Farm Church Garden Lead

About The Organization

Farm Church is a spiritual community that meets on a farm and leverages the resources of the farm to address food insecurity in Durham by asking the question: How can we love and honor people with good food? At Farm Church, tending the soil and tending the spirit are inseparable. Our community gathers each week, sharing in a time of gardening and worship with one another, understanding that these are not separate activities but one integrated expression of faith, justice, and community.

For us, “farm” means urban garden plot. We are located in the Trinity Park neighborhood of Durham, NC. Our lot is a quarter acre, and we maximize it to grow good quality produce, which we then distribute through a range of community partners. Since its founding in 2016, Farm Church has evolved in scope, leadership, and community makeup, but still asserts that as long as people are meeting to grow food and gather for worship — and the food is being shared with the larger community — Farm Church is fulfilling its mission.

Job Description

The Garden Lead is a Durham-based, 20 hrs/week staff position responsible for cultivating and sustaining Farm Church’s quarter-acre garden as a site of food production, spiritual formation, and community life. The Garden Lead works in close collaboration with the Gathered Worship Lead (also 20 hrs/week) as co-leads of Farm Church. Together, along with the Council of Stewards and the broader Farm Church community, the Garden Lead and the Gathered Worship Lead work to ensure that gardening and worship function as a unified ministry.

Full job info: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c0ge0md99ECoG8oBeLgjRpJh3NC58QAH/edit.

Qualifications

• Experience with organic or regenerative gardening (2 years preferred)
• Ability to lead groups with warmth, clarity, and flexibility
• Passion for food justice, environmental stewardship, and community-based work
• Comfort working at the intersection of faith and food systems
• Strong communication and organizational skills
• Comfortable working in a self-directed capacity, without intensive organizational structure, and with a high level of reliability (i.e. self-motivated, adaptable, and collaborative)
• This job requires standing for extended periods, positioning self to work in the garden (e.g., kneeling, bending), working in outdoor weather conditions including heat, and moving garden materials (e.g., fencing, soil, produce, wheelbarrows, etc.) weighing up to 50 lbs
• Commitment to Farm Church’s values of respect, inclusivity, justice, diversity, community, authenticity, environmental stewardship, and courageous love
• Farm Church is committed to LGBTQIA inclusion and affirmation, anti-racism, and anti-Christian nationalism. We continually examine our part in local, national, and global issues and how our faith calls us toward justice. We welcome candidates who share these commitments.
  
  

Compensation: Compensation package, inclusive of self-employment tax contribution, totaling $27,000 to $30,000/year, commensurate with experience and qualifications. Additional benefits include: Annual contribution to medical insurance; Annual contribution to retirement.

Application Instructions: Please submit a statement of interest and resume/CV to applications@farmchurch.org. We will begin conducting interviews the first week of May; candidates moving onto the second round will be invited for a subsequent in-person garden visit, with the goal of securing a final candidate by June 14. The start date is flexible based on the right candidate, though our hope is to have someone in place between July 1-15, 2026 to allow for sufficient overlap with our current Garden Lead. You may submit questions via email, though we request you use discretion in your email communications. We will do our best to communicate with genuine care, expediency, and efficiency throughout the process, noting that we are a small team of mostly volunteers!