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.
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 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.
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.
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!
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 – 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.
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.
I’ve forgotten how I first became aware of John Kempf, but I do know that fairly quickly I realized that he was a gifted man of deep faith following his calling with all of his heart, soul, strength, and mind. His calling is to change agriculture. He believes it is possible to grow crops in such a way that nature is renewed, healing food is produced, and farmers prosper. He is a leader in the regenerative agriculture world that is all about working within the template of how God’s amazing earth works when given the chance. Through the founding of Advancing Eco Agriculture, speaking, and his podcast, he has directly and indirectly impacted thousands of farmers and their families.
I’ve come to know him best through his Regenerative Agriculture Podcast through which I’ve learned a great deal and been profoundly inspired. So I had long hoped to interview him for this blog and was delighted when he accepted my invitation. You will find his story and words wise, surprising, provocative, and abundant in Christian faith.
John is a man of paradoxes. He is Amish and has been fundamentally formed by that unique Chrsitian culture. (You’ll note how easily he can quote Bible verse from memory, translating them effortlessly from the Pennsylvania German in which he first learned them into English.) Yet, he has a global perspective and spiritual gifts that most Christians might not know what to do with. To the best of my knowledge, he has not attended college but is one of the most erudite agricultural experts in the world. Despite his knowledge and having the entrepreneurial gumption to found Advancing Eco Agriculture and three other organizations, John is humble. In his podcasts, he genuinely seeks to learn all he can from every guest and gives them ample time to speak and tell their stories. He is a man of strong ideals and speaks his mind with blade-like precision. Yet, he is compassionate and has a delightful sense of humor.
John spoke to me from his front porch of his family’s new house with his new orchard in the background. It is one of the most stimulating conversations I’ve ever had. Enjoy.
Nathan: I’ve been grateful for all that you have done for regenerative agriculture. The fact that your podcast allows so many people to hear from so many people with knowledge and experience in the field is a great gift. I appreciate, too, how you tease out of the guests’ stories and insights. It’s especially interesting to me how woven into your conversations from time to time are clear indications that your faith is part and parcel of who you are. You don’t beat anybody up over the head with it, but it comes through. That’s a powerful witness.
John: Thank you, I’m glad for that feedback. I’m glad that it does come through. I am hesitant to make it overt. I want to lead people to that gracefully without beating them over the head with it. There have been times when I’ve wondered whether I need to be a bit more overt about it.
Nathan: It’s fun to hear you on other people’s podcasts as well. You were on the Thriving Farmer podcast back in 2020, and the podcaster asked you, “What books do you recommend,” and you said, “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.” My wife and I were driving in the car, and I remember saying to my wife, “That doesn’t sound like John at all. It wasn’t about agriculture, and the title sounded a little gimmicky.” But because you recommended it, we bought the book. Well, it’s so good we’ve now shared it with some family and farmer friends. Thank you for recommending it.
John: What I’ve found particularly intriguing about the book is that it’s framed around money, which is a turnoff to some people. That’s unfortunate, because I think the digging that he does into our subconscious patterning is so important. It’s relevant and important for all of us to dig into that, and not just about money, but about all the facets of our life. That is what I really came away from the book with. Financial management is one window into understanding our subconscious biases, but what if we evaluated our approach to health, food, and medicine through a similar lens?
It’s been very humbling for me that the podcast and the work that we’re doing are having an impact. On the one hand I always had this dream of having a global impact and really being able to impact the entire beautiful planet that God has created, that he has put us here to be stewards of. But it’s still something to see that actually happening in reality. Some days I’m like, “Oh my goodness, is this actually happening?”
Nathan: Since your faith is clearly a part of what you do and why you do it, I thought it’d be wonderful to ask you questions and to share your answers with people who read the blog. So would you mind, first of all, John, just sharing some insights into your own spiritual development? You’ve often shared about what opened your eyes to a different paradigm of farming, but would you feel comfortable sharing anything about your spiritual development?
