Church Leadership Reading List: Growing a Farmer

An article by Matt    4 Comments

Last week I wrote about the reading that I was able to do while away on vacation.  The variety of books that I have been reading has made for a pretty interesting conglomeration of thoughts and ideas floating around in my head.  Three books have impacted more than the others, and I wanted to spend some time interacting with those books through a series of posts on the church leadership lessons they have taught me.

The book Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land is not the typical book that you would expect to see spoken about in church leadership conversations.  When my wife heads off to the library, she will generally pick up a few off beat books that she thinks I might like.  This “odd book lottery” resulted in me reading Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer last year (great book… I want to raise a pig and a cow in the middle of the city at some point), and other books that are just as fun.

I was drawn to this book at first because of my own attempts to start a farm.  While my farm consists of six raised bed vegetable gardens in our back yard and will never come near what Kurt Timmermeister is up to on Vashon Island, in my own mind it is a vast agricultural empire that I rule with an iron fist and protect from the insidious Long Island Furry Rat (known to the rest of humanity as a Rabbit).  My garden is a release for me, it is a place where I can let my mind wander as I plant and reap, work the ground and weed, and mostly just putter around in the sunshine and watch nature run its’ course.  The garden is a deeply spiritual place for me, full of metaphors of how God works in my life and helping me better understand the agricultural references made by Jesus in his teachings.  It also renews my wonder and appreciation for creation: watching a seed transform itself from a tiny little speck of potential into a beet, a watermelon, or a pumpkin is truly an amazing thing.

Reading the story of how Kurt went from owning restaurants in Seattle to becoming a full time farmer I could not help but see parallels to the journeys that a church leader takes through their time in ministry.  Here are the thoughts that I gleaned from his journey.

Vision

Kurt had a vision for what could be.  I don’t mean that he had a grand plan that was boiled down into six easy steps, but he had a relatively clear understanding of where it was that he was heading.  A growing dissatisfaction with the life that he was leading and a desire to be more in touch with where his food was coming from led him towards farming.  That dissatisfaction led him to think through farming.  While he put some basic steps in place he also knew that a big part of how the farm would turn out would be determined not in advance, but through what he learned along the way and how the land could be best utilized.

Flexibility

Early on in his new venture Kurt attempted to navigate the Farmer’s Market scene.  A later venture had him selling raw milk to clients throughout the area.  He now hosts dinners made entirely from farm grown and produced ingredients and makes high quality farmstead cheeses.  While some people would consider these changes the product of a faulty business plan, I look at this and see a learning curve in play.  Realizing that the farmer’s market circuit would force him to compromise what he was attempting to do he moved into the raw milk business.  After years of selling raw milk he began to realize that while he enjoyed aspects of he was doing, there were parts of the business that were sucking the life out of him and so he began to make cheese.  Writing about the decision to make cheese Timmermeister said “it feels right to me”… which I interpret to mean it is a life giving practice for him that allows him to operate in his giftings.

Stewardship

Repeatedly through the book Kurt refers to the idea of passing his farm along to another farmer when the time comes.  His desire is to care well for the farm so that he is able to leave it in better shape than it was when he received it.  This flies in the face of the consumption based mindset of “bleed it ’til it’s dry” that we so often see in this country.  I have a great deal of respect for his heart on this.

Reading this book through the lens of a pastor here is what I took away:

• Vision is important.  You need to know the general direction in which you are headed, why you are headed that way, and what is most important to you in the process.  Without this, you will fail before you begin.
• Flexibility in leadership is key.  If you are committed to a plan that does not work, you will fail.  You need to be willing to walk away from those things that do not work, that may have worked at one time but no longer do, and that get in the way of your overall vision.  I think back to the classic Eisenhower quote “plans are worthless, planning is everything.”  Think through your strategy, plan out how things will work, and execute… but do not be so tied to your plans that you destroy what you are building.
• The church does not belong to us.  We may have planted the church, we may have contributed more than anyone else, and we may have the title of grand poobah of the first order on the church grounds… but the church does not belong to you.  The church belongs to Jesus, you are a steward of it for a temporary period.  If you are serving the church as a way to validate your own needs, get out now… you will only kill that expression of Christ’s bride.

The only disappointment that I had reading this book was that I am unable to purchase Kurt’s cheese online.  After all the time he spent describing how he cares for his cows and making the cheese I REALLY want some.  I may have to make a pilgrimage to Seattle so that I can score some.

What non-typical church leadership book has shaped the way YOU think about church leadership?

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