Celebrating the power of possibility.
I'm Pastor Chris Badle and I believe anything is possible.
Welcome to Anything is Possible.
My name is Halloran Hilton Hill.
What an honor it is to share great stories about great people whose lives prove that anything is possible.
This episode, part two of my interview with the proprietor of Battlefield Farm, Chris Badle.
Thank you for being with us.
Good to be here, my friend.
In our first episode, we talked about a major life transition, a major ministry transition.
You grow up in Cincinnati, Ohio, go off to school, Morehouse, you go to the southern in Louisville, Kentucky.
You get all these degrees.
You're a minister. You're 30 years into ministry.
You've settled in Knoxville. You're pastoring a church.
On top of that, he has 19 kids.
They've adopted so many children and they've opened their home.
They've opened a new ministry, semi-conventional.
One of the things I really enjoy about you is you think for yourself.
I love that about you and I know you'll never lose that.
But in the middle of all of this, you go to clean up a cemetery and a guy drives by.
He's thankful to see what you're doing in the community.
You think you have a discipleship moment happening.
He says, hey, why don't you come to our church?
And he says, I ain't coming to you.
You're right there.
Church.
But I will come to your garden.
You start a community garden and you start to notice that there were people who would show up in the garden
that would never walk two doors down to be in church.
And you're like, we've got to find a way to reach people where they are and a place where they feel safe.
So you start a community farm and before you know it, you're catching the attention of the entire nation now
because they do a feature in People Magazine and NPR does a feature on you and this thing is starting to happen.
You're watching God work miracles in your life, providing housing.
$50,000 piece of land for $5,000.
He's just working miracle after miracle and you're getting affirmation that this leap because you leave church to go to the farm and here we are.
When we left off, you were talking about the veggie van.
Guy says, come get these sweet potatoes.
He gives you 200 bags of sweet potatoes.
You go on Facebook.
A ton of sweet potatoes.
And the people come get it and then you said, but if we're dealing with food insecurity, if you can't get to the grocery store, you can't get over here.
So I need a veggie van.
That's where we left off.
There was a woman that was interviewed and she says it takes her three to four hours to take public transportation here in Knoxville to get to the grocery store.
And what burdened me hurt my heart. I never thought about this because I've always had a car.
Right.
And I've always had kids who can come get the groceries.
Right.
So no matter how much I got, if I forgot something, I go back.
She said takes her three to four hours to go grocery shopping, but she can only purchase what her walker will allow her to carry.
And that broke my heart.
It literally broke my heart.
And I'm like, how do we get this food to the people?
Get the veggie van.
All right.
Many buses are $72,000 brand new.
I don't have that kind of money.
I go on Marketplace and I find some whole lot cheaper, five to $10,000.
Right.
I'm like, yeah, okay.
And I'm literally just about to buy one.
And I'm like, you know how that something says hold off, Chris?
Just hold off.
So I held off and I text a friend of mine and I said to him, you know, you and I are both men of visions and dreams.
And I told him, told him what I was trying to do.
And I said, the only difference between you and I is that your pockets are deep and mine have holes in them.
And if you happen to have a bus that's coming offline, would you look, see if we could buy it from you?
Steve Diggs called me about two weeks later and said, we do.
And so they sold us the veggie van.
We named it Fannie Lou after Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights activist and had the farm in Mississippi.
So it was $1,500.
And I'm like, I can deal with this.
So we've converted it through our relationship with Nourish Knoxville and Second Harvest.
We take out about a ton of fresh produce twice a week.
And we're focusing on the 1-5 zip code or south of Magnolia.
And just to help people get access to fresh vegetables.
We pull up, we have Kroger bags and what have you there.
They walk through, get what they need.
I usually have some James Brown panning or some Parliament Funkadelic.
People literally jamming. We have a ball out there.
But what's happened though is weird because it's like a whole new congregation to me.
People come to me and I don't have the locks anymore.
The reason I cut them, my sister said I looked like a golf course.
What?
Because I had 18 holes.
So I went on a cut up ball. Felt weak after that.
And I would say people would look at me like, you look so familiar.
I said put locks on me.
But what happens though is you stop there.
I may be there half hour, 45 minutes, but you start talking with people.
You start hearing their stories. You start hearing their pain.
They start making prayer requests.
I pray with people. You just chat.
A lot of these people I'm talking with are just lonely.