John: So I’m going to give you a very different narrative than of what I’m sure you might be anticipating. Growing up on the farm, I always felt very connected to nature, to wildlife and particularly to plants. And for me, being out in nature and observing plants and kind of communing with nature was worship. And in many ways I got as much or more out of that and developing a relationship with God than I did from reading the Bible. To me, the outdoors really was my Bible in some ways. Not that it was a replacement for the Bible obviously, but it really was a very worshipful experience.
There aren’t good words to describe this, so I’ll try my best. I’m going to use the terms observe. I was able to observe kind of the hidden nature of things. I was able to observe what the mature plant would look like when it was still only a seedling, even though I hadn’t ever encountered the mature plant before. Or vice versa. I was able to look at a landscape and just kind of have this intuitive knowing, this spiritual knowing, of what was the highest and best use for this landscape and how it would like to develop and to evolve. And as a part of this, I was also able to have a very strong connection to individual plants and groups of plants. Out on the farm, if we were growing a cantaloupe crop or a cucumber crop, if we made a foliar application of fertilizers, or pesticides, or whatever the case might be, or even not having made an application, I could walk into a field and kind of intuitively, instinctively feel what those plants were feeling. In some cases, I was even able to observe the energy flow around them.
You may have heard the interview that I had with Pascal Fafard where he spoke about actively fostering that ability, and developing the capacity to communicate with plants. I think this is a capacity that all humans have to varying degrees. It’s really Spirit-led communication through the Holy Spirit with God’s creation.
Associated with that ability to observe, there were also some really amazing experiences where I was able to work with plants that were unhealthy, or were perhaps being consumed by diseases and insects. Just by being able to be present with that plant for just a few moments and intend a different outcome and intend for this plant to recover and to express gratitude for the gifts that this plant was bringing into the world and by expressing love and appreciation, I would have problems completely resolve. In a few cases within hours or certainly within days. And then shifting that from plants to entire landscapes and having experiences with entire landscapes where I would ask certain pests to leave and they would leave, they would all move. I would designate one part of the field or one corner of the field and say, “You can come over here, but I need you to leave everything else alone.” And they would do that.
So, that then led to a deep study, because I grew up within the Amish culture in which those types of conversations were not considered acceptable or appropriate. I wanted to deeply understand what is happening, what’s going on here, from a spiritual perspective. And that really led to an in-depth study of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and what they really mean. Some of the things that Jesus meant when he said (I’m used to reading this in German, so I’ll paraphrase in English, and I’m sure you’ll pick up the reference), “Be perfect as I have been perfect,” which I think is in Mark. Our understanding of the word “perfect” is to mean without fault, but that’s not actually what Jesus meant in the original Hebrew. He did not mean to be without fault or without sin. What He meant was to be fully functional in all the gifts of the spirit.
Because that is what He was. He was fully functional in all the gifts of the Spirit, the nine different gifts (1 Corinthians 12: 1, 8-11). And so, to the best of my knowledge, he’s the only person that was fully functional in all nine of the gifts of the Spirit. And so I think when we read the parable of the talents and we read the parable of the different things that we are given, those to me are really an expression of the different gifts of the Spirit that we have been given.
And so we have this perception that the gifts of the Spirit are something that were active in the early Church, but are not active today. And yet there is no good rationale or justification for that. And in fact, there are many people who experience those gifts of the Spirit on a routine basis. And so, that really was what led me into kind of a deep spiritual search initially and was also kind of the foundation for what led to my scientific inquiry.
I then started trying to have this conversation with my family and parents and people around me about the gifts of the Spirit, about what I was experiencing and observing in working with plants in a spiritual framework, in a spiritual context. But that was not an acceptable conversation. I was misled and lots of other things, but that has now dramatically shifted. My family has come to a very different perspective over the last decade.
Nathan: As a result of your experience and what you’ve explained?
