It's time to Pivot! In episode nine of season four, co-hosts Terri Elton and Dwight Zscheile welcome this weeks special guest, Rev. Kerri Meyer.

Looking for new ways to connect with your community and integrate farming, faith, and environmental stewardship into your church?

Our latest guest on the Pivot Podcast, Kerri Meyer, shares how her community is engaging in innovative ministry on a farm that is both theologically grounded and practically impactful.

One of the examples Kerri shares is a unique gathering called "Pie and Prayer." Every Wednesday night out in the barnyard as the sun sets, followed by evening prayer in the silo, is how her community gathers and fellowships.

But Pie and Prayer is more than just a weekly gathering; it's an expression of hospitality and community engagement that has been life-giving for many people, including locals who attend on Wednesday nights and travelers who make a stop on their road trips for Saturday morning gathering.

Tune in to the full episode of the Pivot Podcast to discover how Kerri and her ministry are forging a new path to sustainable community and spiritual growth through relationships with the land and neighbors.

Special Guest: Rev. Kerri Meyer.

Mentioned in this episode:

Register for Faith+Lead's School for Lay Ministry Starting May 17th!

Learn more and register at faithlead.org/schoolforlay.

May 2025 School for Lay Ministry Cohort

Kerri Meyer: God is inviting us into relationship with God's self through the land and through our relationships with neighbors. And so the idea that church ought to be maybe somehow an experience of relationship with our neighbors vis a vis the land that we occupy in common. That feels pretty natural.

Terri Elton: Welcome to Pivot. I'm Terry Elton from Luther Seminary.

Dwight Zscheile: And I'm Dwight Zscheile from Luther Seminary.

Terri Elton: And today, we have a wonderful guest, Reverend Kerri Meyer, of Good Courage Farm in Hutchinson, Minnesota, not too far from where I live in in Saint Paul. And we are going to talk about what does it mean to take this innovation in context here in the US, and particularly in a rural context, which we don't always think about in first hand. So welcome, Kerri, and I'm excited to hear more about your story. Would you just begin by introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about what is Good Courage Farm and how did it come about?

Kerri Meyer: Yeah, well, it's just a delight to be here with you this morning. My name is Kerri Meyer and I am an ordained Episcopal priest. And Good Courage Farm, like you said, is about an hour west of the Twin Cities metro area. This is an agrarian ministry. So like a farm based space for faith and food justice to happen. And we've been here since 2019. So we just finished our fourth season as regenerative farmers growing mostly fruit out here. And when you're a fourth season farmer, it means that the learning curve is so steep that it actually kind of just curves back on itself and you're maybe upside down hanging on for dear life because you know what it is you don't know yet and you haven't been able to do what it is you need to do yet. But you can you can see it from here. So being fourth season new farmers is exciting. Before this adventure, I was serving Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in the Diocese of California. It's in San Francisco, and folks might know it for its innovative, engaged liturgical life. And it really shaped who I am as a priest and my involvement with the food pantry there at Saint Gregory's, which some folks might know from the work and writing of Sarah Miles. My work at the food pantry there think planted some of the seeds for a vocation that ends up being right at the intersection of food and faith and in this case, farming.

Terri Elton: All right. I have to ask, as a person who has lived in Minnesota and California. Tell me how, I mean, that's an interesting change of innovation, right, in an intersection in a huge metropolitan, you know, California mindset to rural. And I know this rural area. This is this is not the metro of of the Midwest. This is this is rural that has all kinds of commitments. And so you were walking into a pretty traditional, I'm guessing, kind of agricultural community. Say more about that transition.

