Common Ground joins farm-to-table trend, reaches out to nontraditional church goers

As the sun begins to set, approximately two dozen people line picnic tables topped with fresh tomatoes, bread and fruits in the middle of Grow Food Northampton Organic Community Garden.

Most of the food at the dinner was grown in the community garden by members of Common Ground, a farm-to-table dinner church through First Churches of Northampton.

Their goal is to "help people connect to the earth, one another, and the God whose good gifts we freely share," according to their website. It also helps bring in people who might be turned off by a traditional church setting.

"We wanted to create an experience that was maybe a little easier to enter into," The Reverend Sarah Buteux said. "I find that if you grow food together, if you make food together, eat food together and clean up together, it's a lot easier to get to know people."

Buteux said the dinners are designed so everyone can enjoy them. For example, there's nothing to read, allowing young children to participate as fully as adult members. Attendees range from professors to those struggling with homelessness; they even have members from various faiths wanting to join the conversation, Buteux said.

"If my words are too Christian for you, find words that fit for you. And if you don't like tomatoes eat peppers," Buteux said, getting a few laughs.

The uniqueness of the group is what many of the members come for. Buteux said she doesn't often preach for very long, just long enough to create a conversation and let the group take it from there.

Alison Childs, a member of Common Grounds, said she likes the various topics the group touches on.

"Common ground is always different, from having a harvest dinner out here to sometimes we'll have a speaker come to talk about mass incarceration, or a service trip that they did somewhere," Childs said. "And the food is always different."

Childs helped start the garden. She said she feels closer to God when her hands are in the dirt and finds it a good alternative to traditional church settings.

"It's really responsive, inclusive and uplifting in a way that I think traditional church can be but is not always," Childs said.

Similar programs have been popping up in congregations around the United States as weekly events or, sometimes, as special one-time fundraisers.

A couple of years ago, Princeton Seminary started the Farminary Project. Instead of sitting in a traditional classroom, students work and learn on a 21-acre farm.

The program helps build leadership skills, community and works to "inform contemporary conversation about ecological questions," according to their website.

"As students study and tend the soil alongside one another, they experience a deep dimension of Christian community and learn to love God, creation, and one another in new ways," the website said.

Christianity is not the only religion jumping on this trend.

Congregation B'nai Israel's Abundance Farm in Northampton is a Jewish food justice farm and outdoor classroom. The garden, Rabbi Jacob Fine said, belongs to God and is used to grow food for anyone in the community to come pick.

What they do with their harvest differs slightly from Common Ground but the purpose is the same.

The "powerful experience of being involved in an agricultural act" is both physical and spiritual Fine said in an earlier interview with MassLive. Plus, it helps teach the community.

Many of the members of both Abundance Farm and Common Ground had never farmed before but found it rewarding on many levels.

Buteux was one of those people but, she said, she's learning. She also found being out in the garden allows people to open up in ways they might not have before.

"I think because people are hungry for community and they're hungry for connection and in a lot of these dinner churches it's really about the conversations," Buteux said.

At the harvest meal, members went around and shared what they had learned from being in the garden. Many noted the difficulty of the drought or learning to plant something new but were proud of their work and the dinner they were able to provide.

At the end, everyone took a minute to admire the full moon.

"The moon is rising for all of us," Buteux said. "That's how God works."

The group meets at First Churches of Northampton on the first and third Thursday's of the month at 6 p.m.

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