John: That may have been a contributing factor, but I think they were on their own personal journeys. So they’ve come to their own realizations as well. I think they’ve been led by the Spirit also. So, since that was not an acceptable context and not an acceptable framework, that then led me into a deep scientific pursuit to try to kind of work myself out of the corner that they thought they had worked me into. By being able to describe these phenomena from a scientific perspective… (I thought I could do that).
Nathan: So, it sounds like you had these personal experiences while also being immersed in the Amish culture of Christian faith. One of the things that strikes me about the Amish approach to Christianity is that it ties faith and life together. That was part of the fabric of your life.
John: It’s absolutely supposed to be a lived faith. It is not supposed to be something that you practice on Sunday and then you do something else the rest of the week.
Nathan: Exactly. In John 3:16, which is often used as the Gospel in a nutshell, Jesus declares that God loves the world. And then, Jesus states that whoever believes in him will have eternal life. From my understanding “eternal life” is describing a very abundant, full, complete whole life rather than only a life that goes on after death. I believe Jesus meant for us to make a connection in the verse that he did not spell out explicitly. He loves the world so much that helping people to have eternal life now, providing them all the gifts of the spirit to live out a full God inspired life now will actually help heal the world. His way of loving the world is to get more people to care for the world. Does that make any sense?
John: It makes perfect sense. And I think it aligns with another very common, incomplete understanding of what was Jesus really here for. You ask people a question, “What was He here for? What did He come here for?” The first answer is for the purpose of salvation. But, I think that’s only a third of the answer in my understanding. Yes, He did come for salvation. And salvation was a part of a much bigger piece, which was establishing His Kingdom here on earth. And not just here on earth, but also in heaven. Jesus had a kingdom message. We are actually here to be in His Kingdom while we are here on Earth.
Another aspect is He came to heal us physically. Not just at that moment in time, and not just spiritually, but He came to heal us spiritually and physically, then and now. So He was the great physician. He was the healer. And there’s so much reference to this when you start digging into it.
When we look at the gifts of the Spirit and when we look at, really having His Kingdom here on earth, and you talked about the aspect of eternal life in John 3:16, there’s a very simple question – “When does eternity begin? Does it begin when we die?” No, it is now present in this moment. This is a part of eternity.
Nathan: Absolutely. We’ve already talked about some Bible verses, do you have any favorite Bible verses or stories that kind of connect with this theme of the fact that being a Christian is about being here now and also caring for the Earth?
John: I have lots of favorites. One of them that I really enjoy is in Job 12:7-8 which says something like, “But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will explain to you.” And to me, that is an expression of God’s capacity to speak to us through His Creation, and to have His Creation teach us if we are willing to learn and to adapt the insights that we gain to our own spiritual development.
I’ll give you one example. When I look at the process of photosynthesis, there are so many incredible parallels between plant growth and development and our own spiritual growth. In the process of photosynthesis, plants collect light energy, while the sun is shining, and they store that energy temporarily for a short period of time. And then they use that energy to grow at the darkest time of the night and at dawn. So 80% of plant growth, 80% of cell division, happens between 3:00 AM and 8:00 AM. So think about the spiritual parallels for that. We are also to collect energy from God’s light while the sun is shining on in our lives, so that we have the energy to grow during our trials and tribulations.
Nathan: How has reading the Bible and thinking about faith informed your farming and the agricultural consulting, and how has farming and consulting effected the way you read the Bible?
John: So it’s difficult in retrospect, to look back and see how our perception or how our frame of reference has evolved. But I think one of the foundational reasons for our success in our work at AEA and our consulting work is that I always try to deeply understand what are the root causes of why we have a certain symptom. And, of course, we must try to identify the root cause at different levels.
So if you look at an individual green bean plant, you ask the question, “Why does this green bean plant have aphids?” you will arrive at a certain set of answers that include mineral nutrition and the microbiome and how the soil was managed. And then you can back up and ask that question one level higher – “Why is this field being managed in a way that produces plants which are conducive to aphids?” And you go to another level, and you ask, “What is it that this farmer believes to be true that has led him to managing this field in this way?”