Kerri Meyer: Yeah, well, folks always ask like, why on earth somebody would move from a climate like the Bay Area and become a grower in a climate like that in Minnesota. And I'll just say I'm a midwesterner by birth. And so I'm from here and I grew up in the snow and in the winter and I speak fluent hot dish and, you know, like so I feel really at home here. And my wife Jen, and I lived in the Twin Cities for about a decade before we relocated out to the Bay Area. So we have roots in both places now. And it's true that my last ministry context was spectacularly urban. And the way that, you know, we might innovate our life together as disciples of Christ is pretty, pretty different in that context. But but I grew up in a rural space and so feel I feel pretty at home here. It is really different to be an Episcopal priest out here in rural Minnesota because the Episcopal Church isn't really part of the the cultural fabric out here. And so so that's been new and interesting. But Hutchinson, I have to say, Hutchinson is such an interesting space here. This this community is just full of amazing organic farmers and has a couple of faith communities that that have had to innovate because of real, talk about pivots, in their life together. For example, as as an ELCA community that kind of had to replant itself after the 2009 vote to ordain queer clergy. You know, so there are folks out here who are innovating both in the world of farming and in the world of being church together. And, you know, Hutchinson has such an interesting history. We're here on the homelands of the Wakote, and it was first settled in terms of by by European folks, by the Hutchinson family. And this was actually one of the things that folks talk about God winks and think about things like in terms of just like final theological notice sings in what God is doing in the ecology of the church and in our world. Hutchinson was settled by the Hutchinson Family Singers, who came from out east, from Massachusetts and New Hampshire. They were an abolitionist, suffragist, temperance, musical family. They were the they were like the number one musical act for most of the 1840s, 50s and 60s. Yeah, like the people you never heard of, but they were the Beatles and so there's something there's something in the water here where there's there's a heritage of folks who have thought about about ways to be faithful and ways to be justice- seeking neighbors in, you know, that are ultimately incredibly creative. And Judson Hutchinson, the lyricist for the Hutchinson Family Singers, owned the land that we farm on. And and we you know, like if there's any stream that we might have stepped into in terms of like the life of of a rural Minnesota community, this is the one there's just a lot of good things that have happened here and are happening here and that we, we trust, are going to continue to unfold out here at the edge of the prairie.

Dwight Zscheile: So, Kerri, tell us a little bit about who are the people who engage with good courage farm and how do they do so? What other than growing wonderful fruit and some other things, I think, what what do you do in terms of Christian ministry and spiritual connections with neighbors?

Kerri Meyer: That's one of the richest experiences that we've had out here is discovering the who of this ministry. Because, like I said, we chose Hutch because there is a community of organic farmers here, and many of our farmer neighbor friends haven't been connected to a faith community but are deeply faithful and faith filled people. And so partly we came here knowing that we could minister with them and in whatever way possible, minister to them. And so a lot of the folks who come to the farm are farmers and in particular folks who are farming in ways that are regenerative and attentive to the the inherent goodness of creation. So there are a lot of farmers come hang out here, but then there's also neighbors who don't farm but who are just really interested in how it is we feed one another, both practically speaking, and in response to Jesus' commandment that we feed one another. So neighbors of all kinds, we've had we've had great connections with the folks at River of Hope, the ELCA church here in town, and New Journey, the UCC church here in town. And those folks have been hanging out with us and worshiping with us and growing food with us. But we also when Jen and I when Jen and I made the leap and bought this farm back in 2019, we meant to find a way to sort of lay it down at the feet of the church. And because we're Episcopalian, the starting point for that was to say, how can this become a diocesan resource? How can what we do at the farm be for all people of ECMN and for for all folks in Minnesota, You know, within a stone's throw, I should say, within the food shed maybe who are interested in reconnecting their their Christian practice with creation. So we're forging connections that think are going to be deep and enduring relationships with parishes in the metro area, with other rural Lutheran churches out here. You know, folks out here are bringing their confirmation classes to the farm to to kind of connect the place of creation and their exploration of the creed and our baptismal promises. And we have food ministry partners in the Twin Cities. We've been working with All Saints and the folks at First Nations Kitchen, which is an indigenous led food justice ministry, and also with the Spanish language community of San Nicolas, which is emerging at the Episcopal Church of Saint Nicholas in Richfield, which is in Minneapolis there. So there's just, the ecology is vast. And in the same way that we're discovering that like aspen groves are connected across miles underground, you know, or that like a mother tree in any given woodlot might be connected underground in unseen ways to to trees that are, you know, like a quarter mile away. That's kind of what's happening here. And we're grateful for it because one of the things that we hope is that our focus on food and our connection through through food, which is a basic need and a basic source of delight, that it will help us bridge that urban /rural divide that is happening in so many spaces here in the United States culturally, you know, geographically and economically.

