Por Rick Burnette, personal de campo de la CBF
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building (1 Corinthians 3:5-9).
When Ellen and I were appointed as CBF field personnel in 1994, the concept of incarnational missions was often discussed. Understanding Jesus’ earthly presence as “God with us,” many have been compelled to live, work and interact with marginalized communities as a reflection of Christ. In northern Thailand, we served among immigrant ethnic minority communities, collaborating to improve access to social resources (e.g., citizenship, freedom of movement, education, employment, financial services) while also addressing limited natural resources such as sustainable access to land, water and forest products.
During two decades in Southeast Asia, our incarnational involvement was nuanced. Using outdated language, I often described my role as engaging third-world communities in a second-world nation while living in a first-world home. Could we have better integrated ministry and family? Probably. But we did our best to navigate concentric rings of priorities surrounding a core of vulnerable people.
Now in southwest Florida, the circumstances of those we currently serve aren’t all that different from those with whom we worked before. Immokalee is also home to dispossessed and food insecure people who are struggling in a time and place of immigrant persecution. Meanwhile local commercial interests take advantage of them, resulting in low wages, overpriced shelter and poor access to quality, affordable food.
Although farmworker families are the core of our ministry, not everyone in this unincorporated town of approximately 26,000 is a farmworker. Some residents are too old to work in the fields. Others have transitioned from field work to other jobs, though still low paying and menial. And there are also businesspeople and professionals.
With guidance from Misión Peniel, our long-established partner, the main aim of Cultivate Abundance (in association with Global Missions) is to address local food insecurity through growing, collecting, and sharing nutritious food of cultural preference among our Haitian, Mexican, and Guatemalan neighbors. Our small Cultivate Abundance team, with help from volunteers, can
produce several thousand pounds of such food per year on four 0.1-acre garden sites. As this amount isn’t enough to meet our neighbors’ needs, we enlist the involvement of scores of local, small-scale, food-growing partners, including home gardeners, churches, nonprofits, and a few small family farms. Last year we handled 44,000 pounds of food from 48 local sources.
For comparison, one farmworker can pick the same amount of commercial tomatoes over two weeks. But that’s apples and oranges. Or tomatoes and avocados.
Together, Cultivate Abundance and Misión Peniel work to offer an incarnational presence, especially as many team members and volunteers are long-term Immokalee residents. And while farmworkers toil in the fields of local industrial farms to harvest and ship millions of pounds of produce out of Immokalee daily, our alliance of gardeners work plots and tend home fruit trees to ensure that there’s enough food each Friday afternoon at Misión Peniel.
Gary Baldridge, a past Global Missions Coordinator, along with his wife Barbara, expressed an idea that field personnel might somehow balance efforts to address felt needs of the marginalized while also serving as their allies for justice. He described this as being in their presence in the morning while supporting their cause in the afternoon.
Thirty years ago, Ellen and I were inspired by Angus and Carol MacNeil, Scottish Baptist missionaries who had spent the first half of their career in Zaire before Angus became the General Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society. By the age of 60, the MacNeils had stepped away from administration to reengage as regular missionaries, seeking appointment to serve Baptist churches along the border of Thailand and Burma.
I was told that when the MacNeils expressed their intentions, some members of the BMS board informed them that they were too old to start over again, especially to learn a language as difficult as Thai. I’ve learned that one must never tell an old Scot what he or she can’t do. In 1994, when Ellen and I started T
hai language study at the Union Language School in Bangkok, the MacNeils were in there with us. They were wonderful examples of what Father Richard Rohr describes as “falling upward.”
Now in my final decade of Global Missions service, I intentionally spend at least half of my time and efforts actively growing, harvesting and sharing food. As I sweat in southwest Florida’s heat, I’m aware that my appearance isn’t very impressive. But I firmly believe that to “honor the hands of those who harvest of crops,” as farmworker activist, Dolores Huerta has stated, that I must be incarnationally engaged in producing their food. Such hands-on involvement earns us the right to serve as their allies. It also enables us to bear witness.
Our team spends considerable time advocating for the rights of immigrants and informing others about the plight of farmworkers. We do what we can to encourage farmworker families and their neighbors during these troubled times. Each member of the Misión Peniel and Cultivate Abundance teams has useful and relevant abilities. Mine just happens to be growing, collecting and sharing food.
I’m grateful for the people I work with as well as those whom we serve. And I’m extremely grateful that the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is allowing this aging missionary to be where I’m called to be for this season.