The Real Famine: Why Soul Insecurity Is Killing Us Slowly

A Kingdom Reflection on Why the Garden Was Never Just About Food

By Josh Singleton | Founder and Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project

We’re often labeled as a food ministry.

It makes sense on the surface. We have gardens. We grow food. We steward harvests that could easily be boxed, weighed, and distributed. The need is blaring. Hunger is real. So the assumption is simple: if you grow food, you must be a food ministry.

But we’re not.

And saying that doesn’t dishonor food ministries. In fact, we bless them. Food banks and relief programs carry an important assignment—to meet urgent physical needs and serve those facing crisis. But our assignment is different. And if we’re not careful, the label “food ministry” will keep us in a lane we were never called to run.

It’s not just a mislabel. It’s a misdirection.

There’s a pull that happens when the need is obvious. When people are hungry, it feels almost wrong to say, “That’s not our lane.” But obedience doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it whispers, “Stay rooted in what I told you to do.” And for us, that’s not food distribution. It’s soul cultivation.

I’m writing this for the ones who are exhausted. For those who think change can only come from the hands of disconnected lawmakers. For the ones tired of tracking and weighing food. Tired of looking into eyes and silently wondering if any of it is really helping. I’m writing for those who are ready to walk with God through the rhythms of the soil.

The need is loud, but our assignment is quiet. It happens in slow conversations. In hands meeting soil. In someone realizing they’re more than what’s been handed to them. We’re not here to fill a gap. We’re here to help people remember who they are.

The garden was never meant to become a transaction center. It’s not a program. It’s a place of process. We grow food because food is connected to story, to stewardship, to identity. Not because it’s the most efficient way to feed the masses.

We’ve seen it over and over: a person comes for the harvest and ends up encountering something deeper. They remember who they are. They recover dignity. They begin to walk differently. Why? Because food didn’t save them—presence did. Process did. God did.

Soul insecurity is at the root of what we’re addressing—because it’s what drives every other symptom. When someone remembers who they are, it affects how they eat, how they love, how they carry their body, how they build their future. It doesn’t just restore their soul—it realigns everything else. Maternal health. Diabetes. Chronic stress. Family cycles. Poverty. These are the fruits of forgotten identity. And the garden gives us a slow and sacred place to recover it.

But that pace is often too slow for a world built on metrics and urgency. We’re not dealing in quick results—we’re pulling one weed at a time, until we arrive at a baseline of routine maintenance of the soul. This isn’t a one-time fix. It’s a lifelong tending. And just like any healthy ecosystem, once identity is restored, the rest begins to flourish. But it requires patience. Presence. And a willingness to grow roots in places the world refuses to slow down for—where healing isn’t rushed, where transformation takes time, and where the soul learns to breathe again in silence.

We’ve been conditioned to chase what looks good. To say yes to opportunity. To applaud innovation. To call every open door “favor.” But the Kingdom doesn’t run on good ideas. It runs on God’s voice.

Not every good thing is from God. And not every open door is yours to walk through. Some are detours dressed as favor. Some are tests of your clarity. Some are distractions—sent not to derail your faith, but to dilute your focus.

The enemy doesn’t have to tempt us with evil. He just has to keep us busy with what’s good—but not God. That’s how ministries drift. That’s how assignments get bloated. That’s how gardens become programs.

Jesus wasn’t led by potential. He was led by the Father. He walked past sick people. He refused to be crowned by the crowd. He delayed when others demanded. Why? Because obedience mattered more than optics. Purpose mattered more than pressure.

If we had followed every suggestion—every opportunity that looked helpful—we’d be running a dozen food programs by now. We’d be overextended, exhausted, applauded by the world… and misaligned with Heaven.

But the fruit would be off. Because the root would be compromised.

So we’ve learned to ask: “Did God assign this—or did we just assume it was good?”

This isn’t hesitation. It’s holiness. Because the Garden was never built on ambition. It was built on obedience.

“Food ministry” is a label that puts us in a category we don’t belong in. It may seem harmless. Even complimentary. But labels, even well-meaning ones, have the power to confine vision, redirect assignment, and slowly erode clarity. Once you're named by the system, the system begins to shape you. The expectations change. The questions change. The pressure shifts. Suddenly, you're not stewarding presence—you’re managing outcomes. You’re no longer listening for the whisper of God—you’re responding to the pull of people. That’s not ministry. That’s drift.

And sometimes, I think that’s the point. There is a real enemy, and he doesn’t need to destroy your work—he just needs to dilute it. Mislabeling is a tactic of containment. If he can’t stop the garden, he’ll try to make it something it was never meant to be. Something busy. Something urgent. Something admired by culture but disconnected from Heaven. He’ll keep you convinced you’re doing good, so you never stop to ask if it’s what God actually asked of you.

