateful to have ended up back here.

Nathan: Tell me more about how Au Sable is evolving and how your leadership is helping make that possible. I’m confident you’re a servant leader and not a dictator.

Jon: Well, that’s my goal, but you should talk to the staff. <laughter> My approach is to hire really good people, trust them to do their jobs, empower them, and remove barriers for them.

As far as our programming, there are a couple of issues we’re working on now, particularly related to our engagement with community schools, where we’ve been doing things the same way for 40 years. We’re asking, “Does that still make sense? Is that still a need?” We’re still trying to crack that.

I think one thing I’ve brought here is just a willingness to really look at things, even our college program, and see if it’s time to do it differently. There is value in how we’ve done things. I respect that. But I also think it’s good to ask the question, “Why do we do it that way?” I’d like us to be willing to try new things, be willing to fail. That’s a big thing that I’d like us to do. Hopefully not too much failure, but that’s how you learn.

As an example, next summer, we’re going to add an agro-ecology class course and a one-week program for people who aren’t college students. There are a lot of people other than college students who are really interested in the issue of caring for the earth, particularly from a Christian perspective and what it means for their faith. And right now, if you’re not a college student who wants to spend five weeks on our campus taking a really intensive course, there’s not much that we offer for you. We’re still figuring out exactly what that course will be, but it will be a chance for those people who care about these issues and want to spend a week on our campus exploring them.

Nathan: We talked at the very beginning of this interview about servant leadership, and I see a parallel between leading an organization with a servant leadership paradigm and serving God’s Creation, enabling it to thrive by both protecting and restoring it. So have you learned anything from being a servant leader for the organization that might apply to how we take care of Creation?

Jon: Maybe the commonality is being willing to lead while still being humble. I think I am humble, because I just know I have a really limited view of the big picture and just how complicated things are, particularly if it involves people.

You know Creation and ecosystems are full of complexity as well. When you go into leadership or Creation stewardship thinking you have it figured out and you have confidence that you have it figured out. I guarantee you don’t have a clue. You can’t really know what’s really going to happen when you pull one thread out when everything’s connected to it.

I talked earlier about coming back to Michigan and thinking I had a plan and being really confident in that plan. Nothing transpired the way I thought it would play out. So I guess I’m just recognizing my limitations. One of my favorite verses is in Psalm 100. At our staff meetings, we usually open with a scripture. If I’ve forgotten to assign someone to bring one, my fallback is Psalm 100. “Know that the Lord himself is God. It is He who has made us and not ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.” It’s not my job to figure everything out. I need to be reminded of that. And, frankly, a burden is lifted when I realize that I’m just a sheep. When I forget that and think I’m the shepherd, then there’s issues. Things don’t go well.

One of the recurring themes in a lot of the writings of Wendell Berry is about humility in the face of Creation, what’s around us, and these longstanding patterns and relationships that we’re just barely perceiving. Science leads us to believe that we can manage everything and control everything and understand everything. And that’s just really, really faulty.

I read a good book called The Life and Death of the Great Lakes. Every step along the way in the building of the Erie Canal, people think they’ve got it figured out and know exactly what’s going to happen. Then the sea lamprey comes through (and that became an ecological disaster). And when we go to fix one thing, then that screws up another thing. Everything’s connected. We’re just constantly screwing things up. It’s just way more complex than we can understand. There are limitations.

Nathan: What sort of impacts have you seen Au Sable have on the students who come through?

Jon: What I consistently hear is the word “misfit.” Before coming to Au Sable, many students felt like misfits in their church communities and perhaps in their families and even at their schools because of their love of the earth. They didn’t quite fit in, and they’re kind of looked at with suspicion. And then in the scientific community, they’re looked at with suspicion because of their faith. So they just felt they didn’t fit in to any circle. When they’re all here at Au Sable together and surrounded by other students from all these other schools, it’s the first time they don’t feel that. If they see a snake, for example, they all gather around it. They have competitions to see which of the dorms can find the most different bird species. In most other places, that kind of thing would be kind of weird. Here it’s really encouraged and celebrated.

White board with bird names listed

List of birds spotted by Au Sable Institute students recently.

