Bethany Lutheran Garden Feeds Indianapolis With More Than 6,000 Pounds a Year

On a once underused stretch of church property in Indianapolis, tomatoes climb trellises, greens fill raised beds, and volunteers move steadily through the work of watering, weeding, and harvest. What began as a response to neighborhood listening sessions has become a sustained ministry of food and friendship at Bethany Lutheran Church—now entering its ninth growing season in 2026.

The garden reflects the congregation’s stated purpose, “Living Christ’s love within a changing world.” Fresh vegetables grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides move to local food pantries. Many of the people who tend the beds have no prior tie to the church. Side by side in the soil, those volunteers and congregants have built relationships that last longer than a single tomato season.

A May 12, 2026 report from the Indiana-Kentucky Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America traced how the ministry took root, how it is organized today, and why its leaders still describe hope in practical terms: more food for neighbors, more skills for backyard growers, and a shared space where service and connection meet.

Listening before planting

The garden’s roots go back nearly a decade. Bethany Lutheran took part in the synod’s Connect Transformational Ministry process and conducted 24 interviews with local leaders, listening for unmet needs just beyond the church walls. Those conversations pointed to neighbors living with low incomes in a USDA-designated food desert, with limited access to fresh produce. At the same time, the congregation recognized unused land that could be put to work.

With guidance from the Marion County Purdue Extension Service, planning began in 2017. By spring 2018, a 5,000-square-foot garden was planted. Within months it doubled. Today the site stretches across about 10,000 square feet—rows of vegetables where an underused lot once sat idle.

“It’s a whole new way of living Christ’s love,” Pastor Nancy Nyland said in the synod’s coverage. “Not only in what is given away, but in the connections formed while growing it.”

Three gardens in one

Bethany’s garden is deliberately community-driven. Bruce Bye, a Bethany member and garden coordinator, works with an advisory board of 14 people who oversee operations. Eleven of those members are not part of the congregation. Together they guide planting schedules, soil care, and irrigation—decisions shaped by people who live in the neighborhood as much as by people who worship on Sunday.

The physical layout operates in three parts. Six raised beds serve the church’s early learning ministry, introducing young children to gardening and nutrition. Seventeen individual plots are rented to community members, who also commit to volunteering. A large community garden with 52 beds is dedicated entirely to food production for donation.

That structure matters. It keeps space for people who want a personal plot, for kids learning where food comes from, and for a donation wing large enough to make a measurable difference at pantries. During peak season, volunteers gather twice a week to care for specific crops. In the past year alone, more than 6,000 pounds of produce were distributed. Over eight years, the synod reports, that total exceeds 20 tons. Of the 55 volunteers last year, 49 came from the surrounding community rather than the congregation.

“It is a true community garden,” Pastor Nyland said.

Crops that match real kitchens

The beds grow tomatoes, peppers, squash, leafy greens, root vegetables, herbs, and culturally specific produce grown for a local Burmese community that is primarily Chin. The advisory board regularly consults local food pantries about what clients will actually use, so harvests meet kitchen needs rather than only garden fashion.

That listening habit echoes the interviews that started the project. Growing food for neighbors is not only about volume; it is about respect—planting what people will cook, season, and share. When a garden asks pantries what is missing from boxes and shelves, the rows become a quiet form of hospitality.

Creation care in the dirt

Bethany’s approach also treats the land as something to steward, not strip. Produce for pantries is grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Practices such as cover cropping, no-till gardening, and drip irrigation support long-term soil health and careful water use. Food access and care for the ground sit together—an everyday creation-care theology that shows up as mulch, drip lines, and patience rather than slogans.

Free meals and educational workshops invite neighbors not only to receive food but to learn how to grow their own. Garden coordinator Bruce Bye has been clear about that hope. “Our hope is that the garden will continue to produce food for many years to come, so that we are able to help feed our neighbors,” he said. “The purpose of our gardening classes is to encourage neighbors to have their own backyard gardens, to have healthy fresh vegetables available, and to become self-sufficient.”

Partnerships beyond the fence

The garden’s influence extends past the church grounds. Partnerships have grown with the Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center, which recognized the garden with a Collaboration Award in 2019. That recognition later contributed to national honors from Neighborhoods USA, which named Bethany’s effort the 2020 National Neighborhood of the Year in the Multi-Neighborhood Partnership category.

Outreach reaches neighbors through Lunch and Learns at the YMCA, community fairs at the University of Indianapolis, and gatherings hosted by the Marion County Soil and Water Conservation District. Support and collaboration named in synod reporting include Marion County Purdue Extension, Marion County Farm Bureau, a Lowe’s in Beech Grove, Community Hospital South, the Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center, and Kroger. Student volunteers from the University of Indianapolis, Roncalli High School, and Beech Grove High School help sustain the work alongside congregation members and community residents.

A simpler idea from a volunteer has also widened the circle. A monthly Euchre night, launched in early 2025, brings church members, gardeners, and neighbors together for food, laughter, and conversation. For older congregants who cannot work physically in the beds, those evenings offer another way to stay connected to the ministry and to the people it serves.

Worship that blesses the season

Earlier in May 2026, the congregation marked Rogation Sunday with a service centered on the land and the growing season. Members and community participants brought seeds, tools, and other symbols of planting to be blessed, tying worship directly to the work happening just outside the church doors. Rogation traditions have long asked God’s care for fields and harvests; at Bethany, the symbols are not abstract. They are the same tools and seeds that will return to the 52 donation beds and the rented plots.

Faith without the lecture

Christian communities have always told stories of sowing, tending, and sharing bread. What stands out in Indianapolis is how concrete those stories have become: interviews that named a food desert, unused land turned into 10,000 square feet of productive ground, 49 of 55 volunteers arriving from the neighborhood, more than 6,000 pounds of produce in a year, and workshops that aim to put gardens in backyards as well as boxes in pantries.

The ministry stays politically quiet and neighbor-focused. It does not ask people to join a faction before they join a workday. It asks whether they can water, weed, learn, or play cards with someone they have not met yet. Pastor Nyland’s line remains the clearest summary: living Christ’s love not only in what is given away, but in the connections formed while growing it.

As the ninth season continues, the vision Bruce Bye and the advisory board describe is steady rather than flashy—keep feeding neighbors, deepen relationships, and cultivate new leaders along the way. For other congregations considering a similar start, Bethany’s experience offers a practical sequence: listen first, use what land you already have, and invite the community to shape what grows next.

On ordinary peak-season mornings, that sequence looks like gloves, hoses, and crates of produce headed for pantries. It looks like children learning in six raised beds, renters tending seventeen plots, and fifty-two donation beds filling with crops people actually cook. It looks like a church lot that once sat quiet now feeding Indianapolis—one harvest, one class, and one shared hour of work at a time.