Every Sunday, Reverend Dr. Heber Brown III delivered sermons about daily bread, nourishing one’s soul, and the fruits of the Spirit with conviction.

But all the preaching and praying one man could do couldn’t change one simple fact: his congregation’s tangible food was killing them.

The Pleasant Hope Baptist Church is located in North Baltimore, where 34% of black residents live in “healthy food priority zones” (once referred to as “food deserts”), communities where access to fresh food is nearly nonexistent while convenience stores and fast food thrive. What little fresh food Reverend Brown’s congregation did have available to them was too expensive for most on limited incomes. It was a problem universities, social anthropologists and every level of government had been researching for decades, yielding very few actual results. His congregants suffering from diet-related diseases couldn’t afford to keep waiting while the diabetes and heart disease that disproportionately affects black people caught up to them.

“I had what some would call a divine discontent,” which led Reverend Brown to a simple, but novel solution in 2015 that’s grown into the The Black Church Food Security Network today.

To start, he began sowing real seeds in a 1,500 square-foot garden he cleared on the church’s property. That garden now yields half a ton of produce per year, all of which is given freely at Pleasant Hope. But that was only halfway to the self-sufficiency Reverend Brown felt was so desperately missing from the equation.

So he took it a step further by sourcing local black farmers to run pop-up markets in the church lot after every Sunday’s service. The local farmers could guarantee profitability, and the local citizens could guarantee that the produce they needed to build healthier diets would be available regularly, affordably and that their money would go right back into sustaining their own.

Soon enough, the pews were full, the congregants were happier and healthier, and churches of all ethnicities came calling to find out how to do the same. Today, the Black Church Food Security Network serves 14 different congregations in Baltimore, and many more in Washington D.C., North Carolina, and Virginia as well.

As his organization has grown, so has Reverend Brown’s faith in his cause. “Food is always going to be a priority for our communities. And churches and faith-based organizations, I got a strong hunch, will always be here,” he said. That’s why it’s crucial that the black churches with economically disadvantaged congregations relying on them can provide. Where he once led, he now teaches, consulting with churches nationally to provide them with the skills they need to do the same work he’s done in Baltimore, and spreading the gospel of good food all along the way.

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