Garden connects Lidgerwood Presbyterian with its neighbors

By Marijke Fakasiieiki

Given that Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church has been planting seeds in Northeast Spokane for nearly 120 years, it was not a stretch for it to start Garden o' Feedin,' a community garden project it shares with Growing Neighbors, If You Can Save Just One (Just One) and neighborhood residents.

Since joining the Ezra 3 Project with other congregations in the Presbytery of the Inland Northwest, church leaders fostered understanding around the Old Testament scripture from Ezra 3, when the Israelites returned home from exile back to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple and city walls.

"Spiritually our community was coming back home and needed to rebuild doing ministry in the 21st century," said Mark Wheeler, who has been pastor there 32 years.

"There was awareness of God's calling us back into outreach ministry as an Ezra 3 community. Five churches were in the original cohort. Since fall 2025, four other churches have started another cohort in the program to rebuild themselves and their ministries on their physical properties out of their faith and spiritual understanding," he said.

The Presbytery's Ezra 3 Project is part of a multi-year $800,000 Lilly Endowment Thriving Congregations Initiative grant.

Lidgerwood started in 1907 as a Sunday School outreach ministry of Fourth Presbyterian Church to serve children and youth in North Spokane. Sixty years ago, the church had a membership of 600 with an average attendance of 300, said Mark. Now it has a membership of about 40, and an average of 50 attend on Sundays.

"When I came in 1994, about 80 percent of the congregation were 80 years old or older, and that's still true, but we also have several families with children who are kindergarten to junior high age," he added.

"We are reclaiming our call to work with youth in our support of If You Can Save Just One (Just One), located in the church's garage across from the church, which is at 4449 N. Nevada.

Just One empowers youth and their families with hands-on activities and resources to build strong futures together, exploring their creativity to discover their passions and helping youth feel seen, valued and supported.

"Just One engages at-risk teenagers in low-income families," said Mark, adding, "Natalia Gutierrez, the director, is one of my heroes. She has created and sustained the program through COVID and beyond."

"In 2016, Natalia and her children started attending our church about once a month on Sundays, so when she saw neighborhood kids and her own kids struggling, she asked if she could use the garage across from our church and one of our rooms to help at-risk youth," he said.

"It took her a few months to figure out how that would work before they started in 2017," said Mark.

Just One is mostly self-funded, through grants, donations and support from Whitworth University, which provides volunteers. The church received a seed grant of $11,000 from the Presbyterian Church (USA) to build on or help improve its ministry with Just One, which now envisions building a small community center beside the garage.

The program walks alongside families, children and youth in the neighborhood in a unique way, said Mark.

In the process, members have realized that "we do not do God's work on our own. We need to partner with others. That is part of spiritual growth across the board, and a new understanding of how we do church, beyond a focus on practical, spiritual growth," he explained.

"We are an elderly congregation that is not growing in leaps and bounds. We struggle with finances and energy levels, so we depend on other partners to work to serve in the community," he said.

Mark came to Lidgerwood Presbyterian after serving a Presbyterian Church in Tacoma. He earned a bachelor's degree in religious studies at California State University in Fullerton and attended Fuller Seminary for a year before transferring to San Francisco Theological Seminary, where he earned a master of divinity in 1989.

The church's idea for the community garden originated in 2021 during COVID to provide safe, fresh food as one more way to serve its neighbors and the community more effectively.

Church members built a little food pantry before Growing Neighbors, which started in 2016 at Shadle Park Presbyterian Church, began building food pantry boxes.

"We moved our indoor food pantry outside during Covid to continue people's access to food when we were not in the building," said Mark.

Now the church has one of the Growing Neighbors' food pantry boxes outside, and it works with Growing Neighbors, a program that collaborates with community agencies and congregations to help build healthy neighborhoods through community gardens and community development.

"We recognized that when our church office was closed, there were still people who were hungry," Mark said.

The church also decided to transform a plot of land with dead grass into a community garden.

That small act transformed the congregation, as it created a space for church members to partner with others, to reach our neighbors and "to go where God is calling us to go," Mark said.

"We couldn't do it alone," he added. "So, we partnered with Growing Neighbors. They provided us with the supplies and helped us set up the garden, the watering system and starter plants. They also advised us how to care for the garden."

Growing Neighbors has also taught parishioners and neighbors how to cook the fresh produce in the church kitchen.

During the first three years, there were six regular gardeners from the church doing the gardening and greeting neighbors. In the last few years, as the aging members are less able to help, ten to 40 youth from Just One and other neighbors have pitched in. Just One youth help after school and in the summer.

"The youth have been recruited to help with the garden, planting and turning the soil, weeding and partaking of the garden harvest," said Mark. "They also helped create scarecrows, which were up during the summer.

Mark said that the neighbors know that when they see pumpkins or other vegetables, they did not need to ask permission but could just take what they needed.

"Some neighbors also come and help church gardeners weed, so the garden gets us out of our shell into ministry in the world," he said.

The food pantry, which offers nonperishables, and the garden, which offers perishables, are both visible to the neighbors.

"We want to serve and be present with our neighbors. The garden is available for anyone who drives or walks by. It supplies the food pantry used by neighbors. It shows a model of neighbors looking after each other. That is a beautiful gift," he said.

"By partnering with Just One, we are also able to continue to be a presence with the families in the neighborhood," Mark said.

"It's exciting to see God working in our midst," he added.

 

For information, call 487-4667 or email lidgerwoodoffice@gmail.com; for Growing Neighbors, call 541-286-5059 or visit growingneighbors.org, or for Just One, visit ifyoucouldsavejustone.org.