ripen – a gardening lifestyle magazine is your online community to be a hand of tranquility and cultivate a harvest lifestyle.
We’re here to help you discover all the ways the Christian faith produces a more robust gardening lifestyle that yields greater value.
This is the newest brand by Lifestyle Media Group started in 2022. Founded by Brad Bloom, we’ve grown to be an energetic network of thinkers, communicators, and media developers all with a passion to inspire and motivate people to do more than live life fully.
Sure, it’s great to be healthy, embrace sustainability, experience the beauty of our natural world and live life abundantly and to the max. It is human nature to want that. But – you know there is a nature still deeper in you that desires even more. We believe that is God calling you to not just live life but to BE LIFE, the very essence and expression of God, to others.
ripen – a gardening lifestyle magazine is published 4 times per year. It is available on the Internet and as an EcoPrint edition. The EcoPrint edition is an environmentally friendly printable PDF version that delivers access to the entire free online magazine via a single sheet using a QR code for quick access from a smart phone or tablet. You can print it from our website or have it mailed to you. Bulk quantities are available for you to place in your community. You can also subscribe to our free newsletter service and find us on Facebook and Instagram.
DEPARTMENTS TO CULTIVATE EVERY PART OF YOUR GARDENING LIFESTYLE
- Digging In provides growing techniques, how-to’s and unique garden ideas.
- The Growing Zone showcases growers, farmers, and good garden growing works.
- Tending Our Faith is a celebration of stewardship where the roots of organic faith grow deeper.
- Food & Fellowship takes your gardening to the table. Make healthy food choices, plan meals that are tasty and create fellowship through eating.
- Ripen Together offers perspectives and musings from Editor, Kimberly Bloom.
PASSION – HOW IT ALL STARTED
Back in 2003 I saw a posting on Crosswalk.com that read, “Does anyone know if there is a fitness magazine available that I can feel good about having in my home?” The person posting the message went on to explain how many of the magazines often have good fitness content. However, they are not what you would want to have sitting next to your Bible on the coffee table.
That question was the catalyst into my own personal research effort. The conclusion was a resounding, “No! There isn’t much out there.”
That led to much deeper questions. Could such a magazine, if it existed, be more than an alternative? What would it include if it truly articulated the values (and quite honestly the progressive concepts) of the Christian faith? How could it be dynamic, relevant, and truly captivating to both the regular reader and the casually curious?
These questions led to the launch of our flagship brand, Faith & Fitness Magazine in 2004. We didn’t quit there. The fitness lifestyle isn’t the only interest area where God can have dominion and transform lives. Traveling, getting outdoors and now gardening are also lifestyles where more people around the world – some right around you are making faith central to how they do it. They are discovering along with you or already practicing a Christian faith centered approach to their lifestyle interests.
Passion is both dangerous and powerful. It is dangerous to be passionate in a world of conformity, political correctness, majority rule, and compromise. We don’t plan to compromise. Instead pressing toward a fuller experience – a greater depth – a higher purpose and eternal outcomes. This is what you’ll find in this community. Faith is more than a self-induced trance that scientists have discovered contributes to better health. AND it is a lot more than a conservative mind-set that can be used to get people in church.
Faith is powerfully real. Yet most everyone has a limited experience of faith. That is why I think you’ll find ripen – a gardening lifestyle magazine and our other Lifestyle Media Group brands to be dynamic resources to help you connect faith with your daily lifestyle. Our intent is not to dictate to you our interpretation of the Bible but rather to invite and challenge you to explore it and personally seek God.
There is nothing complicated, difficult, or bizarre about making the connections. Rather, as you do it (and I invite you to begin now) you’ll discover that this is living the way you knew it was meant to be.
-Brad Bloom, Publisher
