Green Growers

NorthBridge Church | Antioch, IL
Initiative: Hydroponic greenhouse and community garden
2024 Grant: $35,000 & Mentoring

Supplying Year-Round Food and Creating Jobs for Adults with Disabilities

When the team at NorthBridge Church in Antioch, Illinois, surveyed their community to identify pressing needs, the results were clear: People needed food. Jerry Bingold and his wife Beth, both active members of the church, looked at the unused land around their church and wondered how they could help support this need.

When they set out to find other ministries addressing hunger, they discovered a nonprofit called Growing Healthy People (GHP). That sparked the vision for the Green Growers initiative, and a partnership that will continue throughout this new ministry. NorthBridge Church was awarded $35,000 in Kingdom Advancing Grant funds to develop a hydroponic greenhouse and community garden, which is designed to produce 1 to 2 tons of food the first year of operation, meeting the needs of 200 families per week. The greenhouse will grow food year-round, including vegetables that have been highly requested by the community like micro-greens and lettuces. The hydroponic process involves an efficient way of growing plants without soil, using less water and much less space. While the greenhouse might look the same as any other, the difference is in the support system and the method of supplying water and nutrients to the crops.

Green Growers is committed to carrying out the teachings of Jesus, and meeting real and practical human needs, by providing nutritious food to people in their community. Half the food from Green Growers will be distributed by two local Christian food pantries. The other half will be supplied to two grocery stores or sold at a produce stand, and proceeds will help pay overhead costs and help NorthBridge volunteers earn credits to go on mission trips.

Beth and Jerry, co-chairs for the Green Growers ministry, explained, “Starting a church-based hydroponic greenhouse is more than an agricultural endeavor; it’s a social and spiritual innovation that embodies the love of Christ. NorthBridge seeks to show this as a replicable model for other churches to lead the way in solving modern challenges through compassion and ingenuity.“

NorthBridge hopes to build the program into a multi-generational, diverse team, cultivating crops together. They will partner with two other organizations to train adults with disabilities for greenhouse jobs like planting and harvesting. This way, their hydroponic greenhouse will become a living parable: “Seeds sown, growth nurtured, and harvest shared.”

https://northbridgechurch.org/

The Kingdom Advancing Grant supports innovative church programs and initiatives that are unique in the way they bring people closer to Jesus, that can be sustained over time, and that can be replicated by other Christian churches. Learn more about the Kingdom Advancing Grant and the Brotherhood Mutual Foundation, including the application deadline and eligibility requirements.