If you keep backing up and you keep digging deeper, this then leads to the question – “How is it that we, the farming community, profess to be composed primarily of Christians and yet we have this incredibly destructive model of agriculture?”
And so I tried to dig into that by asking these root cause questions of why? What is it that we as farmers believe to be true that has allowed us to adopt this destructive model of agriculture that is so degrading to God’s creation?
I believe that there are two fundamental misbeliefs or two beliefs that are fundamentally incorrect about the Christian worldview. And one of them is the belief that the Earth is cursed. We will always have diseases and insects. We will always struggle against nature. The second is the incorrect belief that we are here to dominate, we are here to have dominion over.
This, of course, leads to the verses in Genesis, where it says that we are to have dominion over all these animals. But when you look at what was intended to be communicated there in the original Hebrew, there’s actually a very different meaning than the way we perceive the English word dominion today. It is really meant to convey “to minister” or “to be a steward of.” And this is obviously reflected very clearly in Jesus’s New Testament teachings. We are here to be a minister. We’re here to be a steward. And I think on a kind of an intuitive soul level, on a spirit level, we all instinctively know that we are here to be stewards. It is not the correct framing for us to think that we are here to subjugate and to dominate.
But when you think about mainstream agriculture that has so tremendously degraded the environment and ecosystems and a planet that God has created, it is really based on this ethos of domination and subjugation.
The second misconception I noted earlier is that the Earth is cursed. And anyone who believes that the Earth is cursed and always will be cursed has not fully read and appreciated Genesis 8:21. Genesis 8:21 takes place after Noah emerged from the Ark, and he offered a burnt offering to God. The first part of the verse goes, “The Lord smelled the sweet savor and said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground any more for man’s sake for the thoughts and imaginations of a man’s heart are evil from the days of his youth.”
We all are, at least in my experience, taught and hammered in the second half of that verse: “the thoughts and imaginations of a man’s heart are evil from the days of his youth.” But we missed the first sentence, which is, “I will never again curse the ground any more for man’s sake.” It’s right there.
So if we’re a farmer and we believe that the land is cursed, then it is for us (despite what the Bible says.) That belief will create the reality that we are farming within. I think there is, in fact, a third belief that is also perhaps inaccurate or incomplete, but I don’t yet have the arguments to refute it, and so I’m not quite ready to tackle it yet.
The third belief is that it’s all going to burn up anyway. This belief, in combination with the other two beliefs I’ve mentioned, gives people permission to pillage and destroy.
Nathan: Have you read anything by N.T. Wright?
John: No. I have not.
Nathan: He’s an Anglican bishop, and he has written a book called Surprised By Hope, which is primarily about what happens to the world and us when we die. It is very biblically based and also very rich in a very different understanding. One of the points he makes is that the real point of the Bible is not whether you and I go to heaven. The real point of the Bible is that God is out to restore and recreate all creation. That’s His goal. There’s going to be a new heaven and a new earth according to N.T. Wright. Wright even notes that Paul at one point refers to us as being fellow workers with God. So there’s some positive role for us to play with using our human creativity and innovation to do things that God wants only us to be able to do.
John: I think that is such a very important point. I believe that creation is not something that happened at one moment in time in the beginning, but creation is something that happens new each and every moment. And that if we believe that we are the sons and daughters of God and brothers of Christ, then that means that we are co-creators with Him of the new reality each moment in time. And I think it is accepting that it’s a responsibility and accepting that ministry and that calling is really what gives us the capacity to create a new reality, to create a new future. Within that, I believe that as the sons and daughters of God, the integrity of our intentions, what we intend is what we create and what we intend is also what we become. Going back to where we started this conversation with our subconscious beliefs, the intentions of our hearts are ultimately who and what we become in our lives.
Nathan: And the faith that we have in Jesus and the Spirit that God sends us helps us to have different intentions?
