Meet our Fellows

Drew Nagy: Living Water Community Center

Richmond, Virginia

Creating Sanctuary for Bees and for People

Drew Nagy has always had a soft spot for bees. “When people ask me what I do for a living, I reply that I am a gardener and beekeeper, but I get paid to preach. I serve as Pastor of Westover Baptist Church and Executive Director of Living Water Community Center (or Living Water for short). While attending seminary, I discovered my passion for creating and restoring biodiverse landscapes. This passion has led me to learn more about permaculture, landscape design and beekeeping!”

Living Water offers an innovative model for repurposing a church campus, providing care for both spiritual needs and care for the earth.

“Living Water is an attempt to reimagine what a faith community looks like and how it engages with the local ecosystem. Our goal is to create a community committed to the flourishing of all of life on earth. To accomplish this, we focus on creating space for contemplative practice that supports the physical and spiritual well-being of the individual, the community, and the earth.”

 Living Water is a community center, bee sanctuary, and monastery. The group is in the process of transforming the 3-acre church campus into a bee sanctuary to provide habitat and food for honeybees and native bees. Currently, over 80 flowering trees, a main source of food for bees, along with over 100 shrubs and a wildflower garden have been planted. The bee sanctuary functions as a “passive park” for neighbors and will become an extension of the walking trails along the James River.

Living Water offers honey from the hives for sale to help support the sanctuary. Families can also pay to “host” a beehive for a yearly fee and a CSA (community supported agriculture) program offers families and individuals a chance to become bee sanctuary supporters and receive a pound of honey each year. A more involved, hands-on training program is offered for those interested in hosting a hive with the goal of eventually taking over the care and management of the beehive or beginning beekeeping on their own.

Native bees are not forgotten at Living Water. “Native bees are having a hard time. A lot of the interest is on honeybees. So we have focused on providing a habitat for the native bees.”

 To offer space for intentional spiritual community, Living Water is developing a residential monastic space which they hope to open in 2023. “The Monastery at Living Water is designed as an intentional residential community of lay people, rooted in the Christian contemplative tradition, who are reimagining life in harmony with the natural environment and the larger earth community that humans belong to.” The monastery will offer living space for people who want to work in the nature sanctuary, offer yoga classes or other health and wellness programs or serve the community in other ways.

“Most monasteries throughout time have provided the public with a valued service. Caring for the natural environment is one way Living Water Monastery serves its community. We offer a sanctuary for people to worship and a sanctuary for the bees and nature.”

About Drew Nagy

A graduate of Virginia Tech, where he started his first garden, and the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Nagy taught middle school math for 4 years. In 2016, he began working as a youth pastor and eventually became pastor at Westover Baptist Church. Nagy describes himself as a “non-traditional” pastor. As executive director of Living Water, Nagy finds himself tending the beehives and planting gardens and native trees across the church campus, while at the same time working to build an intentional spiritual community.

Living Water Community Center began as an idea to better serve the local community and ecosystem. “Now, we have a flourishing community supported garden that generates more than 500 lbs. of produce annually and a thriving backyard beehive program that cares for beehives throughout the city of Richmond.”

Profile by Anita Flowers