Joy. Hope. Possibility. That’s what Rev. H. Maurice Barnes, pastor of Calvary Presbyterian Church in Wilson, feels as he watches children harvest cucumbers and play among the raised garden beds outside his church. Seeds are being sown in that soil, growing all manner of produce. But, for Barnes, something far deeper than those cucumber plants is taking root.
The garden at his church is the beginning of a much bigger community effort called Wilson Read & Grow. The initiative, designed for local students in elementary and middle school, aims to address hunger, boost literacy rates, and teach entrepreneurial skills.
It’s also a collaborative project, bringing together five churches in downtown Wilson — Barnes’s Calvary Presbyterian, along with Contending for the Faith, Jackson Chapel First Missionary Baptist, St. John AME Zion, and Total Impact Outreach Ministries.
With guidance from NC Rural Center’s Faith in Rural Communities Program, church leaders spent months identifying their strengths and how they could better serve their neighbors before coming up with the idea behind Wilson Read & Grow.
Now, the project is fueled by a combined investment among the churches. Through the Rural Center’s program funded by the Lilly Endowment, each church received a $10,000 award, which they pooled together for a total of $50,000 to create a deeper, more lasting impact on their community.
“There is so much power in unity and partnership, because man was not meant to be alone and he’s not meant to work alone,” said Carol White, education chair of the Wilson NAACP and a Read & Grow committee member. “You just can’t do it all.”
Better Together
In 2023, White introduced the churches to the Rural Center and its faith program, which helps churches leverage their strengths to create meaningful ministries through coaching and grant assistance. The five churches decided fairly quickly to band together while remaining mindful of their differing denominations and leadership structures.
“We made sure everybody’s internal policies were respected,” White said. “Over the nine months, the Rural Center staff did an excellent job of sticking to that, and they did an excellent job of helping them come to an understanding of the needs of the Wilson community and how they could work together to meet that need.”
Wilson’s churches have long played a central role in tackling local needs. What’s new with Wilson Read & Grow is the collaboration. In the past, they typically worked together on only occasional joint efforts, Barnes said.
“Historically in Wilson, the church has been at the forefront of seeking change across different aspects of the community, so there is nothing new in that sense,” Barnes said. “But the question was, what does that look like today [as we] bridge gaps and recognize the challenges that we face.”
Across the small city of Wilson, the challenges are big. As church leaders reflected on how to best be of service, a priority came into clear focus — supporting local children and families. Some 23 percent of Wilson County faces food insecurity, well above the state average of 15 percent, according to the Wilson County Community Foundation’s 2025 community needs assessment. The county’s reading and math scores for students in third to eighth grade also are below the state average, but above comparable districts across the state, according to a 2025 report about Wilson County by myFutureNC, a North Carolina nonprofit focused on educational attainment.
It wasn’t difficult for church leaders to draw a few correlations. As Barnes puts it, “How can a child learn if he or she is hungry?”
Feeding Minds and Futures
After more than a year of planning, Read & Grow launched in April 2025 with the garden at Calvary Presbyterian. More work is required to fully bring the program to life. The project involves a three-pronged approach that aims to feed the minds and bodies of Wilson’s children through literacy programs and fresh produce from the garden and build their entrepreneurial skills as they consider what the future might hold for them.
By summer 2026, organizers hope the full vision of Read & Grow will have come together. By then, they say, students will be engaged in the literacy components through a program for middle schoolers at the local Foundation YMCA of Wilson and a separate program for grade schoolers.
And the garden will be full of produce, serving as not just a classroom for how to grow and harvest food and the importance of healthy eating, but also as a small business incubator. That third prong involves students learning what it takes to run a business, from managing inventory and setting prices to marketing, and, ultimately, selling their goods at Wilson’s farmers’ market.
“We want the teens, as they get older, to understand that entrepreneurship is a way to sustain yourself,” said Joan Boykin, a member of St. John AME Zion and a retired educator who serves on Read & Grow committees. “A lot of them don’t have good concepts of how they can do something to have their own business.”
Strength From Within
For Barnes, Wilson Read & Grow represents a model for how churches can reimagine their role in the 21st century. With traditional church attendance on the decline, faith communities, he said, must move beyond the pews and become active forces for change in the communities they serve.
“In this moment, in this season that we find ourselves, we have to use our voices,” Barnes said. “We’ve got to speak loud, and we’ve got to find a way to bring our strengths.”
And he points out, church members have so many strengths. Supporting Read & Grow are retired educators, longtime gardeners, skilled builders, and others offering their expertise. Boykin said she was struck by just how many people were eager to contribute when asked — and by the diversity of skills they brought to the effort.
“Just opening up the ideas to the members of the church family gives you a lot of insight into who your church members are,” Boykin said. “You’ll find so much assistance among so many people.”
Going forward, as Read & Grow leaders bring the program to life, they’re also tapping into their broader community networks, reaching out to local colleges, nonprofits, schools, and businesses to help grow and sustain the program through funding and volunteers. The work ahead won’t be easy, Barnes acknowledged. But, he added, it will be worth it.
“You need to be in it for the long haul, and that’s the thing about it,” Barnes said. “It is not a sprint. It is a race of endurance, and I cannot emphasize this enough that [with] the seeds that we are sowing, it will indeed reap a bountiful harvest. But we can’t grow weary. We will get tired, we’ll get frustrated, but we have to pick ourselves back up, brush ourselves off and stay in the fight.”