I sat in on a Zoom call filled with urgency—voices rushing to solve immediate needs, to shift policies, to get disconnected decision-makers to care more about those who are hungry. But not one word pointed to what God says about hunger, restoration, or identity. It was a food ministry conversation without the counsel of the Father, the Bread of Life was misding. And it confirmed something deep in me: the lack wasn’t just in food—it was in vision. In trust. In Presence.

A room full of passionate people trying to rescue others while disconnected from their own Source. At one point, I offered a different view: that maybe, just maybe, God is trying to get our attention. That perhaps even the presence of ICE at food pantries—right or wrong—is being allowed to drive us toward fewer numbers and deeper conversations. To intimacy over intervention.

The irony hit me. The same government some condemn for injustice is the one many ministries rely on for funding. And deeper still, it’s the same source that often shapes the language, timelines, and metrics of the ministries themselves. We speak against the system, yet remain tethered to it—depending on it not just for money, but for validation, for approval, for scale. And that tether slowly chokes the original call. Because when funding becomes the lifeline, the Father no longer is. We begin crafting programs to please a grant application, rather than cultivating spaces to host God’s Presence. We begin writing proposals to perform rather than stewarding gardens to listen.

And in the name of helping others, we often bypass the deeper lack within ourselves. The irony is, we set out to fix food insecurity—when the real famine is soul insecurity. Food was never the root. And when the soul is ignored, every solution stays surface-level. We mask spiritual hunger with physical provision. We avoid asking the harder questions because feeding feels safer than listening. But the same soul insecurity driving hunger in others is alive in us, too. And without the Father, even our best efforts fall short—because without intimacy, ministry becomes maintenance.

We read Scripture, but for many, there’s a veil. Religion taught us to idolize miracles while skipping over the first 30 years of Jesus’ life. We’ve built ministries on the three public years and forgotten the decades of obedience that came before them. The hidden years. The years of becoming.

Jesus was approved by the Father before He preached or healed. He didn’t earn approval through miracles—He lived from it. That’s what made His public life so powerful. Without that root, ministry becomes performance. A hollow shell of doing, disconnected from being.

And this is where religion kills. Not always with violence, but with exhaustion. With applause that replaces intimacy. With doing that keeps us from being. It kills by feeding—offering bread that numbs the ache instead of revealing it. Feeding people without helping them confront the hunger beneath the hunger.

Let’s name it plainly: food insecurity is real, and we should care. But, more importantly, so is soul insecurity. And it’s more deadly. We feel compelled to fill every hunger out of compassion. But not every hunger is meant to be filled right away.

We step in too quickly, often driven by ego, by our own need to feel helpful. Disconnected from how intricately God has woven Himself into every person's story, we short-circuit the process He's trying to walk them through. Jesus didn’t chase hunger. He waited for it to ripen. The prodigal had to hit the pig trough before he remembered the Father. And yet, we often step in before that moment ever happens. We offer a sack of groceries when God may have been letting appetite become a doorway to awakening.

What if hunger was supposed to be a teacher? What if we saw hunger as holy, not just a humanitarian crisis? What if skipped meals could lead to kneeling souls? What if the deeper need wasn’t calories, but identity?

This doesn’t mean we ignore hunger. It means we shift our posture. We serve food with conversation, not just charity. We cultivate gardens and tables where hunger is honored, not silenced. We stop measuring success by pounds distributed and start measuring it by hearts returned.

Because maybe the real crisis isn’t food insecurity. Maybe it’s that we’ve insulated people from encountering their own spiritual famine. And in doing so, we’ve made hunger something to eliminate, not understand. We’ve traded the invitation of the Kingdom for the efficiency of programs. We’ve rescued people from discomfort but never walked with them into dependence.

And in the strangest twist of all, the ones handing out the food are just as dependent on the system as those receiving it. Slightly more resourced maybe—but often just as insecure in their soul. And then the funder becomes the god of the whole system. The one who can make it all right. It’s a vicious cycle.

The truth is, we’re not here to “end hunger.” We’re here to walk with the hungry—starting with ourselves. We’re not here to scale programs. We’re here to host Presence. We’re not handing out impact. We’re returning to intimacy.

We are an organization focused on soul insecurity. And we’re tracking the pulse of hearts returned.

Fewer numbers may not mean less fruit. It may mean the invitation to go deeper. To pull one weed at a time until what’s left is the slow, steady, quiet work of tending identity.

God downsized often, so He could be everything. And He still does.

We’re here to walk with Him—through the slow, unseen places—until the change He wants takes root. Not our change. Not cultural change. Kingdom change.