After last month’s article about our interesting visit to Walker Farms, Princeton, MN, to learn about Regenerative Farming, I was reminded of a visit to Church of all Nations in Columbia Heights, a first ring suburb of Minneapolis led by founding pastor, Rev. Jin S. Kim. Our Care for Creation Team at Christ the King Lutheran, New Brighton, MN was invited to visit, to experience a kind of “regenerative farm” within the city.  

Church of all Nations is a multicultural faith community of 150 members. Their congregation was founded by immigrants from Asia and Africa where interconnectedness is assumed. The values that flow from this are relationships, reciprocity, balance, fruitfulness, and diversity. When there is an openness for life energy to flow, communities become syntropic, generating an increasingly spontaneous and complex network of interconnectedness. Life begets life. 

Church of all Nations, located in the Rice Creek Watershed District, overlooks Silver Lake, a 72-acre lake that is listed by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for impaired waters due to excess nutrients. Three years ago Church of all Nations began the implementation of a permaculture design, in consultation with Ecological Design, to heal the water that flows through their property by restoring soil and water systems. Permaculture has learned from traditional and indigenous knowledge, and so emphasizes “care for people,” “care for the earth,” and “fair share.” Through this work Church of all Nations is also working to translate their community’s non-Western immigrant ethos to the land, which they trust will have a healing effect on both the land and on their community.

In permaculture language, one of the core operating principles of their community is symbiosis. They believe that interdependent relationships between individuals of different cultural backgrounds living in close physical proximity lead to increasing growth for all. And further, they recognize that these benefits increase exponentially when individuals choose to put down roots. Committed long-term relationships create the conditions for communal—and thereby personal—maturation and flourishing. Because of this, they have eight intentional community houses near the church where many of their members live together.

As they continue their permaculture work, they weave this ethos deeper into their relationship with the land. Their goals are to develop community through the creation of a neighborhood-wide, integrated perennial food production system. The installation of a food forest and other perennial poly-cultures at the church will create more symbiotic and deeper rooted relationships on the land. This will both revitalize the local ecosystem and generate increasing yields of food, fiber, and medicine for the community. The church increasingly serves as a production center and training and education site for their members, as interested church members participate in growing food at their homes.

Over time, they plan to implement a community-wide crop rotation tying all the gardens together. As harvests occur, they will gather at the church for communal processing of the crops through drying, canning, pickling, and freezing. The fruit of this labor will be redistributed to the community houses and the broader church community. The result will be a tightly woven network of mutual aid rooted in the local ecosystem that matures and strengthens their multicultural village. The land will heal as their people heal through an ever more complex, interconnected, resilient, and generative ecological-communal structure. 

Our Christ the King Lutheran Church Care for Creation Team visited them on a beautiful summer Sunday afternoon. After an introduction to the community’s origin, membership and values, John Nelson and Laura Newly of the pastoral staff walked us through the church grounds. They have transformed the typical suburban manicured lawns into gardens of grasses, flowers, trees and a home for ground and airborne habitat of all kinds. They have built a good looking gazebo, neat fences and pleasant paths to give the area an interesting look for suburban neighbors.

Church of all Nations welcomes inquiries for possible visits and seminars which can give any community a vision of possibilities for the environment we all steward. To learn more about their offerings visit www.undergroundsem.org/rooting-our-faith or email laura@undergrounsem.org.