Formation Needs Soil

When the conversation about transformation drifts away from the environments that actually produce it

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

There is an observation that has been sitting with me for a while now. One that has become harder to ignore the longer I spend watching people encounter the garden.

I do not pretend to have the final say about formation.

But the garden has been forming me since I was fifteen years old, and the soil has a way of showing you things over time that you cannot unsee.

For most of my life, gardening was something personal. It was quiet work between me, God, the soil, and the seasons. I had no idea how much it was shaping the way I understood life.

That began to change when the garden became something others could step into.

When what had once been a personal practice became a public opportunity, I started watching what happens when people enter the rhythms of soil, seasons, and growth for the first time.

And over time, one pattern became difficult to ignore.

The word formation is everywhere, especially in religious and institutional settings.

Spiritual formation.
Leadership formation.
Community formation.
Personal formation.

Books are written about it. Conversations revolve around it. Entire programs are built around helping people pursue it.

Often it is spoken about as if this is the path toward transformation, the way a person grows into the life of a new creation.

And that may very well be true.

But there is something that has become difficult for me to ignore.

Formation has never been talked about more than it is right now.

Yet much of that conversation seems strangely detached from the kinds of environments where formation is actually lived.

I do not claim to have the final word on any of that.

But after watching what happens when people spend real time in a garden, a simple question keeps rising in my mind.

What exactly is anchoring the formation we are talking about?

Because formation, at least as the garden seems to reveal it, is not primarily an idea.

Formation is a process that takes place inside a living environment over time.

Something has to hold the weight of it.

For most of human history that environment was obvious.

Fields.
Gardens.
Animals.
Trades.
Families.
Shared labor within communities.

Life itself formed people.

These environments carried characteristics that made formation unavoidable. They required repetition, responsibility, patience, and participation. They included friction with reality and feedback from the natural world.

If you planted something too early, the cold told you.
If you neglected a crop, the soil revealed it.
If you rushed a process, the harvest showed it.

Reality itself became the teacher.

But many of the environments where we now talk about formation operate very differently.

They are built primarily around discussion rather than participation.

People gather, share ideas, reflect on experiences, and explore concepts. Conversation has its place. Words can help interpret what people are already living.

But conversation alone cannot carry formation.

Without an environment that requires responsibility and repeated participation, discussion often becomes a substitute for the very thing it is describing.

We talk about formation instead of undergoing it.

The language still sounds right. The intentions remain sincere. But the process floats because nothing in the environment demands change.

This may be one reason so many people can participate in formation groups for years and still feel largely unchanged.

They gain insight.
They gain vocabulary.

But their lives remain largely untouched by the kinds of conditions that actually produce transformation.

This is where the garden exposes something important.

The soil does not respond to conversation.

A seed does not germinate because we discussed it well.
A plant does not mature because we understand its biology.

Growth requires participation.

You plant.
You water.
You wait.
You return.

And over time something begins to form inside the person tending the soil.

Patience develops.
Attention deepens.
Responsibility grows.

None of this can be rushed, and none of it can be faked.

Interestingly, this may also explain why so many leaders, especially in religious spaces, are drawn to garden language.

Seeds of faith.
Deep roots.
Pruning.
Cultivation.
Fruit.

These metaphors appear constantly in sermons, books, and leadership conversations. And they are used for good reason. They describe life with remarkable accuracy.

Gardens reveal how growth actually works.

Roots develop before fruit appears.
Healthy systems require pruning.
Seeds need the right conditions to grow.
Seasons cannot be rushed.

The language resonates because it reflects the way God designed life itself.

But there is an interesting tension hidden inside this.

In many cases the garden language remains conceptual.

We talk about seeds, pruning, and fruit while sitting in environments that are largely disconnected from the kind of living systems those metaphors describe.

The language remains true.

But the soil that originally gave birth to the language is often absent.

For most of human history, the people hearing these metaphors were already living inside agricultural rhythms. They knew what seeds, pruning, and harvest actually felt like. The teachings were not abstract ideas. They were descriptions of life people were already participating in.

Today the opposite often happens.

We hear the metaphors without living inside the environments that first made them obvious.

This creates a kind of holy tension.

Not anger.
Not resentment.

Just the quiet awareness that something true is being talked about without the environment that allows it to be lived.

In many ways, this is the same tension that appeared throughout the life of Jesus Christ.

He often encountered people who knew the language of faith very well. They could quote the law. They understood the teachings. They could speak fluently about righteousness.

But the life behind those words had drifted.

What makes this tension even more striking is that the people around Jesus were literally walking beside Him. They were witnessing an embodied life aligned with God.

Today we live with something even more intimate.

The Spirit of God does not merely walk beside us. The Spirit dwells within us.

What makes this tension even more striking is that we do not live with less access to God than those who walked beside Jesus.

If anything, we live with greater access than ever before.

They walked with an embodied teacher.

We live with the Spirit dwelling within us.

Which means our challenge is not lack of access.

Our challenge is whether we will actually participate in the life we have been given.

This is one of the quiet reasons The Neighborhood Garden Project exists.

Not to offer a better metaphor.

But to restore a living environment where life can actually be practiced.

The garden makes formation tangible.

Instead of talking about patience, people wait for seeds to emerge.

Instead of discussing stewardship, people care for soil and plants.

Instead of imagining fruit, they harvest it.

Something inside people begins to shift, not because someone explained it well, but because they participated in it.

I often think back to when I was fifteen years old.

At the time I had no idea what a gift gardening would become in my life. I did not know that soil would shape the way I see the world, the way I understand people, or the way I recognize the work of God.

But looking back now, I can say something with complete honesty.

The garden has saved me more than once.

There is something about working with soil that brings a person back into alignment with life itself. The noise of the world quiets. The pace slows. The illusion that we control everything begins to dissolve.

In the garden you realize something very quickly.

Life is not something you manufacture.

It is something you participate in.

Seeds carry mysteries we did not design. Roots grow in ways we cannot see. Seasons move forward whether we hurry them or not.

And in the middle of all of that, something deeper becomes visible.

From the very beginning of Scripture, God chose a garden as the first place where humanity would walk with Him.

Before buildings.
Before institutions.
Before programs.

There was soil.
Trees.
Water.
And the presence of God moving among them.

That pattern has never fully disappeared.

Even today, when someone places their hands in the soil, they often rediscover something they did not expect.

The garden has a way of bringing people back into awareness of the One who designed life in the first place.

And perhaps the most beautiful part is how accessible the garden remains.

You do not need credentials to participate.

You do not need prior knowledge.

You can simply step in.

Some people come for an hour.
Some return week after week.
Some stay through entire growing seasons.

The garden meets each person where they are.

Plant something.
Water something.
Pull a weed.
Sit and watch what grows.

People remain for however long they need.

And over time something subtle begins to happen.

The rhythms of life that were always present begin to reintroduce themselves.

Seeds germinate slowly.
Roots grow unseen before anything appears above the soil.
Healthy growth requires patience and care.

No one has to explain these lessons.

The garden demonstrates them.

Perhaps the deeper issue is that we have quietly settled for a much weaker version of formation than what our souls were designed for.

As C. S. Lewis once wrote, our desires are not too strong, but too weak.

In the same way, we have become comfortable talking about formation without participating in the kinds of environments that actually produce it.

The garden gently challenges that compromise.

It invites us back into something older and slower.

Something real.

Not formation as a concept.

Formation as a lived experience.

Because the goal was never simply to understand life conceptually.

The goal is to participate in life itself.

And sometimes all it takes to remember that is a patch of soil.