The Greenhouse: A Mere Christian Community*

The Greenhouse: A Mere Christian Community exists to help men, women, and children embrace the historic Christian faith, grow up in Christ, and live out the Christian faith in generative ways that provide a broken world glimpses of the kingdom of God as it will one day be in its fullness.

Why “The Greenhouse”? Our first goal is to “grow up into Christ,” that is, into Christian maturity as we live our lives like Christ in new contexts. Like a plant in a greenhouse, we need the nurturing care of a context conducive to growth so that we can be planted in the harsher conditions of the world and still thrive and bear fruit. Moreover, not only is a greenhouse an apt metaphor, but our home, out of which we do this ministry, is literally filled with plants. After reading Andrew Peterson’s Adorning the Dark for the first time in 2019, I was struck by his challenge to name the place you live and watch how your relationship with it changes. It took more than three years in our first home before the realization struck me that the name should reflect what is already happening here: literal plant growth, but also very real and meaningful physical, spiritual, and emotional healing and growth. The Greenhouse makes perfect sense of everything we hope our home will be. Though we have moved to a new home, our ministry as a family remains the same.

Why “A Mere Christian Community”? By calling ourselves a Mere Christian Community we seek to emphasize those things that unite us as followers of Jesus, not those things that distinguish, separate, or divide us. We are not saying that denominationalism is bad, only that there must also be a much more concentrated, intentional effort at ecumenism (i.e., aiming for unity among all Christian churches around the world). We are therefore not really non-denominational, but rather intentionally inter-denominational.

At the heart of our purpose, we hope these five defining practices will influence the nature, purpose, and planning of our ministry and ministry events. We will develop these in more detail below.

1-Grow up into Christ.

2-Live as a microcosm of the kingdom of God.

3-Live generatively within our local community.

4-Create a metaphorical estuary through our common life together.

5-Provide a place for open dialogue of ideas between believers and unbelievers and between Christians of various denominational and faith backgrounds.

*We initially launched The Greenhouse as a separate website, but after taking some time to reflect upon the cost of time and money to run multiple sites, I have decided to start sharing resources for/from The Greenhouse on The Classical Thistle as I suspect many Thistle readers will find The Greenhouse materials of interest and help as well. Additionally, though we had to put a pause on many of our plans when we moved in May 2024, we hope to begin with sharing some resources and then launching certain aspect of our ministry again, only now in NW Arkansas.