This Isn’t a Nonprofit. It’s a Place to Grow.
Rooted in Heaven, Growing Through Culture
By Josh Singleton | Founder and Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project
When most people hear the word nonprofit, this is the picture that forms—an energetic cloud of words like charity, help, money, volunteer, and service. And for many, this framework has done real good. There are people working hard within it, meeting urgent needs with compassion and care. We honor that. But for us, this image also reveals a deeper contrast. While the world often associates nonprofit work with urgency and output, The Neighborhood Garden Project moves from presence and alignment. We’re not here to fix or to perform—we’re here to steward what God is already growing. This isn’t about rejecting the nonprofit world. It’s about living from a different root system. We may carry the structure, but we don’t carry the culture.
The Neighborhood Garden Project (TNGP) exists to help people grow and thrive. Yes, we grow food—but more than that, we cultivate people. We hold nonprofit status, but that’s just paperwork. We’re not a nonprofit in posture or culture. The 501(c)(3) is simply a code to help the culture categorize what we do—it doesn’t define who we are. We’re not a program or a service. We are a relational community rooted in presence, not performance—in discernment, not demand.
We carry a 501(c)(3) for logistical reasons—but what’s unfolding here has nothing to do with paperwork or program language. The Neighborhood Garden Project is not a service. It’s not a program. It’s soil that invites people to come alive. It’s space set apart—not just to grow food, but to grow up. Into healing. Into identity. Into purpose. And we’re not the first to walk this path. God has always used cultural language to plant eternal truth. From Moses to Daniel, Jesus to Paul, He speaks through what’s familiar, then draws people into something far deeper.
At Pentecost, God didn’t create a new language. He entered the ones already known. He met people where they were and revealed something higher. We do the same. Gardening is a language nearly everyone recognizes—but here, it becomes a place of encounter. A sacred classroom. A mirror. A slow invitation to be formed. We’re not just planting seeds. We’re watching people root. We’re not growing produce. We’re cultivating presence, rhythm, and Kingdom remembrance.
God has always entered systems—not to copy them, but to plant something better. Joseph didn’t copy Egypt. Daniel didn’t bow to Babylon. That’s more than a historical footnote. It’s a pattern of Kingdom distinction.
Joseph, elevated to second-in-command in Pharaoh’s house, was surrounded by Egypt’s wealth and power, yet he remained clear: “It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer” (Genesis 41:16). He never claimed the source. Even with authority, he remained a vessel. Joseph used Egypt’s infrastructure not for his own gain, but to preserve life: “God sent me before you to preserve life… to preserve for you a remnant on earth” (Genesis 45:5–7). His position never replaced his purpose.
Daniel, though trained in Babylon’s language, literature, and governance (Daniel 1:4–5), “resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food” (Daniel 1:8). That small act of resistance anchored him in a different Kingdom. Later, when commanded not to pray, “he went to his house… got down on his knees three times a day and prayed… as he had done previously” (Daniel 6:10). He honored his earthly assignment but never forgot his heavenly allegiance.
Both men bore fruit without becoming the systems they served. That’s the posture we walk in too: present but not performative, faithful but not for sale, inside the structure but flowing from something higher. The world may see a nonprofit. But the roots run much deeper.
We exist within a nonprofit framework, but we are not defined by it. We don’t serve grants or metrics—we serve the Kingdom. That changes everything. We don’t measure success by numbers but by alignment. We don’t move fast—we move faithfully. We don’t ask people to come—we trust the willing will show up. This is not an organization. This is a living ecosystem—nourished by obedience, not strategy.
The garden is more than a metaphor. It’s a spiritual ecosystem. A place where becoming happens. These beds aren’t for escape—they’re for encounter. And that encounter is not just with the soil, but with the God who first breathed life into it. Here, people don’t just grow plants. They grow trust. They let go of control. They let themselves be tended, pruned, and renewed. The garden doesn’t demand perfection—it demands presence.
Revelation shows us a Kingdom made of every tribe, tongue, and nation. God never asked us to lose our culture—He asked us to bring it into alignment. These gardens honor that. Everyone is welcome. But not everyone will stay. Not because we exclude, but because the soil reveals what’s real. This work doesn’t cater to comfort. It calls people into alignment. And when they say yes, they stop planting from effort and start growing from identity. They don’t just take part in a project—they root themselves in something eternal.
This is how God has always moved. He incarnates. He translates. He disrupts. He redeems. And then, He multiplies. The Neighborhood Garden Project is one small thread in that eternal pattern. We’re not solving problems. We’re stewarding people. We’re tending the places where growth begins underground, in the quiet, in the hidden, in the surrendered. And we’re here to remind people what the soil already knows: God is still speaking. Healing is still growing. And the Kingdom is still coming—one rooted life at a time. If something in you feels drawn, even if you can’t explain it, you’re not alone. The Kingdom is calling you, too.
