Pastor Zac Morton knows his congregants at First Presbyterian Church don’t always have clean hands after Sunday services.
He couldn’t be happier about it.
Especially since he’s the guy who started digging up the dirt in the first place.
The Colonial-era First Presbyterian on Spruce Street can date its first services in Morgantown to the fall of 1788.
Community ministry and outreach has been its lighthouse ever since.
Especially in the 20th century.
In 1946, the church helped build the first integrated swimming pool in the state of West Virginia at The Shack Neighborhood House, a community center in Osage.
Two years later, a black family welcomed into the congregation sat in the front pew during services.
First Presbyterian sponsored two refugee families fleeing the Vietnam War in the 1970s.
The church regularly reaches out to the LGBTQ community.
And now, it is putting forth prayers, and setting down plants, for food insecurity.
Food insecurity is the state of simply not having enough to eat, in order to sustain oneself nutritionally.
For the past several weeks, First Presbyterian has been working the soil of its Spruce Street campus as a way to combat the above.
The church recently celebrated the first harvest of its Gardening Ministry program, and it has plenty more to grow on.
Morton got the idea over the winter as he was studying to be a master gardener.
Congregant Susan Eason took root with the story, with a quick chronicle by email:
“He said, ‘Why not use our church’s available space to do some urban gardening and feed those who are hungry?’ ” she wrote.
Small plots around the church are currently bursting with tomatoes, yellow squash, bell peppers, purple cabbage, green beans and more, she reports.
What comes out of the soil goes to area concerns such as the food pantries at Rock Forge and Canyon Church, Morton said.
The crop, he said, yields just as much to the heart.
“On Sundays, we finish up in the church, then we go outside,” he said.
“We have a faith lesson and we start working the gardens. The little kids love it.”
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