OF WORMS, WASTE, AND TRANSFORMATION

The only instance of vermicomposting in Scripture happens in Acts 12. There, it says that Herod Agrippa “addressed the people in the voice of a god,” then was struck down, “eaten by worms, giving up the ghost.”

The Seminary’s Miller Summer Youth Institute’s new partnership with Growing Change, a youth empowerment and decarceration nonprofit based in Wagram, N.C., will also utilize worms—not for judgment, but for reclaiming food waste and transforming it into nutrient-rich soil. The key words here are reclamation and transformation, concepts central to the mission of Growing Change and to the future of SYI.

“The practice of reclamation points to how troubled properties can be used in new, life-giving ways,” says Noran Sanford, Growing Change’s founder and executive director. Beginning next spring, SYI will be joining in this work, where the Growing Change youth team is transforming a polluted “brownfield” decommissioned prison site into a “greenfield,” an environmental and community asset. The young people in charge of this work are coming from struggles, including encounters with the juvenile justice system. nationally innovative example of reclamation. The work of Growing Change stands at the four-point crossroads of environmental justice, decarceration, youth empowered social entrepreneurship, and a focus on community wellness. For this work, Growing Change has received state and national recognition.

SYI’s work with Growing Change is driven by a deeper sense of reclamation through the Christian spiritual practice of reclaiming forgotten people and neglected places. As the nonprofit is transforming this decommissioned prison into a sustainable farm and community resource, this partnership with SYI is part of a

The Rev. Dr. Franklin Tanner Capps, director of SYI, anticipates leading small groups of PTS students and/ or area clergy to North Carolina, who will bring back what they learn about reclamation and memory and begin conversations in their own context. Eventually, he hopes it will create North-South and urban-rural connections, expanding the ways in which the Seminary is forming students for ministry.

“I think this is the leading edge of what theological education ought to be doing in concert with the work of the classroom,” Tanner says.

The partnership is possible due to a gift of $8,000 last year from the Hurlbert Family Foundation, designated for SYI. This generous donation will be used as seed money to start the vermicomposting project, which Noran and Tanner hope will grow into a more full-fledged partnership.