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2007-11-06 issue:

Students learn theology in butchering

Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center and AMBS partner for course.

by Jennifer Halteman Schrock

Print Article

A group of adults of mixed ages knelt around a heap of dirt dug from a pit two feet deep in a former farm field. They examined the heavy clay soil, squeezing fistfuls to see if it would form clumps in their hands. Earlier they had paced the length of several parcels of land: the square footage needed to feed one person a subsistence diet, a vegetarian diet and a typical American diet for one year.



Conference participants of “Sacred Soil: Reclaiming the Source of Our Food,” at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center, Goshen, Ind., butcher chickens during a workshop. Photo by Luke Gascho.

This was not your typical seminary class. Nevertheless, a number of those learning about soil horizons were students from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), Elkhart, Ind., participating in the experience at the Sept. 28-30 conference at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen (Ind.) College for credit. They had signed up for a course “Sacred Soil: Reflections in Ecological Theology, Ethics and Spirituality,” offered through a new partnership between Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary and Merry Lea, a nature preserve near Wolf Lake, Ind. They were attending the Autumn Hope Conference, with this year’s theme, “Sacred Soil: Reclaiming the Source of Our Food.”

For several years, Merry Lea has offered an Autumn Hope Conference, which blends ecosystem experiences outdoors with theological reflection, but this year is the first time future pastors could earn academic credit for attending, though over half the conference participants were not seminary students.

The sacred soil course was originally designed by Karla Stoltzfus, AMBS graduate. Ted Koontz, professor of ethics and peace studies at AMBS, and Luke Gascho, Merry Lea’s executive director, teach the course.

“It is critical for pastoral leadership to learn how to look at the earth and to understand that there are connections for us theologically,” Gascho says. “Most of the formal training that happens for church leaders doesn’t include the spirituality and ethics of creation care. We need to understand that God has a relationship with all of creation and not just with human beings.”

Jeffrey Hawkins, a pastor and keynote speaker for the weekend conference, operates a family farm in North Manchester, Ind., where he also mentors other pastors through an organization called Hands-On Pastoral Education using Clergy Sustaining Agriculture.
Hawkins says that when he began farming while serving as a pastor, learning to tend his crops and livestock with the seasonal rhythms and uncertainties that go with farming also taught him to better serve his congregation.

An experience that just wouldn’t work in a classroom was the butchering workshop, offered as a breakout session during the conference.

In an experience that combined wielding an axe and meditative readings, participants helped butcher the chickens they would eat for Sunday dinner.

“In no way did I want to be present for the butchering,” participant Peg Zeis of Fremont, Ind., said. “Yet I do eat meat, and I felt that I had to be there.”

Larry Yoder, a retired former director and assistant director of Merry Lea, led the reflective portion of the butchering workshop.

“What have you killed before?” he asked the group.

Discussions ranged from Genesis to Psalms, from Native American approaches to the killing of animals to Old Testament requirements for processing meat.—Jennifer Schrock for Goshen College

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