Author and scholar Elaine Heath says the most challenging question ever put to her inquired, “What does care for the earth have to do with following Jesus?”
Heath now uses the question as a reflection tool for her ministry as the abbess of a new monastic community, Spring Forest, near Hillsborough, N.C., close to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle. Spring Forest’s 12 permanent residents and dozens of volunteers practice what they call being “grounded” in a radically hospitable spirituality that prioritizes healing, connecting and caring for the earth.
Elaine Heath
“Creation, the first book of God, teaches us the interconnection of all things,” Heath said via a slide series in her recent talk for the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement. “We see environmental justice as a way to keep our heads on straight when the whole world is literally and figuratively on fire.”
Author of books on missions and evangelism, Heath was dean of UMC-related Duke University Divinity School and a longtime professor at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. She retired from Duke to co-found the Neighborhood Seminary, an education project to cultivate Christian community and embody hospitality. Now officially appointed by North Carolina Conference’s bishop as Spring Forest’s abbess, Heath described its ministry as part of the “spiritually transformative journey into which God is calling the church.”
Heath spoke during the Nov. 20 “Movement Cafe,” a monthly webinar sponsored by United Methodist Creation Justice Movement. An unofficial organization that includes mission volunteers known as EarthKeepers, UMCJM has developed in the past decade as a champion of earth care amid the global climate crisis. The 2024 General Conference adopted UMCJM’s legislation for annual (regional) conferences to develop “Green Teams,” enhance stewardship of church land, incorporate sustainable practices and hire or appoint a “caretaker of God’s creation” in every conference.
Spring Forest values
Spring Forest’s values center on love, welcome, humility and outreach with “no strings attached,” meaning not necessarily bringing participants into church membership. Instead, Spring Forest aims to operate as a servant and a guest in its community, not as the kind of domineering host churches have been in the past.
Spring Forest has adapted the “rule of life” design sketched out by Marjorie Thompson in her book Soul Feast, with a fivefold “scaffolding” built on prayer, rest, work, neighbor and table. Its “lead team” practices trauma-informed ministry through cultural humility, antiracism, LGBTQ affirmation, therapeutic support, collaborative shared power and bivocational ministry (meaning ministers also hold paying jobs outside the community rather than the historic United Methodist practice of pastoral appointments).
Spring Forest volunteers
Heath noted Spring Forest’s “lead team” includes people who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious,” meaning they have no formal affiliation with an organized faith group.
“We’re at the forefront of the New Reformation,” the abbess said. “We can never go back to the ways things were before COVID and the climate crisis.”
Heath told her online audience that part of the New Reformation movement is “to repent of objectifying everyone and everything. All are to be welcomed as Christ, as St. Benedict said.”
“We build into our worship experiences lots of grounding in the land,” said the abbess. “We’re a demonstration plot for how interconnected everything is.”
The Farmastery
A setting called “The Farmastery,” coined from the words “farm” and “monastery,” serves as the hub for Spring Forest’s ministry. Its 23 acres include a retreat center, forest preserve and organic farm, two houses for permanent residents, two “tiny houses,” a “hermitage” RV, and a “safari” tent along with six dogs, three cats, eight goats and 35 chickens. Spring Forest also serves a “dispersed” community through digital and real-life groups.
“All goats go to heaven, even the one that’s in our freezer because she was a bully and we had to send her home to Jesus,” joked Heath, noted for her fondness for raising goats.
In addition to feeding Spring Forest’s residents, The Farmastery operates Community Supported Agriculture, a concept in which people subscribe to weekly boxes of vegetables, eggs and other farm products. The farm is run by volunteers, not paid employees, and its income helps support Spring Forest financially.
True to the academic background of its abbess, Spring Forest also serves as a teaching community with ministerial interns, immersion classes and “other learning experiences,” Heath said. A recent retreat on “eldering” with facilitator Gary Shockley was held outside under some oak trees.
Migrant ministry
Spring Forest also aids migrants and refugees, sometimes sheltering migrants on site. It supports refugee resettlement through sponsorships and holds English as a Second Language classes. A recent grant enabled the community to hire a full-time chef and program director to teach immigrant women how to start their own catering businesses using the cuisines of their native countries.
“Migration is being forced by climate change; many people are climate refugees, but they’re not officially recognized as such,” Heath said.
Sometimes Spring Forest’s migrant ministry, which supports sponsorships for refugee resettlement, draws criticism from those who don’t see refugee support having much to do with its “regenerative farming,” Heath acknowledged.
“The idea of living in harmony with sacred respect for the land and the wildlife doesn’t seem like church to a lot of people,” Heath said. “To connect people to those theological thoughts can be challenging. But wherever two or three are gathered, the Holy Spirit happens.”
Despite some challenges, Spring Forest also has become a place where those who’ve been harmed by organized religion can find healing, Heath stressed. Recently one man, who was part of Heath’s earlier “intentional” community in Dallas, reconnected with her at Spring Forest after living in dire straits and battling addictions. After a year’s therapy, the man’s addictions are in remission and he has been looking for a job, Heath said.
Beginning with a backyard garden
Responding to a participant’s question about how to start similar missional communities, Heath said she and her husband began their 20-year journey to Spring Forest with a backyard garden. At the time they attended a large United Methodist church in the Dallas area that had no interest in creation care, so they started their own “Journey Earth” ministry for education and advocacy. Later she began a community garden at Perkins that drew not only students and faculty but also immigrants and others outside the university.
Another participant, Jen Burch, encouraged the 40 webinar watchers to look to the 180 United Methodist camps and retreat centers across the United States as sites for creation care ministries.
“They’re already stewarding natural places, providing space for experiences in Christian community and opportunities for play, renewal and education for people of all ages,” Burch said. “A few sites are already hosting ‘Wild Church’ or other ‘Fresh Expressions,’ but there is so much untapped potential there.”
Fresh Expressions is a new evangelism movement within the UMC that helps groups start spiritual communities in unlikely places beyond traditional churches, often formed around shared interests.
While experimental, Spring Forest and other intentional communities are carrying on the missional tradition started by Methodism’s founders, John and Charles Wesley, Heath said. “Early Methodism was a lay monastic movement, although they didn’t call it such. Monasticism flowers whenever the church loses its way like it has now because of social chaos.”
Heath said she wasn’t sure missional communities like Spring Forest are “meant to last.”
“People are trying new and old things, seeking a prophetic voice,” she said. “Things that rise up are not necessarily designed to last or needed to last forever. These things might be new iterations but could also be things needed in the moment. They may reach their life cycle after 20 to 30 years and fade as the church finds its way — and that’s OK.”