John: Yes. I’m using the word intentions because it’s a word that a popular audience can relate to, but you could also use the word prayer. You could also use the word or the thought process of being led by the Spirit because I’m not excluding the Spirit from this. I think that we have to be Spirit-led and when we have Spirit-led intentions, we are the co-creators of what is happening here on this planet.
Nathan: I think this is a good segue into your work with Advancing Eco Agriculture. Can you share just a little bit about what AEA does? And if you wouldn’t mind, do you have a story of how AEA has helped a particular farm family and how that has changed not only their agriculture but maybe even the spirit of their family?
John: Yes. I have many of those stories. They’re so powerful and they’re often very emotional. So what does AEA do? Well, it’s difficult because we do many things. We are agronomists. We are crop scouts. We do consulting for plant nutrition. We do consulting for microbiology. We make recommendations on nutrition management and microbial management. And we have products. So it’s this really multifaceted approach.
It all came together for me in a flash of insight when I realized that what we actually do as a company is we redefine relationships in a farming operation. We redefine the relationships between farmers and their soil, between soil and plants, between plants and insects, and we help to facilitate and bring all those relationships back again closer to what they were originally intended and created to be. So that may not be a very clear answer for your audience, but I’ll expand on that just a bit further.
We have demonstrated that it is possible for plants to be completely resistant to all diseases and all insects and completely eliminate the need for pesticides when we manage nutrition and biology differently. Particularly, when we manage nutrition and biology, where the primary consideration is health rather than exclusively yield. When we do that, when we manage nutrition and biology differently and we produce plants that are completely resistant to diseases and insects, they can also transfer this immunity to livestock and to people. We can then have a legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine. Ultimately, this is about a return to a deeper understanding of God’s design and allowing God’s creation to fully express itself the way that it was designed to rather than trying to force it and direct it and manipulate it into unnatural directions.
Here’s a story of a farmer that perhaps might be a clear description of this process, of what this relationship process looks like. About seven or eight years ago, we started working with a cherry grower. He had heard about us, and he came to visit our exhibit at a trade show. He stood at our trade show table and he said, “I have no desire to be organic. I don’t want to reduce fertilizer applications and don’t have a conversation with me about reducing pesticides. What I really want to do is I want to grow large firm cherries that qualify for the export market, and I’ve heard that you can help me do that.”
And that’s where we started. So we started working with this grower to help him produce large firm cherries from about 370 acres in Oregon that qualified for the export market. On this path, he was very open-minded and very engaged. He started using compost. He started using cover crops, started managing nutrition and biology.
Obviously, the transition doesn’t happen in the field first. It first happens in our hearts and minds and then the fields follow that. At the end of three years, we sat across his desk for an annual review meeting and he looked at us for a moment. He was just silent. And then he said, “When I first met you, I told you that I have no desire to be organic, but I don’t have powdery mildew anymore. I don’t have bacterial tinker anymore. If I wanted to, I could be organic.”
This was a farmer that over the course of three years had shifted from being one of the most intensive fertilizer and pesticide applicators in the region to applying none. And his yields had increased. His profitability has significantly increased. And his relationship with his farm and with his land had changed as well.
As we work with farmers, we specifically seek to develop an empathy in them for the landscape and empathy for the crops. I think people are specifically here to minister. The function of administering and being a steward is a function of having empathy with the landscape.
There is this characteristic that is considered to be perfectly appropriate or normal for livestock farmers, but not for crop farmers. This is the characteristic of being intuitively connected to their livestock. So when you have a dairy farmer, a smaller scale dairy farmer, a hundred or a few hundred cows, or perhaps even less, there’s the expectation that a good dairy farmer will be able to walk into a herd of dairy cows and say, “Something is off with that cow,” when there is nothing visually observable that you can point to. It’s an intuitive, spiritual if you will, process that they just know. So we consider that to be appropriate for livestock farmers, but that hasn’t been considered to be a part of the required stewardship lexicon for crop farmers.
