Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice challenges the Western worldview that has distorted Christianity and damaged creation. The center trains leaders by returning them to an Indigenous Jesus — one who taught from hillsides and wheat fields, who drew lessons from fig trees and fishing nets, who understood that God’s creation is our first and most faithful teacher. Founders Randy (Keetoowah Cherokee) and Edith (Eastern Shoshone) Woodley guide leadership formation through Eloheh Farm & Seeds in Oregon’s northern Willamette Valley, on the traditional lands of the Kalapuyan people. The land reveals what buildings and books cannot — patience learned through planting seasons, humility through tending soil, interdependence through observing ecosystems and generosity through seed saving and sharing.
Participants practice co-sustaining the web of life, discovering their place as servants rather than masters, learning to lead through relationship rather than extraction, reciprocity rather than domination. This formation shapes leaders differently. Participants return to congregations and organizations with embodied wisdom: that all contributions matter because all of creation matters, that strength comes through collaboration rather than hierarchy, that abundance flows from honoring limits rather than ignoring them. They’ve learned these principles by living them — by working with their hands, observing natural cycles and experiencing what happens when humans align with creation’s rhythms rather than fighting them.
How does Eloheh embody traditional innovation?
Indigenous peoples have always known that creation teaches what humans need to learn, that the earth holds wisdom for those who listen. Jesus himself taught this way, drawing divine truth from mustard seeds and sparrows. Eloheh recalls faith communities to this forgotten theology — that understanding God’s creation makes better leaders because it teaches us to lead the way creation itself leads: through mutual flourishing, patient growth, generous abundance and attention to the whole. Eloheh catalyzes this learning beyond its own 10 acres by training cohorts of leaders who carry these creation-based principles back to their communities, creating networks of practitioners who lead from earth wisdom in their own context. What looks innovative — leaders formed by dirt and seeds, theology rooted in soil — is actually the recovery of how faithful people have always learned: from the book of creation itself, the way Jesus taught.
Read more about Eloheh here.