DINWIDDIE, Va. (AP) — A group of ministers and former theological students is hoping to use a historic Dinwiddie County farm as a way to reimagine the way religious leaders are taught in central Virginia. It starts by turning Sophia Farms into a self-sustaining entity that can cover 100% of the costs of a seminary to be located with the farm.
Once that school is up and running, the students will provide the labor to run the farm and pay the bills for the school. They can then graduate with a three-year master’s degree, becoming a minister without having paid a dime in tuition payments or having student loan debt, which Sophia Farms leaders say is a significant issue in training more religious leaders.
Leaders behind the Sophia – separately incorporated Sophia Farms, and Sophia Theological Seminary – want the school to be a place for a paradigm shift in religious thinking.
The small-scale intensive farming operation is currently about 20 acres. It bears summer crops, such as eggplant, cucumbers and tomatoes, plus winter vegetables, such as cauliflower, collards and kale.
It’s currently farmed by a core group of trustees and committee members. When the seminary opens, plans are for Sophia to have 36 students plus staff members working the dirt.
“Our aspiration is not to be huge; our aspiration is to have an impact,” said Melissa Jackson, a member of Sophia Farms’ steering committee.
Currently in a startup phase, the farm between Interstate 85 and Boydton Plank Road in Dinwiddie is just about four plots of rotated farmland. As the farm grows, Sophia leaders want to build other amenities, such as walking trails and three student housing buildings.
Sophia Farms is operating under a community-supported agriculture – or CSA – model in which the customers essentially subscribe to “shares” of the farm’s produce. Each customer gets a share, or multiple shares, each week when Sophia harvests its fields. Most of the shares are currently purchased by people in the Richmond area.
The bulk of the revenue is currently earned with typical farm crops, but could move into other products.
The most notable individual products now are a pair of “Sophia’s Pantry” branded hot sauces made with cayenne and serrano peppers farmed at the property. One is an old family recipe that one of the founders called “use wisely” because they couldn’t agree on how hot the sauce is. Some of the members say it has enough kick to make their eyes water; others don’t think it’s too spicy.
The second hot sauce is a combination of honey and peppers formed in conjunction with Virginia FoodWorks, a nonprofit cannery in Farmville. The sweet mixture also comes with a kick of spice.
Sophia staff members say they could branch into new products or markets for sale as the farm scales.
“If I had to guess what the future is, I would say it’s a cobbled link together of several different things that all are meaningful for us, but also taste good,” Jackson said. “The hot sauce tastes good. We’re not dabbling; it’s a proper hot sauce.”
The farm and its CSA model are designed as a way to combat a significant economic downfall that has been plaguing theological education over the past decade.
Sophia Farms is the brainchild of Mark E. Biddle, a former professor of the Old Testament at Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond. Most members of the current steering committee and board of trustees were once his students. He says he taught about 1,200 current ministers across central Virginia over his 26 years there.
That ministry closed in 2019, citing financial reasons.
Biddle said those reasons are a lopsided cost structure for ministers upon graduation. Religious schools and institutions have long relied heavily on donations to provide education and services. Biddle said that support from donations is starting to wane. That results in seminaries charging increased tuition, which is difficult for ministers to pay off.
“It’s just hard to go into $100,000 of debt, and then go into the ministry at a little small church out in the countryside and try to support your family,” Biddle said.
The Association of Theological Schools accredits Christian schools of all denominations. It found that the average theological student spent $53,800 per year on their education and that almost 60% graduated with student loans averaging $44,500.
According to ATS studies, 38% of graduates had to take an extra job within the first five years after graduation, 33% looked for a higher-paying job and 19% postponed health care to help make ends meet financially.
“A lot of really sharp, talented, wonderful former ministers who are former students of mine have left the ministry after three to five years simply because they can’t pay off their student debt. It’s a killer for the church,” Biddle said.
The closure of Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond gave Biddle the opportunity to take theological education in a different direction. First, he had to work out the cost and revenues.
Board chair Neil Zahradka, an ordained minister with experience working with the Department of Environmental Quality, crunched numbers in a spreadsheet. They were confident based on the results that the available farmland, plus incoming labor, is enough to support a theological school.
A former student of Biddle’s just happened to have the perfect piece of land.
Kathy Shereda purchased the farm, now called Sophia Farms, in 1987. She and her husband farmed the land for pumpkins, Indian corn, gourds and flowers before she eventually went to the seminary.
“I knew I couldn’t sustain the farm physically; I kind of wanted to sell, but I didn’t want to lose the property,” Shereda said.
The farm itself is the last parcel of a property that belonged to the family of Winfield Scott. Scott grew up there and eventually practiced law in Petersburg before joining the military and fighting in the Mexican-American War. He later was a Civil War general for the Union, as part of President Abraham Lincoln’s staff. The current 92 acres are all that remain from the historic 5,000-acre property.
“They called and said they were looking for a farm that was 100 acres, with about 20 acres open with some farmhouses, barns and water access. I said, ‘You just described my property.’”
She sold the farm to Sophia but will continue living there and working the fields with her decades of knowledge about the land.
“This means I still have my hands in the soil on the property that I love so much,” Shereda said. “A piece of property like this, you don’t own it, you borrow it. And now it can continue a legacy, a living legacy.”
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