What is Growing in Us
Seeds are being planted at New Hope Christian Church in Lawrenceville, and I mean that in every sense of the word. I had the joy of visiting their Oakland Community Garden recently, and what this congregation has built is remarkable. A church member named Jennifer showed me around, and what started as a simple idea, grow things and share them with the neighbors, has become a full ministry. While I was in the garden, I noticed a small sign which read: planting seeds, growing love, cultivating community.
I have not been able to stop thinking about that sign, because it names something I keep seeing all over this region. Earlier this summer, I sat with a congregation honoring a longtime elder for decades of faithful service, while nearby a brand-new congregation was still finding its shape, still learning what it means to be church together for the first time. At another church, I watched a minister trust her congregation to others while she rested on sabbatical, and I celebrated a colleague marking thirty-five years of ordained ministry. I watched our youngest campers arrive at camp for the first time this summer, brought by adults who chose to bring them.
None of these things caused each other. The elder's ministry did not create the new congregation. The sabbatical had nothing to do with camp. That garden was not planted because of anything happening anywhere else in the region. And that is exactly the point. This region is not a straight line where one faithful act leads tidily to the next. It is a body with a great many parts, each one doing its own quiet, faithful work, at the same time, without needing permission or connection from the others to matter.
I think that is closer to what we actually believe as Disciples than the neater story would be. We do not have one congregation with 48 branches. We are 48 congregations, each planting what it was given to plant, each tending what it was given to tend, trusting that the Spirit is present in all of it at once. Unity across difference does not mean everyone is doing the same thing. It means we can look at a garden in one town and an ordination in another and a new congregation in a third and recognize the same Spirit growing something different in each place.
August sits at a hinge point for us. Summer is loosening its hold, camp season is closing out, and across the region committees are reconvening and Sunday schools are gearing up for another year. It is tempting to want a single unifying theme for what everyone should be doing this fall. I would rather ask something else of us. What are you tending right now, in your own corner of this region, that does not need to look like what anyone else is tending? What seed, tended faithfully and without fanfare, might be exactly what your community needs?
Wherever you are, I hope you will look for what is quietly growing in your own congregation or community this month. It may not make the newsletter. It is no less holy for that.
Grace and peace to each of you as the season turns.
Your partner in ministry,
Rev. Adam
Rev. Dr. Adam Harmon
Regional Minister, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Georgia
Where's Rev. Adam? (August edition)
7/27: Retirement celebration for Rev. Betty Brewer-Calvert
8/1: Regional Board Meeting (virtual)
8/2: Preaching at Union Christian Church, Watkinsville
8/5: Atlanta Office Hours at Peachtree CC
8/9: Worship at Central Christian Church, Columbus
8/16: Worship at First Christian Church, Macon
8/17-8/19: Disciples Home Missions Meeting, Chicago
8/23: Sunday with my family
8/30: Preach at First Christian Church Atlanta, Tucker
9/2: Work from Atlanta (TBD)
This message appeared in the August 7, 2026 Regional Newsletter. If you missed it, read more in the Regional Newsletter Archives here. Or sign up to receive the monthly newsletter here.