Dwight Zscheile: So tell us a bit about some specific things you do, like Pie and Prayer and something having to do with vines and vineyards. Tell us about how you engage in those gatherings and those ministries.

Kerri Meyer: Yeah, so and prayer and prayer kind of happened at the meeting of two, two answers to the question of what is it God's calling us to do here? And we felt pretty clear that God was calling us to to worship regularly and in spaces that are kind of different from where folks might worship. We worship outdoors, we worship in a silo. And so we are surrounded by the smells and the sounds of creation and the feeling of of wind and even raindrops sometimes. So. So we worship and we we do it a couple of times a week and we call it Pie and Prayer and the pie part. The pie part comes in because we bought a perennial fruit farm and it came already planted with established orchards and vineyards and berry fields that are between 6 and 8 years old. And so, so we grow a lot of fruit and some of that fruit is really easy to figure out how to share with neighbors who might not otherwise have access to, to good local fruit like apples and pears and raspberries and table grapes. When we share those with our food ministry partners we're all equally stoked to be able to to bring those for folks who are experiencing food insecurity. But then there's stuff on the farm that like black currants and gooseberries and rhubarb that maybe, you know, I always say this jokingly, but I'm pretty serious that our neighbors who are at the McLeod County Emergency Food Shelf, they're not there because their family ran out of gooseberries. Right? So it's like, well, you know, so prayerfully we were like, "Hey, God, what are we going to do with the gooseberries?" And then, of course, the answer is, well, pie. And so we make a lot of pie here and really good pie too. And so pie becomes an expression of hospitality, but also also something sacramental almost, where we get to engage through our senses and enjoy something that that you don't have to have. Nobody has to have pie. You can live without pie, but it's beautiful and delightful and delicious and a joy to share with one another and I think evidence that God really wants us to be happy on Earth. That pie is a possibility. So every Wednesday night we get together and we have pie and coffee and tea out in the barnyard as the sun sets. And then we gather in the silo to sing evening prayer. It's been life giving for a lot of people. We have a regular community that gathers for pie and prayer. The Wednesday night folks have been locals, which makes a lot of sense because after work, you know, you can you can get here and then the Saturday morning pie and prayer, which we did last year, it'll probably morph a little bit this year on our, you know, based on our iterative, reflective process. But last year on Saturday mornings, we did pie in prayer and it was folks from far and wide. There'd be people on road trips who are like, "Yeah, I'm driving to the Dakotas, but heard you're here and you have pie and you pray. So I stopped." So, so yeah, so that's pie and prayer. And the vineyard stewards, small group ministry is going to be an invitation to other faith communities where there are existing small groups who maybe know each other or maybe are in a period of transition where maybe they, you know, got kind of big or they're trying to figure out how to renew themselves. And we're going to invite people to come together as small groups here on the farm. But in relationship with our grape vineyard where we grow table grapes and wine grapes and because because there's so much varied and really gratifying work that we can do together in the Vineyard. And because the Gospels are just full of metaphor and image, where really understanding what it means to attend a vineyard could unlock things that we might not otherwise have understood in Jesus' teaching and ministry. We're going to get together and we're going to we're going to pray and sing and we're going to work really hard to prune and mulch and tend and harvest grapes. And then at the end of the season together, we're going to press them into Eucharistic wine that folks can then take back to their communities, all the while digging into the gospels and the Psalms that that have images of vines and fruit that can help us understand God and the work of the Holy Spirit and our relationship with and in Christ.

