About
Our Vision
Terra Numa is a Christian ministry still in it’s formative stages. Our vision is to establish an ecological farm and place of retreat in the Lynchburg / Bedford, Virginia area with a focus on renewal, restoration, and reconnection. This multi-dimensional land-based ministry will have discipleship to Jesus at it’s core with a heart for raising up a new generation of Jesus followers who will reintegrate life and faith.
Our name, Terra Numa, points to the Garden of Eden story, where our Creator makes Adam, the first human, by forming him from the soil (terra) and breathing His spirit (numa / pneuma) into Adam. We believe this story is foundational to understanding what Jesus saved us for – to recover our identity and purpose in God’s great plan of redemption. We are made of soil and the spirit of God.
Our Call
The Lord has placed in our hearts a call to recover a whole-life pursuit of Jesus and His kingdom, and to facilitate healing, renewal, and wholeness in the Body of Christ. We believe this call is embodied in four key contexts: communion (prayer), creativity (culturemaking), community (deep relationships), and creation (farm and forest).
Terra Numa is a call to recover a whole-life pursuit of Jesus and His kingdom. Our heart is to facilitate healing, renewal, and wholeness in the Body of Christ – in the context of: communion (purposeful prayer), creativity (culturemaking), community (deep relationships), and creation (farm and forest).
Over 20 years ago a vision for a farm and place of retreat began to form in our hearts. Through the years we’ve tasted aspects of this ministry but today we continue to press into it’s full expression. We believe the Lord is calling many of us back to the land in order to establish places of refuge, healing, discipleship to Jesus, and genuine Christian community. This idea of land-based ministry is not new – but it is being renewed in our time. And it is a much needed renewal – as we find our way back to an embodied faith. This is not just a faith for the mind, but for the body and soul as well.
Years ago I had a dream with the late Native American Christian leader Richard Twiss. In the dream he appeared standing on a hill and said to me: ‘Keep the church on the farm’. He then turned into a small twister. I felt a very profound sense that this dream was from God. At the time we were living on a farm and helping host a house church with the couple who owned the farm. It was what I call an ‘untentional community’. But nonetheless it was a partial fulfillment of a deep call we’ve felt for many years – a call which this dream reinforced and again stirred up.
These are unprecedented days in some ways. We live in a time of volatility and countervaling forces. And yet, the great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us also endured days of trial and uncertainty. Followers of Jesus have always sought to be faithful witnesses but I think we often mistake the message we are being witnesses of. It is not a message of flight from the world – to pine for peace once and for all in the clouds. No, according to Scripture God has something more planned:
“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:10–13)
The Biblical story ends with the redemption of the material world. The story ends in resurrection. Are we living backwards from a vision of a disembodied future or an embodied future – a future with God in the heavens – or a future with God on a redeemed earth? Our answer affects how we live out our Christian faith everyday. Are we waiting at the bus stop biding our time until the figurative bus comes to get us, despising the gift of this physical life, or are we in hot pursuit of God’s purposes, our hands dirty with that original Eden call – to steward all that God has given us?
Join us on the journey as we seek to live out a more whole-life pursuit of Jesus and His coming kingdom. – JF