But yet when we work with growers who make this transition the most rapidly, and this cherry grower’s one example, they move very quickly to having that intuitive empathy and understanding. Three years is a rapid transition for the type of crop that he was working with. But we would walk with him through his orchard, and we would walk into a block of trees and he would say something like, “There’s something off with this block. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t feel right.”
Nathan: Wow.
John: And it’s when you have that empathic connection and you start sensing where the crop is and where the plants are and that they need something, that you get these extraordinary responses and turnarounds. So that is really, I think, one example of us helping to transition the relationships that farmers have with their crops and with the landscape.
Nathan: That’s really interesting because I’ve been reading some Jewish thought as well and one of the Jewish tenants or principles is that sometimes the doing of things can actually shape our spiritual character. I think sometimes in the Christian tradition, we believe we have to think our way to things and new behaviors and new understanding, and in the Jewish tradition, whether it’s ceremony or ritual or doing the right thing, doing those things in real life can reshape our hearts and build new understanding. That seems like in a way that that’s happening right there.
John: Yes.
Nathan: John, you have a remarkable breadth and depth of knowledge, and you’re able to articulate and communicate so clearly. Clearly, learning is a fundamental part of who you are. What have you learned about learning? What can you share with people? Because it seems to me anyone can benefit from learning. But this is especially true of farmers who are working with so much interrelated complexity. Do you have any tips or any advice or insights about how to learn?
John: Oh, my. I’ve got so many I don’t know where to begin. Well, I’m actually not going to talk about the process of learning. Instead, I want to talk about the types of learners. There is a difference between heart knowing and head learning. And there have been many times where as I was working in the field, being closely led by the Spirit, where I knew something to be true, but I did not know how to describe it scientifically, only to have it validated scientifically some period of time later, sometimes a decade later. I think it has been harmful to us that we have given so much credence to the scientific method and to mechanistic, linear, logical learning, because that is not really how the Spirit works. The Spirit speaks to our heart, not to our minds.
I think being open to and actively seeking that spiritual knowing will bring us to answers and to places that intellectual knowledge learning never can and never will. And in some ways, this is almost a parallel conversation to the discussion of indigenous peoples and their indigenous knowledge of knowing and grasping the complexity of a whole without knowing all the intricate details of the whole. So that’s one thought that comes to mind.
I frequently hear people make the comment that, “You are so smart. You’ve learned so much.” They’ll also say I have such a depth of knowledge. And there’s actually a part of that that really distresses me, and the reason it distresses me is because I was born with the same potential, although perhaps with different innate skills and talents, as anyone. Each one of us is unique. Each one of us has our own skills and talents, but we all have the same or a similar raw potential. And I don’t believe that the potential for intellectual knowledge that I have been given is significantly greater than a large majority of the population. And again, we’re all on a spectrum, but I don’t have a particularly extraordinarily high IQ for that matter, or EQ or whatever parameters you want to use to describe it.
The point that I’m trying to make is that every one of us has incredible potential that we consistently fail to tap because we don’t believe we can. We believe it’s beyond our capacity.
Nathan: Yes.
John: We should actively cultivate a desire to constantly expose ourselves to new situations and new ideas. Many of us prefer comfort, and we find the exposure to new ideas that challenge our preconceived ideas or beliefs to be uncomfortable. But it would be wonderful for us to shift and become comfortable in those contexts, because it’s in that manner that we can expand our breadth and depth of intellectual knowledge. So I don’t know. I’ve not really spoken to this before, and I don’t know how much sense I’m making, but…
Nathan: You’re making a lot of sense. In your podcasts you often ask your guests something like, “What question didn’t I ask that you wish I would have?” So I’ll ask that question.
John: That’s my question. And you can’t do that. (Laughter)
Nathan: I will pay you whatever copyright fees there are. (More laughter)
John: Give me a moment to consider. Well, a question that you didn’t ask that is perhaps worth digging into a bit more is that the distinction between heart knowledge and mind knowledge and the distinction between spirit and soul and heart versus mind. It’s very clear in the Bible. It’s hidden, but it’s very clear once you know what you’re looking for.
