On a summer morning in North Chicago, the workday in the garden begins in silence. Young people fan out among beds of kale and basil, sunflowers growing next to them. Phones stay in pockets. For the first 30 minutes, they breathe, notice, pray, and write. Then shovels scrape, soil turns, and conversation rises—about tomatoes and rototillers, patience and pain, seeds and the slow work of God.
More than simply gardening, this is spiritual practice in action—intentional rhythms of silence and reflection designed to help youth meet with God.
This is the heartbeat of Rooted in Hope: Growing Food, Growing Lives, a project of Mosaic House Ministries. The real story isn’t the garden itself. It’s the way relational discipleship and service created a space where young people’s faith could take root and grow.
From Barren Lot to Sacred Classroom
Last summer, Mosaic House Ministries, a discipleship community invested in leadership and neighborhood transformation, planted a handful of community garden beds beside their building. One day, a young girl stared at a tomato plant, wide-eyed. “Those don’t come from the store?” she asked. That simple moment revealed an educational gap, and an opportunity. If a single tomato could spark wonder and learning, what might an entire garden do? The Rooted in Hope project soon found out.
Mosaic House Ministries received a grant through TENx10’s Faith & Service Project, which allowed them to transform an unused, nearly three-quarter-acre lot into a living classroom. In a neighborhood carrying the weight of food insecurity and trauma, the grant gave the opportunity to put the Faith Formation Framework into practice. Here, youth are learning to cultivate the land, and, just as importantly, to cultivate lives of faith through service.
A 16-year old girl connected her service in the garden with her faith and love for others. “I have learned to be still and quiet with God,” she shares. “I've come to love the community of North Chicago more over this summer. I can't wait for God's plan for this neighborhood, and I’m happy to be part of it.”
When youth engage spiritual disciplines through relational discipleship and service, they’re able to connect their faith to action—propelling them into a deeper, more lasting relationship with Jesus that helps them own their faith.
The Power of Relational Discipleship
The garden’s impact flowed directly from relational discipleship. Andrea, one of the leaders, was more than a supervisor—she was a mentor. She invited youth into daily spiritual practices. When they arrived, they surrendered their phones for 30 minutes of silence.
“We didn’t know how that would go,” Daniel Hartman, Mosaic House’s Executive Director, admits. “But they soaked it up and looked forward to it.”
Andrea also introduced them to the practice of prayer through journaling and made space to ask questions that connected scripture with soil. Side by side, she watered, weeded, laughed, and prayed with them.
“She was like a mom to the youth,” Daniel says. “She encouraged, she asked the right questions, she shepherded.” In Andrea, the youth experienced the kind of trusted relationship that allowed them to connect service with faith.
One moment stands out. Early on, the teens were learning to use a rototiller—hard, slow work. The frustration began building, and Andrea noticed. Rather than backing away, Andrea pressed in—and pointed them to Jesus. “What are you sowing in your heart right now?” she asked. The teens paused; the answer that rose was “patience.”
That single word reframed the day. “You can’t force plants to grow,” Daniel reflects. “You can’t force people to grow. But you can create space with the right ingredients, where we can be nurtured and grow together.”
In that moment, a spiritual discipline was born. Patience wasn’t just an idea from the Scriptures; it became something they practiced, muscle-deep, through service.
Andrea’s actions beautifully illustrate how relational discipleship creates the trust and space for adults to come alongside young people. Because of her consistent presence in the garden, her words carried weight - and youth were formed through it.
Service as a Pathway to Formation
From the beginning, the garden was designed around service and formation happening together. Youth worked Monday through Friday, all morning. Each day included a brief teaching or question that connected the physical work to an inner reality. And service became the laboratory where faith was applied.
By summer’s end, the youth identified healing as the season’s most surprising fruit. “In a community where life can feel chaotic and fragmented,” Daniel says, “the garden offered one simple thing to do, together, in a trusted space. Over and over the young people said, ‘I feel at peace—with God and with myself.’”
The act of simply serving side-by-side with trusted mentors guiding them became the soil where peace and trust in God could grow.
Transformation through Serving the Community
The relational web didn’t stop with Andrea. Other adults came alongside—teaching gardening skills, stopping by to pray, celebrating the youth’s work. Parents FaceTimed their youth to show them sunflowers stretching ten feet tall. Neighbors offered water, asked for plots, and shared their struggles.
In this environment, faith became tangible. Youth weren’t just learning about God’s love; they were experiencing it through relationships, prayer, and shared service.
This is relational discipleship at its best: trusted adults walking with young people, helping them connect everyday experiences to spiritual truths.
The garden even garnered the favor of the city. Initially skeptical about “another community garden that might get overgrown,” the city watched the space flourish—and now, Daniel notes, “they’re so happy with it they fill our water tank when the rains don’t come.”
Scripture in the Soil
If you asked Mosaic House Ministries to describe its approach, they might tell you they’re simply paying attention to the ways God already uses creation to teach us. “We take inspiration from places like Princeton’s Farminary,” Daniel notes, “where farming and seminary meet.” But the real curriculum here is Scripture made tactile.
Compost becomes a living parable of redemption. Tending the same square foot of bed every day gently confronts our impulse to hurry. And because service is the entry point—cultivating food for neighbors in a food desert—youth are constantly reminded that faith is not a private hobby but a public, embodied love.
Andrea and the team also wove trauma-informed practices into the rhythm: naming emotions, noticing how the body holds stress, and learning to bring those realities to God. The result, Daniel says, is that “God taught us through the garden what it means to be human, and to be human together.”
These disciplines weren’t add-ons; they were relational pathways for faith formation. They remind us of what the Faith Formation Framework emphasizes—the faith of youth can flourish when young people engage service and spiritual practices in the soil of relational discipleship.
What Lasting Faith Looks Like
Why does a garden matter for lasting faith? Because habits shape hearts, and service places young people where God’s heart already is—among neighbors, in shared work, face-to-face with creation’s quiet brilliance. In the garden, youth learn to practice presence; persevere; see connections between parables and planting, repentance and weeding, hope and harvest, and more.
Those habits don’t evaporate when the season ends. They become part of a young person’s muscle memory—spiritual reflexes that endure.
"One of the biggest lessons I discovered was that gardening is far more complex than it appears,” an 18-year old Rooted in Hope gardener opens up. “In many ways, it mirrors our walk with God. Without ongoing care, a plant will not survive the season, and likewise, our spiritual growth can wither without daily renewal—whether that’s sitting quietly in scripture, reflecting in prayer, or simply spending time in nature and witnessing the work of our extraordinary Creator. No matter where we are, God meets us there.”
That’s the quiet miracle of Rooted in Hope—a community space where youth learn to serve, to pray, to pay attention, and to love their neighbors in tangible ways. It’s the kind of soil where lasting faith takes root.