Lori Robbins (left) and Candy Evans harvest vegetables in the Community Garden of the Cason Methodist Church in Delray Beach. Photo provided
By Tim Pallesen
The community garden behind Cason Methodist Church isn’t only feeding the poor. The garden also has saved the historic 109-year-old church on Swinton Avenue from closing its doors.
“We’re now known as the church with a garden,” the Rev. Linda Mobley said. “It’s given us an identity in the community.”
The Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church was ready to close Cason in 2008 when Candy Evans and Lori Robbins, two women in the congregation, suggested the garden.
The garden would give a congregation suffering a financial crisis and falling attendance a way to reach out to the community with a good cause.
Since then, gardeners have donated more than 3,000 pounds of organic produce to feed the poor at the Caring Kitchen in Delray Beach.
“We knew very little about gardening and had no resources to speak of,” Evans said. “However, we did have everlasting faith, a will to survive and an opportunity to make Christ known to the community of Delray Beach through the garden.”
About 40 volunteers of all ages will pay $60 for a plot to plant vegetables for the garden’s fifth growing season, which starts Nov. 1.
A master gardener will teach congregation members and non-members of all ages how to grow tomatoes, green beans, strawberries, melons, peppers and other produce. Each gardener promises to donate at least 10 percent of his or her crop to the poor.
Sunday attendance at Cason Methodist Church has grown from an average of 75 people in 2008 to 165 people now.
Mobley credits the community garden for helping Cason to survive its crisis five years ago.
“When we got our new beginning, we had to reorient from this crisis place that we were in,” she explained. “We had to become outwardly focused again. The garden gave us that opportunity.”
More than 600 attend the Jewish New Year celebration at the Crest Theatre. Rabbi Irwin Kula joined his musical brother Aaron, who led the music. Photo by Terri Berns
More than 600 people celebrated a mix of jazz and Jewish wisdom at an American Jewish New Year event in the Crest Theatre at the Delray Beach Center for the Arts at Old School Square on Sept. 9.
Aaron Kula, director of music performance and education at Florida Atlantic University Libraries, provided the music.
The nine-member FAU ensemble that he began in 1997 provided the unique blend of ethnic orchestral jazz. Klezmer Company Orchestra is the only professional ensemble of its kind at an academic library in the country.
His brother, Rabbi Irwin Kula, is listed by Newsweek magazine as one of America’s “most influential rabbis” by inspiring people worldwide to use Jewish wisdom to speak to all aspects of modern life.
Jews and Christians enjoyed the mix of jazz and wisdom in two performances a week before Rosh Hashanah. The Kula brothers will return to celebrate the High Holy Days here next year.
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Nearly 500 members of First United Methodist Church in Boca Raton volunteered for community service projects during their Love in Action initiative on Sept. 14-16.
The church did service projects last year on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. “It was such a great project that we decided to make it an annual event,” First Methodist director of adult ministries Mary Beth Pate said.
Volunteers worked for local charities Caring Kitchen, Boca Helping Hands and Habitat for Humanity and prepared 40,000 meals to be shipped overseas by Stop Hunger Now.
The annual Love in Action event, which culminated with a dinner and worship service at Patch Reef Park, inspires Methodists to serve their community through the year, Pate said.
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Muslims honored former Coastal Star religion columnist C.B. Hanif for breaking down religious barriers at their state conference in West Palm Beach on Sept. 29.
Hanif is a founding member of the Florida Conference of Muslim Americans and a longtime interfaith advocate within the Muslim community of Palm Beach County.
He is currently co-president of the Delray Beach Interfaith Clergy Association, which builds bridges across religious, ethnic and cultural lines. His Coastal Star column won two Florida Press Club awards.
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Advent Lutheran Church will celebrate the pastor who came to Boca Raton in 1967 and never left.
The Rev. Ronald Dingle stayed because he saw the community growing and says he believed God had plans for his church to grow with it.
Dingle, 65, will be honored for 45 years at Advent and 50 years in the ministry on Oct. 7 after he preaches at all three Sunday morning worship services.
Advent built a church sanctuary in 1971, opened its middle school in 1972 and added an elementary school in 1987 under Dingle’s leadership. His wife, Marguerite, founded the popular Early Childhood School and Day Care Ministry in 1977.
Dingle retired in 2004 and now preaches around the country to raise money for hunger relief. His son-in-law, the Rev. Andrew Hagen, replaced him as Advent’s senior pastor.
Most pastors remain in a congregation fewer than 10 years. Hagen speculated that his father-in-law’s love for deep-sea fishing might have been another factor that kept him in Florida .
“He never left because he enjoyed fishing for souls and for marlin,” Hagen joked.
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An Ethiopian congregation in Israel will receive a Torah from Temple Beth El of Boca Raton.
The local Jewish congregation will unroll its new Torah at a festive Oct. 7 celebration before sending its old Torah to the new congregation in Israel.
The Torah contains the first five books of the Jewish Bible. God gave the laws found in Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai and the Tabernacle, according to Jewish tradition.
Tim Pallesen writes about people of faith, their congregations, causes and community events. Email him at tcpallesen@aol.com.
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