Let me give me a moment to paraphrase this verse from German to English. “The Word of God is like a two-edged sword; so sharp that it divides heart and mind.” (Hebrews 4:12) Rather than going too deep into the scriptural explanations for it, we know that there is a clear distinction. It is sometimes difficult for us in our world today where Greco-Roman thought dominates, and we have become so consumed by this mechanistic, linear, science-based belief that it is sometimes difficult for us to really capture or to really feel what heart-based knowledge is actually like and to learn more about it.
I would suggest that if people want to dig into this topic more deeply, I would recommend an author, Stephen Harrod Buhner. He’s written quite a number of books. Unfortunately, I do not believe that he’s a Christian. He is a very talented author, and he’s one of my favorites for his writing style, but he has written a trilogy of three books that I think if people were to read those and internalize them, would completely shift the way they see the world. The first one is titled The Lost Language of Plants. The second is titled The Secret Teachings of Plants, and the third is Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm. In each of his books, he approaches each topic from both a heart and mind perspective in alternating chapters.
I find the topics themselves to be incredibly, incredibly fascinating, but the way he approaches the conversations is a really incredible as well.
(Above is an episode of John Kempf’s Regenerative Agriculture Podcast you will enjoy. In the episode, he interviews Ray Archuelata, who is a tireless and dynamic educator for a soil-life-building approach to farming and whose faiht also comes across loud and clear. Here is the podcast link for the interview.)
Nathan: Excellent. You might take this as a strange diversion, but I don’t think it is. If you look at websites for a lot of more mainstream Christian churches, there’s an incredible focus on this intellectual theology of what they believe and what they don’t believe, and there’s really no sense of what their heart is or how they’re trying to live with a heart-led faith in God. I don’t know if mainstream Christianity knows how to help shape people’s hearts so they have open hearts, that they fully have empathy. Maybe that’s part of the missing link.
John: Well, I think modern Christianity for the most part, at least what I’ve been exposed to (and this is a very strong statement and I’m almost hesitant to make it and yet I do believe it to be true) has largely denied the gifts of the Spirit. Because that’s really what we’re talking about and we’re using the language of the heart right now. Most people today don’t believe that those gifts of the Spirit are relevant for us in this day and this moment in time. So they disavow the gifts of the Spirit. And as a result, they are never going to experience what you and I are talking about.
Nathan: Wouldn’t it be interesting if you had a spreadsheet, and you had the fruits of the Spirit each in their own columns, and each agricultural practice (like prophylactic use of antibiotics) was a row? And you considered whether each practice exhibited each fruit of the Spirit by checking or not checking the appropriate column.
John: That’s fascinating.
Nathan: So let me come to a close here with sort of two related questions. One is – how dire is the situation we face in terms of how we currently do agriculture and how it affects the health of people and the planet? And what can non-farming people who want to live out a God-fearing, God-focused life, do about it?
John: If we were to approach the question of how dire is the situation from a purely secular point of view, then it appears to be exceedingly dire. We are actually insulated from the majority of the severe climactic changes that are happening around the world here in North America. We actually see some climactic fluctuations and weather fluctuations, but we don’t actually see what is happening in the world’s oceans and what is happening in large forested areas around the world. We are, at this moment, experiencing the most rapid extinction events in recorded history. And it’s really interesting to consider that the earth is experiencing this extraordinary ecological disaster, if you will, and that it has been caused by human hands, which are to be stewards and ministers. And instead they are dominating and subjugating into extinction.
So when we look at it from that point of view, the situation can appear to be almost hopeless. But then when we consider our capacity as co-creators, and God beside us, with us, helping us to create the reality that we want to see in the future, then it actually appears extremely hopeful. It’s extremely hopeful, because for the first time these issues that have been compounding for generations are now entering the collective consciousness in a significant way. In a significant way that hopefully leads to action and changes the reality that we want to see in the world. So I’m actually very hopeful.