I just sent out an email to our students who were here both this summer and the year before and about 10 students replied. One got a job at an environmental nonprofit. She wrote: “I think about Au Sable often. I’ve enjoyed sharing what I’ve learned with my friends and family. I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done that led me to Au Sable because it has been one of the greatest joys of my life.”

Then this other student wrote: “I’m now a restoration technician at the Midewin National Tall Grass Prairie with a nonprofit organization called The Wetlands Initiative. I’m constantly inspired by how Midewin is healing. Although many areas are still in early stages of restoration, the native floor and fauna are coming back and thriving. I’m thankful that I have the opportunity to help restore what is left of the Prairie State. I’m excited to be caring for God’s Creation while sharing its beauty with others.”

Other students shared how Au Sable first showed them that doing the things they value could be a career, that this matters to God, and that this work can be part of building God’s Kingdom. And they’ve never heard that before.

Nathan: That is awesome. Are you seeing trends among those colleges in terms of Creation Care?

Jon: It’s hard to tell, to be honest. Some schools are farther along. They’ve got clubs on campus specifically around sustainability projects and caring for Creation. At others, this is really not on the radar at all and not any sort of priority. We serve all sorts of different schools in all stages.

Nathan: What are some of the biggest challenges that kind of keep you up at night?

Jon: The divisiveness of our culture is really hard. Christian colleges are on a spectrum of theological beliefs on a lot of hot button issues. We serve all of them, and we want their students to come to us and be a community while they’re here. But students often pick their schools because they’re aligned with the students’ particular beliefs and upbringings. And so they’re kind of expecting us to be like their home school.

One of our benefits is that we’re not. We have students across the spectrum, and we all come together. But students then need to grapple with what does community means while they’re here. How do you respect people that have different views on the age of the earth, on climate change, and on human sexuality issues? Schools are taking positions. And people are picking what group they want to be in and just want to be around people of that group.

I have a deep fear that that it’s going to just continually be harder and harder for us to be neutral. I don’t know if “neutral” is the right word. We stand for something. I’m a zealot for what I believe. But how can people from different schools all come together and be a community, particularly while they’re here, and respect each other and love each other?

Nathan: We’ve had multiple conversations in the past, and you often circle back to liturgy, the work of the people. Can you say a little bit more about that?

Jon: I love liturgy. When I was in DC, we went to an Anglican church where liturgy was a big part of it, and I loved the rootedness of it, the faithfulness of it, the beauty of it. Here, we like the idea of liturgy – it could just be a walk through the woods – as daily habits and as a way to push back against the larger culture. Your time in church on Sunday morning is not enough to reorient your frame of thinking about your role in God’s story. Our country’s culture can be distorted and give you distorted thinking about your values. So we need to ask what are the things we do on a daily basis that help remind us of God’s story, the truth of God’s story? A walk in the woods can remind you that you’re the sheep and not the shepherd. It’s humbling.

(Note – Jon led the development of a beautiful liturgy workbook around Creation Care at Au Sable that is entitled Liturgies of Restoration. You can order a free copy here.)

Nathan: I’d like to take that thought about a liturgical culture further. You’ve gone to different churches in many different places. Do you have any thoughts for what Christian culture would be like if it was true to God and yet made a concern and consciousness of Creation an essential element? How could we build that kind of culture?

Jon: I don’t have an easy answer for that. I think a lot of it has to do with what is your end? We shouldn’t want Creation at the end of the day to be the end goal. Our goal isn’t that we have clean water. What we need to ask of anything is, “Is this going to glorify God?”

Caring for Creation is a natural expression of Christian faith. It’s a part of what you do to be faithful to Jesus and to love the things that God cares about. It’s like a spiritual discipline to me. So when you read about spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting, you do those things. Not because you want to be really good at prayer and fasting. You do them because you want to be more like Christ. And if you could be more like Christ without those things, then you wouldn’t have to do them. So, to me, being aware of the earth and God’s Creation and caring for it is just another spiritual discipline, a means to the end of being more Christ-like.

