Our church is over 120 years old, inhabiting a heritage-overlay building in one of the poshest bits of Melbourne’s inner East. It’s tough for a church in the area to survive in this context of individualism, self-sufficiency, status-seeking and devotion to consumerism.
Eight years ago the environment department of the local council entered into a project with us to establish the first community garden in the municipality, bringing $20,000 and a staff worker one day a week for a year. The garden has a membership who gather monthly to make decisions about the garden, have a working bee together and then people tend the garden during the month according to the time they can offer. We harvest together and share out the produce, with any leftover distributed to people with low food security.
Christians have largely been trained to think that serving means doing something for someone, but this garden has been a great opportunity to learn that we are called to do life with people.
Contributed by Jude Waldron. To read the full article, see p10-11 of the Summer 2023-24 Enews.