I’ve set as a mission for myself that regenerative agriculture becomes the global mainstream in the next 20 years, by 2040. My metric for that is that I want to see 80% adoption on all agricultural lands globally of these regenerative agriculture ecosystems. I believe that that’s a very reasonable and realistic and achievable goal, and that we’re well on the pathway to achieving that goal.
Now, along that pathway though, there’s a very real possibility, actually I would say that it’s a probability and that some of it is already coming to pass, that there will be a great deal of human suffering along that pathway. And we’re seeing this already in our modern civilized societies, where we have this epidemic of degenerative illnesses, diabetes, stroke, heart disease, cancer, et cetera.
Today, basically, one out of two people living in America today is going to have cancer sometime in their lifetime. Autoimmune diseases for people under the age of 18 has gone from 10% of the population in 2010 to 20% of the population in 2018. And perhaps one of the very significant trends worth mentioning is the rapid decline in fertility where we’re actually looking at tremendous losses in the human population’s ability to reproduce as a result of toxins in the environment and in our food supply.
Nathan: What can we do if we’re not farmers? Obviously, eating choices are obviously super important, but is there anything else we should be doing?
John: It’s not a question that I’ve prepared for, but remember that each one of us, as stewards and ministers and co-creators, is co-creating the reality that we want to see in the future. We need to fully invest ourselves in our own personal health and journey. And that’s not just food choices. It goes deeper than that. It means taking full responsibility for our health and our family’s health. That means you do not delegate responsibility to the doctor. You don’t delegate responsibility to other people. You take full responsibility yourself for learning and implementing.
There’s a great book that I’ve just read a little while ago that I would recommend people read, entitled Health for All of Life. It really encapsulates this whole personal responsibility and spiritual perspective on health and food, dietary choices, and lifestyle choices as well. Then, beyond that (and I’m realizing as you asked the question that I actually need to think about this more deeply and provide a more comprehensive answer) I would also suggest that obviously we have a lot of power in prayer and in action beyond just the food choices that we make and how we lead our daily lives.
So are we invested in the stock market? How are we managing our money? And if we’re invested in those places, why not invest in local farming? Why not invest in the solutions? It’s about managing all the different aspects of our life to create the change that we want to see in the world and living it. But then also doing more than just living it, also communicating it to others through our values and our actions and our business decisions.
By and large, the majority of farmers profess to be Christians. And yet we have adopted a model of agriculture that is directly the antithesis of these foundational Christian values.
And to a similar degree, we can say the same thing about businesses. Think about all the businesses that interact with agriculture and our food. If we picked some of the Christian nonprofits that feed lots of people, they buy a lot of food. If they were to change their food purchasing decisions, to bring about a different reality, they would have tremendous power and tremendous clout.
Nathan: That is an excellent point. I have pretty well given up on finding a church where I feel like I can be true to all of these things that we’re both sharing and discussing and I feel so strongly about. I read the Bible every day. I pray every day. I read a lot. But clearly in the Bible, it’s hard to get away from the fact that we need to have some sort of communal gathering of faith with other people. Do you have any advice for me, John?
John: Well, I have the same question. I have an incredible group of people that I commune with and that I fellowship with that are not in close geographical proximity to me. That’s been very valuable for me, but I would like to have geographical proximity and actually commune with people locally.
You know, Nathan, I think you are doing powerful work by sharing this on the blog, and you are attracting those people to you. So perhaps you should approach that question from the T. Harv Eker (author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind) perspective and ask the question, “What can I do to become a like-minded believer magnet (instead of a money magnet)? What are the subconscious beliefs that I have that might push people away from me?”
Nathan: John, it has been such a pleasure and a blessing to have this conversation with you. Blessings on your family and on your new farm.
Nathan believes that a whole Christian faith includes an imperative for us, individually and collectively, to actively show God’s earth mercy and compassion every day. For more than 15 years, he has worked for non-profit conservation groups that restore and protect natural habitats, change the relationship people have with nature, and promote sustainable farming. To learn more, click here.
