All Saints and Seed Savers: Honouring Those Who Planted Before Us
by W.J de Kock, ThD
Educational Consultant to Partners in Ministry
Professor of Practical Theology at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University
8 minute read
November arrives with the scent of fallen jacarandas and the promise of summer rain. This is the season of harvest and remembering—when gardeners collect seeds from the year's best performers and prepare for next season's possibilities.
But there's another kind of collecting happening too, and it shares DNA with the most audaciously paranoid conservation project on earth: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Hidden in the Norwegian Arctic like a botanical doomsday bunker, that underground fortress holds over a million seed samples from every corner of the globe—insurance against agricultural apocalypse, hope against human forgetfulness, a bet that the future will need what we're too careless to protect today. It's the ultimate "just in case" project, where purple Cherokee tomatoes rub shoulders with ancient grains from Syria and rare beans from the Andes, all waiting in frozen patience for the day they might be the difference between plenty and famine.
Australia has its own seed savers—stubborn romantics working from backyard laboratories, preserving varieties that arrived in grandmother's suitcases, guarding rose genetics that have been making suburbs smell like heaven for generations. Each saved seed carries more than botanical instructions; it holds stories, wisdom, and the faith of someone who believed the future was worth planting for.
When All Saints Day Waves a Garden Spade
All Saints Day arrives in this context, and suddenly the metaphor stops being subtle and starts waving its arms like it's directing traffic.The church has its own version of Svalbard—generations of faithful witnesses who preserved varieties of Christian faith through seasons of drought, flood, persecution, and the occasional parish council meltdown. They passed down not just doctrine but the living genetics of hope: the heirloom wisdom of how to pray when words fail, how to love when love hurts, how to keep showing up when showing up feels like cruel and unusual punishment. Every congregation is a heritage garden, growing varieties of faith that someone before us cared enough to save from extinction.
The writer of Hebrews understood this agricultural mysticism: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."[i] That cloud isn't a celestial cheering section doing the spiritual equivalent of a Mexican wave; it's the living legacy of seed savers who planted what we're harvesting today. Their faith varieties are still growing in Australian soil, adapted to local conditions but retaining their essential character—the genetic memory of grace under pressure.
Local Legends, Living Varieties
Consider the heritage varieties already flourishing in your congregation. There's the Ukrainian grandmother who brought her prayer tradition wrapped in handmade scarves, teaching children to cross themselves with deliberation, not haste. Her faith variety has deep roots and exceptional drought tolerance, capable of flowering even when life feels like the Sahara during a particularly grumpy summer.
There's the Aboriginal elder whose connection to country shapes how he reads the Psalms, finding Christ in the landscape with a wisdom that predates European settlement by about 60,000 years. His variety grows where others struggle, adapted to this ancient soil in ways that newcomer plants are still figuring out.
Then there's the Lebanese family who arrived with nothing but their Maronite liturgy and a fierce commitment to Sunday lunch that transforms every meal into communion. Their faith variety bears fruit in community-building, in the kind of radical hospitality that turns strangers into family over fattoush and conversations that last until Tuesday.
The Irish grandmother who spent forty years in rural Queensland, teaching Aboriginal children while learning languages that had been spoken here for millennia—her variety combines contemplative depth with practical love, a hybrid that bridges worlds without breaking them.
Lessons from Tomatoes and Temperaments
Seed saving in the garden requires patience, observation, and the humility to learn from what thrives rather than forcing what doesn't. The same principles apply to preserving faith varieties. You can't just transplant someone else's spiritual practice and expect it to flourish in different soil—that's how you end up with the ecclesiastical equivalent of English roses sulking in the tropics. But you can learn from the characteristics that make certain varieties resilient: the deep roots, the pest resistance, the ability to set seed even when conditions would make a cactus complain.
The heritage tomato teaches this lesson beautifully. Modern hybrids might grow faster, resist more diseases, or ship better without turning to mush, but they can't reproduce true to type. Save their seeds and you'll get the botanical equivalent of a mystery box—could be anything, probably disappointing. Heritage varieties, on the other hand, carry their essential character forward unchanged. Their genetics are stable, tested by generations of selection for the qualities that actually matter. In faith terms, this is the difference between trendy spiritual fads that burn bright and fade fast, and the kind of deep practice that remains true to type across centuries of cultural weather.
Not a Vault, a Nursery
Every congregation needs its seed savers—the spirited archivists who recall not just the events but how the church responded with grit and grace. They’re not merely institutional librarians; they’re guardians of spiritual genetics. They remember which prayers coaxed life through the drought of the 1940s, how neighbours rallied during the recession, the bushfires that consumed everything but hope itself. Their stories aren’t museum pieces; they’re survival guides—the “this is how we did it” manuals that steady our roots when storms roar.
Yet too many churches trip over the finish line by confusing seed saving with museum keeping. Real seed savers don’t stash traditions behind glass, letting them gather dust like relics in a mausoleum. They plant them. They watch them adapt, flourish, and bear fresh fruit in new soil. Heritage traditions are living lineages, not archaeological curios meant for a Netflix special. Like heirloom seeds, they bend but don’t break under new conditions, preserving their core character. Think of the resilient Irish faith that once soothed Melbourne’s slums and now thrives in Brisbane’s suburbs—always carrying its essential DNA: a suspicion of authority balanced by an unwavering belief in the redeeming power of a good cuppa.