I think more Christians would be willing to go along with Creation Care if they realized that being more Christ-like was the end goal and not feel like the most important thing is the health of the environment. They don’t want to feel that you will use their faith in order to get them to do what you want. It’s more about, “I love Jesus. I believe what the Bible says about God and His Creation.” That’s the end. It’s just natural for me then to want to respond to that. As opposed to starting with, “We need to address climate change so let’s use your faith to have you act differently.”

So, if it’s about Jesus, the climate gets changed even though the work itself might look the same. I guess it goes back to that divisiveness issue again. Some Christians fear (that if they work to protect Creation) that all of a sudden they’re going be driving a Prius with a Coexist bumper sticker.

 

Students at Au Sable Institute’s Pacific Rim campus enjoy the life of the Pacific Ocean edge.

Nathan: We have two thousand years of history in which taking care of Creation hasn’t been seen as part of how we serve and love God. It’s been peripheral. In fact, being concerned about Creation made you suspect, because it seemed like you were worshipping nature. How would you change that in a local church? What would make possible a church culture that cherished this world that God loves?

Jon: My grandma’s favorite song was, “I’ll Fly Away.” It’s a beautiful song. And it’s also completely wrong. It’s the idea is that we’re bound for something else, and this earth is not it. This idea needs to be changed.

When I speak to churches now, I always include a strong focus on the cosmic scope of Christ’s desire to restore all things. In advance of this interview, you said you were going to ask what my favorite Bible verse is around Creation Care. Christians usually go to Genesis 2:15 where we’re called to serve and protect Creation, which is what dominion looks like. But I was actually going to read from Revelation 21:1-4 in which there is the image of the new heaven and the new earth coming here. We’re not going to be sucked away.

The best book I think that you can read on Creation Care isn’t specifically about Creation Care. It’s called Surprised By Hope and is written by N.T. Wright. It blew my mind. It made me understand Christ’s resurrection as the first fruits. Christ’s resurrection gives us a glimpse of what the new earth is going to look like. That changes everything about what building the kingdom looks like now, particularly in the sense of the earth. If there was more of an understanding of where we’re headed and how it doesn’t just involve people – it involves everything! – that would be very helpful.

Nathan: I really appreciate you bringing up Revelation and what the end goal is. We need an alternative to the Left Behind series.

Jon: Well, that was half my childhood. They were big at the time. I had a good friend who anytime he’d come home and his parents weren’t home, he’d freak out because he thought he was left behind. He was scarred for life. And Left Behind is not true. The whole story in the Bible is about God coming down here. It’s really beautiful. It changes how you live now.

Nathan: Absolutely. Jon, I believe anytime we’re doing what God wants from us in our lives, we’ll usually be compelled to grow as people. God doesn’t usually give us a task that’s super easy. We’re often called to things that stretch us and take us beyond what we think we want to do. So I’m curious about how sense you’re being called to grow.

Jon: That’s a great question. I guess I’m growing in two ways. The first is that I’m growing with grief and suffering. I lost a younger brother a little over a year ago.

Nathan: I’m sorry.

Jon: Thank you. I’d made it 50 years of my life without ever experiencing what death and grief were. When I’d have friends or a loved one who would lose someone, I’d say the right things, but not have a clue of what they were feeling. So I’m just growing personally a lot through this grief. And with my parents and my wife’s parents, it feels we’re entering a phase where there’ll be more grief, and we’ll be learning how to live with that. I don’t know how I missed out. So how do I learn more about being Christ-like through suffering? That’s a big chunk of my life right now.

The other half specifically related to my leadership is that for a lot of my life I liked people to like me. I like making decisions, but when you’re a leader, the stuff that comes to you isn’t the fun stuff. The good stuff gets taken care of without me. The hard stuff comes to me. With every decision, someone’s going be disappointed. I have to learn to just live with that and grow through that. A big growth area for me is making decisions when you know it’s going to disappoint someone, but then remaining in relationship with them and moving on and continuing to respect each other and work together. It’s not easy.

Nathan: Is there anything else I didn’t ask you that you’d like to share thoughts on?

Jon: No, this has been great. I appreciate you helping me think about these issues. I’m grateful for your interest in our work and what you do to push it forward and to bring attention to it and your willingness to be a misfit, too.

Group shot of students at Au Sable Institute’s Pacific Rim campus based at Whidbey Island.

 

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