Some ladies come out and they'll just sit and talk the whole time.
Or I'll make them dance with me or something.
And so it's become like a new congregation, but it's so authentic.
You don't have to dress up. You don't have to put on any pretense.
Just come and share.
We do worship at the farm.
Really? Tell me about worship at the farm.
We call it the cut. The church under the tree.
It's abbreviation for church under the tree.
And we meet on Sunday mornings when God says it's okay.
And that means it's not too cold or it's not raining.
Then we'll meet.
We just sit up under there and share. Not too many of them.
Everybody's invited, but we have people come off the street and they'll sit there.
We'll do Bible study of what have you and pray with each other.
And then we...
It's just a time when we can...
And the interesting thing is we have people who are coming.
A lot of them are the Duns. They're done with church.
I've even had a Jewish rabbi come and share with us.
I've got a Quaker who comes.
I've got some people who are just frustrated with institutional church.
But they know there's something bigger and greater out there.
My goal at the farm is not only to feed people,
but also I got saved the second time through Campus Crusade for Christ.
I had the four spiritual laws. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
Page two.
I got to the point where I'm knocking on strangers' doors.
They'll say the prayer and we'll say goodbye.
Maybe we'll see you tonight. Maybe not.
But at the farm, my goal is to just develop relationships with people.
And my prayer is that they'll get to the point where they'll ask me why I do what I do.
And I share with them. I share with them good news.
I believe that God wants His kingdom to be established here.
And the way I'm establishing it is through food.
Through this camaraderie.
Our core values are agape, which is the unconditional love of God, shalom,
which is peace or wholeness, completeness, and ubuntu,
which is African term, which means I am because we are.
We welcome everybody at the farm.
We have a lot of different types of people who come because there's something about working in the soil.
Possibility powered by Covenant Health, Home Federal, and the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Coming up.
And I got to looking at my friends and I'm like, oh my God, all African American Baptist preachers.
I'm like, yeah, you dog, you know, bishop.
I'm like, this has got to change. Something's not right about this.
How can we reach the world in my circles this big?
You are a scholar.
And I don't say that lightly.
And I'm in a lot of people, but you camouflage a vast intellect behind good humor.
But you're a thinker. You're not, you are a thinker. You're a thinker's thinker.
So it's been interesting for me, for a person like you, you could get lost on an academic, scholarly, philosophical track.
But to see you become or return to the soil, I've been wanting to have that conversation with you about what you are learning from the earth
and what your spiritual experience has been through the earth because George Washington Carver, that was one of his big things was,
he was so fascinated by that because there was a deep spiritual dimension to this.
Can you let me into that?
I hope I can capture that.
And am I describing you accurately though?
I don't know about the scholar part, but definitely the humor.
But since working in the soil, it has taught me to be more introspective.
A lot of times I just go to the farm and just sit, you know, smoke my pipe, drink my coffee, just sit and just be in awe of who God is and what he's doing
and how he's allowed me to do this, what happens, this little bit that I'm doing in his effort.
But it has also taught me about the value of other people.
And I think the biggest change for me, Howard, has been there were people I shunned because they didn't go to church.
They didn't believe like I did, come out from among them, you know.
And then it just hit me one day, like, come out from among them.
And Jesus didn't even do that. He was hanging with them.
That's why they called him a wine-bibber and publican and everything.
I'm like, hmm. And so I started having coffee with people.
These people who had wanted to volunteer at the farm. Let's go have coffee. Let's talk.
And man, it was like all these non-believers who are wonderful, talented, beautiful, peace-loving people who in the community,
who I didn't want to be bothered with just because they didn't go to church.
A guy did a study. His name is Alan Hirsch. He's a Missyologist from Australia.
He did a study and said that most Christians after three years of being a Christian don't have any un-Christian friends.
At this point, I had known Jesus a long time. We've been tight for a while, right?
And I got to looking at my friends and I'm like, oh my God, all African-American Baptist preachers.
I'm like, yeah, you know, Bishop. I'm like, this has got to change. Something's not right about this.
How can we reach the world in my circles this big? You know, I need a bigger circle.
And it was kind of, evolution came through the garden. I wasn't invited. It was like, just happened.
People would come. I had a guy come tell me once, he goes, I love your mission.
I don't know about the God of your mission, but I love your mission, what you're doing here.