Terri Elton: I like have so many questions that I want to go down that road for, but I want to instead ask two bigger questions or reflective questions, and I'm going to give you them both, and you can just respond in the order that makes sense. I'm so intrigued by the way that you're thinking theologically. About church, about ministry, about our calling in the world and not like in the same boxes of church, Right. Like it doesn't have to happen in a building with a steeple at this time in this place. So thinking theologically about ministry, that's then shaping all of these creative ideas. But also I'm thinking of all the practical ways you're reimagining church, just like what you were saying about all the richness about the vineyard gives you right to think of Psalms and to participate and put yourself in the story. And so I would love to think with you or have you share with us your thinking about how have you come to these places? Because I think so many church leaders or even church goers that have this these boxes, right. These paradigms that we think church has to look a certain way and you are blowing both of those away in so many ways, so theologically and practically. This imagination: bring us into that a little bit more.

Kerri Meyer: Mm. I can say that theological approach to "What shall we do together?" comes entirely from my formation at Saint Gregory of Nyssa where the the the question that shaped every choice liturgically the question there is always: "What do we see God doing and how can we do something like that?" And and that's kind of the question that shaped all of the experimentation and the iteration and the the innovation at Saint Gregory's. Um, that if we, if we tried something liturgically and it didn't work, then we could say, well what was our motivation again and was it connected to what it is we see God doing in the world, how we see God moving? And so, so for me, the shape of our life together, both in the liturgy and, you know, in in our fellowship and in our faith formation outside of our time together on Sundays is always that question, always is the starting point. What is God doing and how can we participate in that? How can we do something that is like what God is doing? And so, of course, you know, in terms of God, our Creator, God is always doing a new thing, right? Making things new and inviting people into lasting relationship. And, you know, when we look at the Hebrew scriptures and what the those texts reveal to us about God, God is inviting us into relationship with God's self through the land and through our relationships with neighbors. And so the idea that church ought to be maybe somehow an experience of relationship with our neighbors vis a vis the land that we occupy in common, that feels pretty natural. And in terms of, you know, what do we see God doing in Jesus? Always telling stories. And the stories are always grounded in people's felt experiences of the place where they lived and always feeding people and eating with people, right. And so naturally, that seems like a good place to start in terms of like, what should we do if we're going to have church, what should we do? Well, let's eat and I think in terms of the the what we see the Holy Spirit doing in the world right now, the Holy Spirit is always moving through landscapes, even even that our wildness, even that our brokenness with a greening renewing power. That is what's giving me hope right now. And think that a lot of folks are looking for communities that have practices of hope. And so to do that in relationship with creation, especially right now in this moment of ecological crisis and opportunity, those questions shape what are we going to do together when we get together on Saturday? Or, you know, or why is it we're doing this in an orchard? Because God is busy and and I want to participate in that. And the best way I know how to do it is to imitate.

Terri Elton: That is really beautiful. And the simplicity of those questions is really complex in real life, isn't it? Because there's so many possibilities, there's so many creative ways that God is available. But first we have to notice. And second, then we have to say what are we called to, right? What's the thing? What's the area? What's the particularity of our area, of our context, of our calling that we can lean into? Yeah. So so I have a wondering and and this is in that practical box. So did you, were you ahead of the church or was the church with you? You said you made this move, you bought this farm and you wanted to do this. And did the Episcopal Church say, "Oh, that's so awesome, or whatever?" Or did you just say, "Hey, we're going to do this? You're welcome to join us?" Tell me about that.

