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We believe humans are creatures that belong to a Creator God and experience life to its fullest when in communion with God. We assume the Scriptures to be correct when they testify to Jesus being the Son of God who came into humanity to reconcile an estranged creation. We believe in a Triune God who deserves our worship, and we seek to submit to Jesus as our Lord.
We realize that not everyone shares our belief, and we do not require our shareholders to confess this belief. Yet we want to be open regarding our convictions, motives, and mission. To us, our entire lives belong to Jesus and it is our desire that all our decisions be made in respect to this faith.
Accordingly, our organization carries with it some distinctives. We do not seek the endorsement of any particular congregation or denomination as it is our desire to encourage Christians from all denominations to understand the spiritual nature of our consumption of food. Where we get our food from, how it is farmed, who profits from it and who suffers from it, and what that food does to the bodies given us are topics that warrant discussion by followers of a God who made us eating beings. The gospel is itself communicated to us as we partake of the bread and the wine, the body and blood of Christ. God’s salvation is simultaneously a spiritual and a physical reality. The more we’ve studied how we as a society consume food the more we see how the spiritual nature of food penetrates the physical and the more we’re convinced that this is a social justice issue that includes the welfare of the poor and labor ethics, diseases and healthcare, government power struggles and fossil fuel wars, the quality of family life, the future of the environment and of our children’s lives.
Why the name “Eighth Day Farm?”
Early Christians celebrated the “Eighth Day,” the day after the Hebrew Sabbath, for on this day the God-human named Jesus rose from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus marks a new dimension of rest and peace for God’s people. We at Eighth Day Farm want to go about our work from that place of rest and peace. We believe work performed in gratitude and strengthened by rhythms of rest is rewarding for all involved. Concurrently, we hold that good stewardship of the land requires periods of rest and renewal.
Jesus’ resurrection marks the beginning of a new era wherein the powers of darkness and death are unraveling in the presence of God’s salvation. The term “Eighth Day” represents the coming of a new day, a distinct period in history that is the beginning of the end of all that is broken and wrong in the world. Or, to state it positively, the “Eighth Day” ushers in a time where we can experience and taste in fresh ways the hope and promise of communion with God and love for neighbor in a world God created beautiful.
Eighth Day Farm operates out of a fervent belief that the Creator cares for creation and the creatures made in God’s triune image. We believe this care culminated in the saving work of Jesus Christ’s death on a cross and resurrection—where justice confronted evil, and grace reached out to embrace enemies, and the way of peace and love prevailed.
The resurrection of Jesus is the good news that forms and informs all our present choices. While we await the final resurrection with the new heavens and the new earth, we serve our living God with the gifts, talents, and choices given to us. We care for the soil, forests, streams, and lakes as we are intimately connected to them by God’s design. Our “spiritual” mission is also our physical mission. We live in the Eighth Day.