By Grayson Hester
Jesus was known to extol the virtues of possessing a faith the size of a tiny mustard seed.
Although mustard may not be one of Jessica Hearne’s main crops, there’s no refuting the faith she nourishes and the abundance she, her community garden at Grace and Main in Danville, Va. and her work with the CBF’s Environmental Stewardship Network have yielded as a result.
These initiatives, undertaken with great faith and even greater care for the natural world, represent a significant facet of the ways in which CBF is responding to its mandate to care for creation, an effort made more urgent with each heat record broken and each natural disaster endured.
“We’ve lived in Danville since 2008 and didn’t mean to start an intentional community; my husband was called as an associate pastor at one of the downtown churches,” Hearne said. “The fact we’re still here, 16 years later, is really a testament to how God takes our plans and flips them over and changes them around.”
Danville would seem a natural starting place for a ministry career: It’s a city small enough to cut one’s teeth in congregational ministry, but not large enough to allow for a financially prosperous, indefinite stay. Positioned near the Virginia-North Carolina border on the eponymous Dan River, Danville boasts a layered history, the richness of which is revealed in contrast with its present poverty.
Many pastors would view a place like Danville as a steppingstone on the road to larger congregations and ever-increasing prestige.
The Hearnes might initially have seen it that way. But instead of stopping in and passing by, they took a different approach. They planted roots. “Danville really is an interesting place and a special kind of place; we have really grown to love it here,” Hearne said.
Over the past decades, Jessica and her husband, Joshua have taken “grown” not just as a figure of speech, but as a way of being. They have planted an intentional community, Grace and Main. It began as a small apartment Bible study in the early 2000s and became a ministry addressing housing and food insecurity. Alongside this community, they have grown a garden that nourishes both the Earth and the people living in it.
“Our current work has shifted over the years – intentional community work changes as the community changes,” Jessica said. “The longer you do it, the more the community changes.”
The Hearnes have been doing it for a remarkably long time. When it comes to intentional communities, Jessica said, the average life span is 18 months. Yet, Grace and Main has been thriving for nearly 15 years.
In that time, Jessica’s role has transformed from cultivating a group of people to primarily cultivating soil. A key part of addressing food insecurity in a “food desert,” an area in which no grocery store is accessible within a mile from the neighborhood, like parts of downtown Danville— is to grow the food oneself, and to teach others how.
“My work with Grace and Main, especially this time of year, is to manage the urban farm,” she said. “The farm is about three-quarters of an acre of land.”
The Hearnes have officially been recognized as CBF field personnel in this ministry. For a ministry like Grace and Main, “sustainability” takes on a twofold meaning. For one, like all ministries under CBF field personnel, it must prioritize presence and asset-based development in the community. In other words, it does not seek quick fixes to entrenched problems, but instead works alongside people to teach long-term solutions; a hand up rather than a hand out.
“We provide food through the urban farm and educational experiences in which people learn how to grow their own food in ways that are sustainable for the environment as well as low-cost,” Hearne said.
And that brings up the second meaning of “sustainability” for Grace and Main – environmental stewardship. In a global economy dominated by industrial agriculture and factory farms – many of which, through their harvesting of just one or two crops (known as monoculture), widespread use of chemicals and hoarding of water resources, contribute significantly to climate change – the kind of farming Hearne practices at Grace and Main is nothing short of radical.
“Immediately, as soon as we received our land and cleared it, we sent four of our leaders to learn about ‘permaculture’ – permanent and agriculture– which works with natural systems so that it is more self-sustaining. This method enables resources to be put back in even as resources are being taken out, thus caring for the environment.” she said.
This movement, developed in the 70s and merged in with Korean natural farming (which Hearne also practices), makes vibrant soil the literal bedrock of its approach. The premise of permaculture is that people can’t produce healthy food if they don’t nourish healthy soil. People can’t get healthy soil unless they grow a diversity of seasonally appropriate, ecosystem-sustaining plants without the use of chemical fertilizers.
The results speak for themselves: The food is tastier and more nutritious; the land is more arable and remains so longer; and, according to Hearne, gardens practicing permaculture yield more crops, acre for acre, than even the largest factory farm. “Permaculture is about using patterns evident in nature, maintaining wildness on the parts of the land not currently being cultivated, and using the natural relationships between plants and animals on the land,” she said.
Although Hearne’s primary focus remains Grace and Main and the tight-knit community it serves, she maintains a global perspective. She sees her relatively small contribution as being intricately woven into the larger fight for ecological justice. “How can we move forward as a planet that is somehow able to feed its population and yet not roast ourselves to death with carbon emissions? Permaculture is going to be a major piece of that,” she said.
It’s no wonder that Hearne and Grace and Main were asked a few years ago to join CBF’s Environmental Stewardship Network (ESN) and tasked with sharing this knowledge to CBF-affiliated churches all over the country.
And just as this work is indispensable to creation care, it is integral to the Gospel. “When I read the Gospels, it’s very clear to me that, in addition to saving our souls, Jesus spent his time speaking about how we take care of one another,” Hearne said. “Environmental justice is very much an issue of loving one’s neighbor and especially an issue of racial and economic justice.”
As part of the ESN, Hearne educates churches on practical ways they can practice this green Gospel, such as cultivating biodiversity on their properties, installing water capture systems storm runoff, building permeable parking lots, etc. Suffice to say, there’s much to be done.
In addition to issues of money and imagination, Hearne and the ESN have bumped into challenges of narrative. Much of the White Christian church has not only neglected creation care, but has even advocated against it. “Because the dominant narrative in a lot of church spaces in our country is the opposite side of that, it’s important we think to try and amplify our voices in favor of caring for the creation and in favor of taking positive steps toward addressing some of the environmental calamity that is coming down,” Hearne said.
Climate change most directly and disproportionately impacts those who are the least responsible for its occurrence—people in the developing world; people of color, particularly women; citizens of island nations with minimal carbon footprints, all who stand to feel first and most fiercely, the effects of a warming and more alien world.
Hearne believes churches have a special responsibility to advocate for this world and the minoritized people who call it home. “If we really love our neighbor, part of loving our neighbor is a willingness to take on their burdens as our own burdens,” she said. “If we’re not willing to take on the burdens of our neighbors, I wonder if we can really say we’re loving our neighbors.”