Kerri Meyer: Yeah, yeah, That's the the answer to both of those questions is yes. And it happened in an order that maybe otherwise people would be like, That's not how I would do that. You know, the cart and the horse, you may have hitched them backwards. So. So we committed to purchasing the farm and we I chose to left to leave my my work at Saint Gregory's, which was a really big sacrifice to make, to, to pick up this vocation. We said yes to this with only the briefest of conversations with the Episcopal Church in Minnesota. But that's because we put an offer down on the farm the moment that the bishop announced his retirement. And so the moment that we were like, "Hey, we'd like to come do something new and we'd like to do it in this space with all of you." Everybody was like, "Could you could you hang on a minute? We need to find a bishop." So we came anyways and we made the leap. And then the other thing that happened then was COVID. Covid happened. So we landed here and we were like, We're going to meet people. We're going to build relationships. We're going to do cool new things with God's help. And it was like, no, no, we're going to we're going to hole up here and just eat the food that we produce and drop it off on people's porches. So COVID was kind of an unexpected thing, but we did it anyways. We made the leap. But then what happened next was just absolute grace. The 10th bishop of Minnesota who whom we called I think about, oh, I don't know, four months after I got here, couldn't be more enthusiastic about what the Holy Spirit is doing out here with our help. And the folks of the diocese have said, you've been out there doing what for the last few years? That sounds amazing. Absolutely. We want in. And so our bishop, who is really, truly committed to the art of faithful innovation, has been 100% on board. And one of our biggest cheerleaders and the diocesan staff have have been there for us as we as we've tried to figure out practically how do you do this thing? So yeah, we made the leap and yeah, the church was there to to meet us when we landed. And all of that was just pure faith, foolishness, but maybe faith.

Dwight Zscheile: So what are some challenges and opportunities that you face as you lead this ministry into its next season?

Kerri Meyer: Well, I mean practically speaking, when you say we're going to we're going to do ministry in a different field, literally, like we're going to we're going to do it in a really different context. And the context here is agriculture. Our biggest challenge is actually the day to day struggles that come with the climate crisis, that there are things that we want to do and things that we want to plan, both in terms of growing food and sharing the work together, but also just gathering on the farm where it's like, yeah, no, we had an 80 mile an hour derecho last night and we have to clean up a bunch of damage or oh, we had hoped to put in a, you know, a field of corn, but we're in our third season of drought. And so we can't do that for our food ministry partners because we just don't have the infrastructure. So so there are practical challenges that came with the climate crisis and I really thought, thought maybe we'd have like a few minutes before that was right in our face when we bought the farm. But we wake up to it every day. But it's also really good to be able to welcome people into encounters with that crisis so that we can witness it together and talk to our kindred in faith about what we ought to do differently. Last year, we did a ton of hospitality. We welcomed so many folks to the farm, and that's what we came here to do. We had about a thousand people come through the farm last growing season and we said yes to everybody because we've just been delighted by who God is bringing here. Folks just come with such hunger and so many gifts and graces that we couldn't possibly say no to any group or any individual. We were just like, Yes, y'all come. And a lot of farming did not happen last year. So this year we have to figure out how to how to balance the actual work that we're inviting people into with the invitation. How can we be hospitable? How can we gather together and how can we make sure that we are in right relationship with this land and helping to grow good food that we can share? And then there's there's we're at that real pressure point in terms of scale. And I truly believe that small is all. And there is nothing in me that is motivated by growth itself here and mean growth in like size and like I don't, don't look at the we had a thousand people on the farm and say "success this year will look like 3000 people on the farm." That's not how I feel at all. But the ministry is gaining traction and it's growing anyways, like in spite of us, without us because it's God who gives the growth and it's happening. And so now it's like, how do we scale up? How do we how do we create the spaces and the staffing and the whatever it is we need in order to be able to say yes to people and not burn ourselves out? Because that's a real that's a real risk. And for us, the trick is, is that we are committed to offering this space and its ministry and everything that God gives us through this land as a gift. And we don't want to have what happens here become a fee for service transaction. And I've said to to everybody, to the to the bishop, to our neighbors here, to our board of directors, that the moment that this experience of God's goodness in creation, the moment this becomes a transaction and I think we can avoid that. But if that happens, that's when I will know that I have to set this ministry down because food is a gift. The goodness of this world is a gift, and I want to give it away as a gift. But you still have to buy chicken feed, right? And you still have to pay the bills. So that's a real challenge is to to figure out how to move forward as a gift economy, as as Robin Wall Kimmerer would would describe something like this or as we might even describe it here as a gift ecology, because that is a that is not that's not a model for nonprofit, church adjacent ministries, right? Like but think about how at Saint Gregory's they they flipped the the liturgy and they never collect the offering before we share the bread and the wine because that's the kind of thing that leans toward a transaction. Like some people might be like, "okay, I paid my ticket in and now I get to experience this encounter with God in the material universe." But at Saint Gregory's, they collect the offering. After we've given the bread and wine to every single person in that room. You know, regardless, that's the kind of choice that we want to continue making so that it's clear that everything that we receive is a gift. And everything that we have to offer here can only be offered as a gift.

