How can pastors be on the frontlines of community activism while also being faithful to their call? In this episode we speak with Heber Brown, III, pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church and founder of the Black Church Food Security Network, about his work for racial justice in Baltimore and beyond.

Transcript

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How can pastors be on the frontlines of community activism while also being faithful to their call? In this episode we speak with Heber Brown III, pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church and founder of the Black Church Food Security Network, about his work for racial justice in Baltimore and beyond.

Ann Michel: I’m Ann Michel, Associate Director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary and I’m editor of Leading Ideas E-newsletter. I’m pleased to be the host of this episode of Leading Ideas Talks podcast. I’m talking today with Rev. Dr. Heber Brown III who’s the pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in Baltimore city. He’s a community activist on issues of racial justice and he’s also the founder and executive director of an organization called the Black Church Food Security Network. So happy to have you talking with us today Heber!

Heber Brown III: Well thank you for the opportunity. 

Ann: Yeah, so since I have last seen you, Heber, you’ve gotten to be a pretty famous guy. I come home from work and I turn on the TV and there you are with Ari Melber on MSNBC. And I’m driving my car and I’m hearing you on WTOP. And then I open up Christian Century and you’re there, too. You recently won an award, I believe, from the Claneil Foundation, from their emerging leader fund.

Heber: That’s correct.

Ann: Wow Heber! There’s really something up with the work that you’re doing. So can you tell our listeners something about the work that you’re doing in the community?

Heber: Yeah. So, I am blessed to, as you’ve said, pastor the Pleasant Hope Baptist Church here in Baltimore. I just celebrated 11 years as pastor of this glorious church. And it is a church that’s in North Baltimore City. And so, a lot of what I do is just pastor people, a lot of your listeners will identify with that. And during the course of my pastoring though, I noticed an opportunity to minister to people in a deeper way. When I learned, during the course of hospital visits to members, that many of them were there because of diet-related issues. I wanted to do more, I wanted to do something more than pray and just provide spiritual counsel. Though prayer and spiritual counsel is so very important, I just felt an urging, and a nudging, a divine nudging maybe, to do something more than that. And that’s when the idea came, eventually for us to start growing food on a part of the front yard of our church. And now we’ve been growing food for about eight years, right on the front yard to provide fresh, healthy produce to the members of our congregation and the community as well. Our church garden was going so well that, after about 5 or 6 years, I really was inspired to scale up and systematize the idea. And it really just started with a question. “What if? What if more churches that own land, used that land to grow food for their congregations and their community? And in what ways could food become a more pronounced ministry through our churches?