That's cool. I want people to be able to come to the garden.
Even though we don't have any so much religious thing like that, I don't try to throw religion or faith on anybody.
If it happens, it happens. It's not fine. But I want people to think that when they think of Chris Bauer like, he's a Christian, but he's not a jerk.
That almost feels like a bumper sticker.
I want to be able to relate to people from every party. I told my wife, I said, I think I genuinely like people. I don't meet strangers.
I'll just go bump up to somebody. I saw a guy the other day, we were literally dressed alike. His beard was way down here.
We both had overalls on and a black shirt up under it. I went up to him, we were at the IHOP.
I said, you know, my mama always told me never to trust a man with a black shirt and overalls on.
He looked at me crazy and he's like, dude.
I mean, I like people. I love people.
And I want to hear their stories and, you know, want to get to know them. And again, prayer for you, they'll ask me why.
Possibility powered by Covenant Health, Home Federal, and the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Coming up.
It starts in the garden. And when he goes looking for them.
Yeah, he's in the garden. And if you remember, you know, Jesus was crucified in the garden, buried in the garden.
And when he was resurrected, Mary thought he was the gardener.
The book is entitled, I'm not coming to your church, but I will come to your garden.
You should get a copy of this. You know, I was thinking about it as you were talking.
I'd read this proverb, paraphrase of a proverb, and it said,
watch the patterns of creation. It will enliven your spirit and deepen your reverence.
And I spent about a year sitting up on a high point right before daybreak, just in nature.
I took pictures every day. But the longer I stayed in nature, there was something really profoundly spiritual about just sitting there and being there.
Sometimes I would sit there with my coffee and my cigar, and I would just be there.
And it was, it really was transcendent. When you were saying that, I was like, oh, I know that feeling. But then I thought,
God makes man from the dust of the earth, forms him.
He makes woman from the man. If this is, if you believe this narrative.
And he stands them up in a garden.
It starts in the garden.
It ends in the garden.
Right? And when he goes looking for them.
Yeah, he's in the garden.
And if you remember, you know, Jesus was crucified in the garden, buried in the garden.
And when he was resurrected, Mary thought he was the gardener.
My sermon on Easter Sunday was the resurrected Jesus wears overalls.
My goodness.
But yeah, so, you know, it's something about being in nature.
You know, I just love to hear the chickens and, you know, and just the sounds and just the smells.
I was out there this morning and just got some chocolate mint. I grow every mint but gubbler mint.
And I got some chocolate, start chewing.
I'm like, man, you know, I eat okra raw now.
It's just, it's just, it's just the beauty of nature, all this provides and how we disregard it.
You know, I think, I think part of the piece that I have within me now is just the fact that I'm not in this constraint to this building.
Yeah. You're out there closer to him.
Closer to him.
You said I don't worry.
Yeah. I don't. Not about, I'm not going to say I don't have worries.
I don't worry about finances or anything anymore.
I have come to the conclusion that when you are in your lane, when you are, you know, doing what the creator has called you to do, he's going to provide whatever that means.
And I just, I don't fret over that anymore.
How can people help you? People watching the day. I want to see your garden grow.
Well, of course, we can always use volunteers at the farm.
We're also trying to do a grocery store in the community where this grocery store will sell everything we sell in the grocery store will be a nickel over cost.
We're going to call it the one five because it's going to be in the 379 one five Zinc like that.
But until we get the brick and mortar, hopefully before this year's out, we'll have a mobile grocery store that's going to go around the community and just we'll be able to do the same thing in the mobile that we're doing in the brick and mortar.
We got a 38 foot trailer that we're going to that's going to be converted to be a grocery store.
So we're real excited about that because we all again funding is always the key.
Our goal is to make the one five and Oasis and then move on to the next one because there's 15 identified food deserts in Knoxville affecting 50,000 of our neighbors.
We got to change that. And I think we have the ability to do it.
See, that's the thing I've learned about possibility and positive possibility people is they believe they believe it can be done.
Like, even if it's never been done, even if it's asymmetrical, even if it's different, they they actually go, no, we can do it.
And I'm going to roll up my sleeves and I'm going to go do it.
And for that, I just so deeply appreciate you and it's to watch you take a step in the direction of a new possibility and then watch it unfold.
It's just a beautiful thing. And I thank you for being with us today and I'm going to be in this box.
Thanks for having me, bro.