Terri Elton: That's really beautiful. And I love the spirit of which you're going after this really hard work. As you were talking about farming and church and the challenges, right. Of just we have heard a lot about the adaptive work that farmers have to do in this day and age, given all of the challenges and more that you have named here. Right. And so for this ministry to live at the intersection of two huge adaptive challenges, farming and church, in this time and place, given all the things around that is both the the beauty and the hard work, right? There's no playbook for what you're doing. And and yet there's this sweet spot of holding it loosely trusting in God and and the things theologically that animated me in your conversation were about holding on to this God that's generative and creative and calls us to risk and radical hospitality. And how do we do that in a way that stewards, the gifts that have been passed down to us and the people and the stories, even the stories that you've shared of the place you've landed in, the way you hold those as sacred and that you're joining. And some of that's restorative stories that need to happen, some of that's passing on and continuing right with regard to that and and the way that you have framed this as a collaboration not only with the land and not only with the church, but also with weird partners, right. Other other farmers that are thinking differently, people that are open to thinking about God differently than the church box has helped them think about, the way that people are thinking about hospitality and wanting to just be in community with people in a way that they can show up as themselves and share their stories and hear other other folks. And somehow this little intersection, you know, I can imagine on x two county roads or whatever, is trying to get at these really big questions in a place with a certain group of people with the listening to the spirit. So those are some of my takeaways for today. Dwight, anything you want to share as we wrap up this episode?

Dwight Zscheile: Well, Kerri, this has been amazing to hear and I'll be excited to see what the Holy Spirit does through this ministry as it evolves. Where can people learn more if they want to connect with Good Courage Farm?

Kerri Meyer: Well, we have a website. It's one of the things that didn't learn how to do in seminary, but we do our best to keep the website up to date so that folks can find information there. So you can you can find us at WWW dot Good courage.farm. Did you know that you can have.farm as a as a suffix on your web address, isn't that cool? So good courage.farm. We're also out there on social media and we'd love to connect with folks if they're on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. And you can sign up for a newsletter at any one of those spots there. And we will send you a news of what is happening here with the help of our neighbors and the spirit. And come on out to the farm. We have a calendar of regular volunteer days and pie and prayer and faith formation opportunities on Saturdays in the growing season, which is April through October. Yeah. So we would we would just love to connect with people. So give us a holler, stop by for some pie and some coffee.

Terri Elton: Kerri thank you for all of that. And I really encourage people to go to those platforms and to learn more. And maybe even I could even bike out there and have some pie in prayer. That sounds like a fun thing. Next week our episode is going to be "How do we start such innovation and such ministries in the local context?" So we're excited for that. Keep up with this season of Pivot Podcasts as we continue to talk about the mixed ecology of inherited church and innovative expressions of ministry, and look for more on our website. Thanks for being with us today, Kerri.

Kerri Meyer: Thanks. It was a great conversation.

Faith+Lead: This episode of the Pivot podcast was brought to you by Faith Lead. If you enjoyed today's show, head over to Faithlead. Org to gain access to a free resources. See you next time.