Welcome to this week’s edition of the Redeeming the Dirt Newsletter!

Redeeming the Dirt is the ministry of Noah Sanders and his family, committed to encouraging Christians to live for Jesus, excel in agriculture, and make disciples.

Quick Updates:

• ​Click Here to listen to my latest podcast on freedom and food safety.
• Or watch it here.
• 2027 Training for Trainers Dates: May 10-14th, October 11-15th.
• I will be speaking at the Traditional Skills Summit on October 13th

Is Your Garden a Distraction from the Great Commission?

A thousand miles from my farm in Alabama, I was in upstate New York teaching a horticulture course at a week-long guild hosted by a Christian publishing ministry. Professionals from all kinds of arts and crafts had gathered for a week of work, worship, and spiritual growth. Around a hundred students, most of them young people, were learning up close from well-known scriptwriters, composers, actors, filmmakers, artists, theologians, and craftsmen.

I felt a bit out of place as a farmer among the teachers, but I was excited to share not only the craft of growing food but the connection between a Christian worldview and agriculture. So far that week my students had put in a no-till garden, made compost, and grown in their appreciation and trust for God’s design in creation.

The campus is beautiful. Set in a small New England village, it looks like it stepped out of one of the vintage books the ministry reprints. Group sessions are held in a nineteenth-century church building with a slate roof, stained glass windows warming the wooden pews, and bookshelves lining the walls — giving it the feel of a cozy library while practically holding the inventory of the publishing business. Next door, an old Victorian house has been converted into a bookstore and coffee shop. Between the two was the small vegetable and flower garden my class was installing.

I was taking a break between sessions to rest and reflect in the coffee shop when a young man from one of the other classes — theology, perhaps — sat down next to me. He mentioned that he had done some gardening at home the past year but had felt led to take the other class instead of mine. I assured him I didn’t feel slighted, and we went on to talk about the value of agriculture and how we should think about it as Christians. Then he humbly opened up about a question he had been wrestling with:

“When there are so many people around the world who need to hear the gospel, and who are suffering and need help, how can you justify staying at home and tending a garden?”

This was a young man who loved the Lord, standing in that critical season of life when he had to discern how God was calling him to serve with his life. His question showed his passion and willingness to serve wherever he could be most effective for the gospel. But it also reflected an honest confusion shared by much of the Church about the relationship between the Great Commission — to go and make disciples of all nations — and the First Commission — to steward God’s creation.

In practice, most of the Church divides in our thinking into two camps: the many who do the normal work required to survive in this world — farming, teaching, carpentry, medicine — the necessary First Commission work of stewarding creation; and the few who feel called into ministry work — preaching the gospel, helping the poor, making disciples of the nations. Traditionally, the first camp funds the second, and that partnership has done a lot of good over the years.

But I had wrestled with the same question this young man was asking. I felt a strong calling to farm, and I also had a real passion for making disciples.

Did I have to pick one or the other? I wanted to be all in for Jesus. I wanted my whole life to be defined by Him, holding nothing back. If I really wanted to help fulfill the Great Commission, did that mean pulling back from the First Commission? And if I really wanted to make an impact through the First Commission, did that mean saying no to the Great Commission?

That was his real question: how could he justify First Commission work when there was still Great Commission work to be done?

I shared some of my thoughts. I had come to the conclusion that you don’t have to pick one or the other. In fact, I have often seen God use stewardship and discipleship better when they are integrated than when they are kept separate.

Each of us has a role to play in representing Christ and spreading the gospel, and our impact depends not on the part we play but on our obedience to whatever God gives us to do. Farming or gardening can be part of the mission God uses to build His kingdom — or a distraction from it, if He is clearly calling you to focus on something else.

But First Commission work like gardening isn’t in conflict with the Great Commission. Just the opposite: the visible transformation of the practical stewardship in our lives is what gives authenticity and credibility to our testimony. When people see our relationship with Jesus producing excellence, joy, and practical solutions in the gardens we grow, that is real-life evidence of the gospel we want to share with them.

Some of us may be called to go to the ends of the earth. But it is our faithfulness right where we are that God uses to prepare us for whatever He has next.

A mentor of mine from Africa says, “You can tell the state of a man’s heart by the way his field looks.” The young man admitted that the garden he had been working was large and overwhelming, and its condition wasn’t something he was proud of — or something that would bring hope to anyone else. That discouragement had led him to question the value of what he was doing. He honestly couldn’t see how his garden could play any role in sharing Christ with others, because he had never seen or experienced the gospel applied to gardening.

I don’t remember speaking to that young man again, but the conversation has stuck with me. In my own journey of faith and farming, I have seen countless examples — in my life and in others’ — of God using the integration of stewardship and discipleship to advance the gospel and solve real food-security problems, in ways that amaze both ministry leaders and farmers.

From Alabama to Africa, individuals, families, and whole communities are being transformed through people who see stewardship as a vehicle for discipleship, and discipleship as the foundation for fruitful stewardship.

Some are farmers like me, integrating discipleship into our work. Others are ministry leaders and missionaries, integrating work and stewardship into their discipleship. In both cases, God is opening doors for the gospel in ways that feel new and exciting — and yet are really a rediscovery of God’s ways from generations past.

I wish I'd had the chance to share more of that with the young man in the coffee shop. God is on the move. People are sensing a call to practical ministry — what I've come to call missional stewardship — and God is doing amazing things through those who answer it.

Some of us are called to focus more on stewardship, some more on discipleship. But if you, like me, have ever wondered whether there could be a more direct integration of the two, I would suggest it is not only possible, but often more fruitful.

Often the front line of spiritual battle is found in the unseen moments of obedience in the ordinary tasks of a life radically surrendered to Jesus. The story of humanity's rebellion began in a garden. So did its redemption. Your faithfulness to work yours may be what God uses to draw others back to him.

Have you ever wrestled with the question this young man had? Has anyone ever challenged the eternal significance of what you are doing through agriculture?

Your Fellow Missional Steward of the Land,

Noah Sanders

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