Preserve and Adapt, Please
Spiritual seed saving requires the same blend of preservation and adaptation.The Korean congregation that gathers at 5 AM for prayer isn't being quaint or showing off their alarm clocks; they're preserving a variety of Christian devotion that has sustained their people through occupation, war, and exile. The Samoan church that spends four hours in worship every Sunday isn't being inefficient by modern productivity standards; they're cultivating a faith variety that understands celebration as essential spiritual food, not optional dessert. The Aboriginal Christian community that reads Scripture through the lens of ancient law isn't being syncretistic; they're allowing the gospel seed to take root in soil it was always meant to inhabit, where it grows with a depth that makes theology professors weep with envy.
The work of documenting these varieties is urgent and sacred—more urgent than you might think, because memory is surprisingly fragile and leadership changes are surprisingly frequent. Too many congregations have lost their stories to the entropy of pastoral transitions and the inexorable march of time.
The Lebanese woman who taught three generations how to prepare for Easter—someone should have written down not just her recipes, but her prayers.
The Aboriginal stockman who found Christ in the red centre and brought that faith back to mission communities—his way of reading the land as text should be preserved alongside his testimony with the reverence usually reserved for ancient manuscripts.
The Italian migrant who built the church hall with his own hands while raising seven children—his integration of physical labour and spiritual devotion deserves documentation as surely as any theological treatise, and probably with more practical application.
Creating story banks isn't just about preserving the past; it's about equipping the future with a decent toolkit. The challenges facing today's church aren't unprecedented, despite what the anxiety merchants might suggest. Previous generations weathered their own storms of cultural change, theological controversy, and social upheaval. Their responses, their innovations, their hard-won wisdom—these are the heritage seeds that could flourish again in contemporary soil if we're wise enough to plant them instead of reinventing the wheel for the thousandth time.
Mentors with Svalbard Energy
This is why mentoring becomes a form of spiritual seed saving that would make the Svalbard scientists proud.
When an experienced pastor takes time to show a younger colleague not just what to do, but how to think about ministry in sustainable ways, they're passing on more than technique. They're preserving varieties of faithful practice that might otherwise be lost to the great ecclesiastical amnesia. When a longtime church member invites a newcomer into the quiet disciplines that have sustained their own faith through decades of ups and downs, they're sharing genetic material that can't be googled, downloaded, or ordered from Amazon Prime.
The heritage garden also teaches lessons about diversity and resilience that would revolutionise church leadership if anyone actually listened. Monocultures are vulnerable to sudden collapse when conditions change—just ask the Irish about potatoes, or any denomination that's put all its theological eggs in one cultural basket. But gardens that preserve multiple varieties—different ripening times, different resistances, different flavours—can weather almost anything Mother Nature throws at them. Churches that honour only one expression of faith, one cultural tradition, one way of being Christian, are setting themselves up for the spiritual equivalent of potato famine. But congregations that celebrate their heritage varieties while remaining open to new plantings—these are the communities that thrive through changing seasons with the resilience of a well-tended permaculture plot.
Indigenous wisdom traditions have always understood this principle with a sophistication that makes modern agriculture look like finger painting. They preserve not just individual varieties but entire ecosystems of knowledge—which plants grow well together, what conditions favour which outcomes, how to read the subtle signs that indicate when to plant and when to wait for better weather. The church desperately needs this kind of ecological thinking, this understanding that faithful witness isn't about preserving individual saints in isolation but about maintaining the living relationships between different expressions of grace.
Plant It Forward
As November unfolds and All Saints Day approaches with its peculiar blend of celebration and solemnity, the invitation is clear: become a seed saver in the heritage garden of faith. Learn the stories of those who planted before you. Document the varieties that have thrived in your particular soil. Share cuttings with anyone interested in growing something real instead of artificial. And remember that every faithful life plants seeds for harvests they may never see—including the harvest growing right now in congregations around Australia, preparing for cultural moments that will test the depth of our roots and the quality of our soil.
The cloud of witnesses isn't just cheering from the sidelines like some eternal sporting event. They're the living legacy in every prayer that sustains us, every act of service that shapes us, every stubborn hope that refuses to let despair have the last word. Their varieties of faith are still growing, still adapting, still bearing fruit in Australian soil with a persistence that would impress even the most cynical gardener. The question is whether we'll have the wisdom to tend them well and the courage to plant them forward.
In the economy of the kingdom, nothing faithful is ever wasted—not even the failures make good compost. Every seed saved is a vote of confidence in God's future. Every story preserved is a map for the next generation's journey. Every heritage variety maintained is a living testimony that what grows from grace remains true to type, no matter how many seasons pass or how dramatically the weather changes. This is the sacred work of All Saints season: honouring the planters by tending their gardens well, and maybe learning to laugh at our own attempts to improve on their time-tested varieties
[i] Hebrews 12:1, NIV.